Jellyfish

This is a seafood restaurant that claims to work only with certified sustainable sources, and always with fresh rather than frozen fish. You can have four to seven courses but this is otherwise a no-choice menu, with the dishes of the day displayed on a blackboard. Five courses cost €79, to give a rough idea of price. The head chef is Laurin Kux, who was previously sous chef here for two years under the previous head chef Nils Egtermeyer, who is still involved with the restaurant as a consultant. The room has a casual feel, with no tablecloths.

The wine list ranged in price from €39 to €149, with 90 different wines available, over a third of these from Germany, but with bottles from France, Austria, Spain, Portugal and South Africa too.  Given the emphasis on fish, it is not surprising that there were just six red wines listed. These included Markus Molitor Weissburgunder 2013 at an enterprising €42 for a bottle that costs just €6 in the high street, Alheit Bush Cartology 2014 at €62 compared to a retail price of €39 and Bachelet-Monnot Puligny Montrachet 2011 at €99 for a wine that will set you back €48 in a shop.

The meal began with a nibble of fresh mango and avocado with cucumber, jelly of yellow gazpacho, fresh mango and octopus. Octopus is a difficult thing to prepare as it is inherently chewy and typically requires hours of cooking to render it edible. Even in Japan it is possible to encounter rubber-like octopus. Here it was cooked in red wine for four hours and was indeed reasonably tender, the accompaniments pleasant (13/20).

This was followed by wild prawn wth green and white asparagus, wild chives and asparagus cream soup. The prawn had lovely sweetness, and the asparagus was just in season and had excellent flavour (15/20). Yellowtail sashimi came with a Niçoise salad with olives, green beans, cream of white beans, marmalade of tomato and basil, potato chip, rocket, mousse of red onions, Spanish anchovy and a French dressing. This was an interesting riff on the classic Mediterranean salad, the fish having good flavour and the salad elements working well (15/20).

A dim-sum style duck steamed dumpling had Thai curry within it, served alongside diver-caught scallops, salad of glass noodle, soya jelly, bak choi and foam of fresh crocus. The Norwegian scallops were classy, with excellent inherent sweetness. The dumpling had good texture, the Thai spices nicely complementing the meat (15/20).

Smoked eel came with celery, beef ragu, apricot jelly, carrot, cream of celery, chervil and oxtail broth. The eel was fine and the ragu had quite good depth of flavour, the earthy celery a pleasing foil to the distinctive taste of the eel (14/20). Halibut was cooked accurately and came with yellow pepper cream, rouille, dark risotto rice, fresh mango, pineapple and a garnish of lovage. Fruit is a tricky pairing with fish but it was not too jarring here, and the rouille had plenty of deep garlic flavour to keep the dish on the rails (13/20).

The final savoury course was guinea fowl with peas, panna cotta of yellow peas, marinated young onions, Amalfi lemon and a reduction of the cooking juices. The local peas had good flavour and the guinea fowl was tender (14/20).

Dessert was short crust pastry with coffee cream, cereals, orange crust pastry, orange ice cream, raspberries, coffee drops and a soup of buttermilk. This was as much breakfast as dessert, but the fruit had enough flavour to pull the dish along into sweet territory, and the pastry itself was pleasant (13/20). 

Coffee was from a supplier called Carroux and was very nice. One important point to note is that this seems to be a cash-only restaurant. They also take a thing called a Maestro Card - a mainly German creation - but seemingly not regular credit cards, at least according to the German version of the website; the English translation is silent on the subject. Service was friendly and efficient, though dishes arrived at a distinctly leisurely pace, even on a quiet Tuesday night. I left €180 (£142) in cash including tip, with plenty of nice wine. A typical cost per head for a shorter menu and more moderate wine might be around £85. Overall Jellyfish was a pleasant experience, the cooking quite ambitious and accomplished, the product quality good, though it is not a bargain.