Tonight I caught up with Hamish and Kate for dinner at the relatively new Jaz Restaurant and Bar in Toowong. Situated where The Malaysian Experience used to be, Jaz reintroduces the unique stone grilling meals back to Brisbane all inside a fashionably modern setting (Hamish tells me of a place in The Ville near UQ that no longer exists that also served this). The novel stone grilling approach involves providing each diner with a heated stone block that continues to provide enough heat to cook a selected piece of meat throughout the entire meal. Although the stonegrill experience is what most people select when they go to Jaz, their menu still offers enough of a diverse range of meals to satiate any sort of appetite.
I started the meal with their garlic bread and was pleased to bite into the crisp bread pieces and encounter the sufficiently salty and strong flavour of their garlic butter. Soon enough I was cutting up pieces of prime rump to be seared on the stone grill in front of me that continually radiated with extreme heat throughout the meal. Each stone grill meal is accompanied with either roast vegetables or a salad and chips, and the consensus from all parties last night is the recommendation of the salad and chips as we were all surprised by Kate’s roast “vegetables”, consisting of a single roast potato chunk and a few small carrot and pumpkin pieces. Although you can get bigger steaks elsewhere, I was pretty satisfied by the quality and tenderness of the rump. It seems that the restaurant also expects this to be pretty consistent since the only utility they provide for slicing pieces off your meat is a butter knife.
Details: Jaz Restaurant and Bar
Found on: 80 Jephson St, Toowong
Contactable via: 3870 1111
Highlights of the place: Who wouldn’t want an individual sizzling platter where you can slice and sear your own bite sized chunks of meat? The menu seemed to have an affordable yet diverse range of dishes that should appease most people
Room for improvement: Though modern, the atmosphere still seemed a little excessively sterile but may improve as it becomes more popular.
Patrick, have you seen this strange new cooking machine with hot stone called the Entertainer? You can actually get it for home if you want. See http://www.raclette.com.au/ for details. I haven’t tried it myself, but it looks like a lot of fun! And the price is okay as well (it’s for eight people!). I put a link to it as “my website”. Guess that’ll make all those hot stone grilling restaurants that are popping up now a bit nervous…
Pete
Hi Pete,
I have seen variations of this machine before, but I haven’t seen this particular brand before. It looks like a pretty cool concept and would definitely be good for dinner parties. It looks like it does the job of the hot stone grill and then more as well! Thanks for your comment.