The Jungle Room for cocktails and good Indonesian-Japanese food

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Jungle Room

Where: 961 Denman St., Vancouver

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When: Dinner, Happy Hour, late night, daily. Weekend brunches.

Info: 604-558-4343 jungleroom.ca

I grab the cobra and I’m in. To The Jungle Room, a West End cocktail lounge, that is. It’s funny because I’m the actual wuss who refused to visit the amazing Jemaa el-Fnaa square in Marrakech because there are snake charmers there. And avoided entering a room at a Peruvian jungle resort because of the snakes preserved in jars on a counter.

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At the Jungle Room, I’m fearless. The cobra is metal. It’s the door handle so, no problem.

When I called the chef, Krisyanto, he’s breathless and it really does sound like a jungle over there. He’d been working 14-hour days to keep up with Dine Out Vancouver demand. Could we please postpone the interview until Dine Out’s finished, he requests? Krisyanto’s mononym is common in his native Indonesia as well as in other cultures. Most often, he’s called Kris.

Who’d have thought, even 10 years ago, that Vancouverites would get so excited about Indonesian-Japanese food? It’s not just the food though. Jungle Room, which took over the old Dover Arms spot, hits the right vibe — elegant, but with a neighbourhood feel, theatrical and sexy with vibrant jungle hues, yet intimate and cosy. Some restaurateurs can spend $3 million and not get it right, but owner Kevin Frank did.  There is loads of square footage, but the restaurant’s sectioned into three areas — a plush dining room, a lounge surrounding a luminescent bar and a library with a fireplace for two-top tête-a-têtes. In warm weather, there’s a 26-seat garden patio with more plants, dominated by birds of paradise, tropical plant-lover Frank’s favourites. The bathroom is covered in jungle-themed wallpaper done by a local artist.

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Frank visited many a fabulous cocktail lounge around the world and missed such wow spaces in Vancouver. In Montreal, where I reached him, visiting friends, he’s loving the lush and luxe Atwater and Milky Way cocktail bars. “Why don’t more people in Vancouver do that?” he wonders.

Krisyanto melds Indonesian and Japanese cuisine with French techniques, mirroring his culinary journey. He’s cooked at Miku in Vancouver as well as other Japanese restaurants in Sydney, Australia, and opened two in Indonesia. He then trained in French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa.

“When I create dishes, I think about Indonesian cuisine first, then substitute and tweak with Japanese ingredients but I’m very, very much in love with French techniques. I try to level it up. Fine dining in Indonesia isn’t quite there yet,” Krisyanto says.

He’s a tweaker. For example, his rendang, the rich Indonesian beef dish, isn’t authentically Indonesian. He subs in pork for the traditional beef and takes a shortcut with the sauce, which typically requires hours and hours of reduction until it becomes part of the meat. “My sauce is very saucy, more like a curry texture. It’s more Malaysian where the flavour is in the sauce.”

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The best seller, for good reason, is the laksa bombs ($16) which are prawn and truffle dumplings in a lobster laksa sauce. As much as he loves laksa noodle soup, the more refined dumplings convey the same flavours, but are dressed for a cocktail lounge, not noodle shop. They’re very good.

You’ll find lumpia or spring rolls ($14) but unlike in Indonesia, Krisyanto doesn’t include bamboo root in the filling. “To be honest, it has a distinctive odour and so I don’t make it authentically Indonesian,” he says. He serves it with a crying tiger dip, noted for its chili heat.

Scallop and cucumber yuzu broth ($22), a colourful, vibrant dish with granny smith apple, shiso, wasabi, pickled mustard and crispy capers, is a big winner. He credits consulting chef Alessandro Vianello for the dish. “It’s like a gazpacho,” says Krisyanto.

Uni soba with local sea urchin and lobster dashi butter, sambal oelek, and ikura ($26) enacts his culinary journey with a bit of French (lobster bisque-style sauce) plus Indonesian and Japanese notes (sambal oelek, dashi and sake, soba noodles). Quite luscious!

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And with the Two Rivers grass-fed flat iron, he adds a hint of Japanese honey plum umeboshi to the jus and serves it with king oyster mushrooms, green-tea smoked yam purée, grilled broccolini, and smashed potatoes.

Desserts are by Mariko Foster, who previously worked at Miku and Thierry Chocolate and Patisserie. Check out her miso caramel ice-cream sandwich, which you unwrap to eat. I liked her take on mango sticky rice. Instead of fresh mango, difficult to find at peak ripeness, she make a mango lime sorbet to top the sweet sticky rice flavoured with vanilla galangal. It’s topped with grated coconut snow and served with a coconut-vanilla galangal sauce.

Foster’s chocolate lava cake has a belly of Earl Grey ganache “for more of a lava effect.” It’s served with sake poached pear two ways — stewed and as sorbet. And some of her chocolate work shows up in bar manager and mixologist Emily Vey’s cocktails.

Vey was previously manager of The Diamond, the well-regarded Gastown cocktail bar and she placed in the top 10 at last year’s Canada’s Best Bartender competition. Some cocktails are classics, and some more innovative. Part of the drinks list called Liquid Gold features cocktails made with premium spirits for premium prices. For instance, the classic Penicillin cocktail ($75) is made with Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Lagavulin 16-year whiskies.

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There’s live music Thursday to Sunday evenings and DJ sounds for weekend brunches. On Wednesday evenings, loop artist Phil Bo regularly takes the stage.

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