Martin FrimetNo points for mayhem at messy Yeah Maan
May 25th 2008 12:28
With the rival eating attractions of Richmond and St Kilda just a few minutes away by car in either direction, any restaurant that sits on booming, busy Punt Road is going to have to work pretty hard to draw in its fair share of customers. To that end, using everything from its very name and nature onwards, Yeah Maan seems to have tried to approach the issue by offering things not readily available elsewhere in the city; not only is it one of the very few Jamaican restaurants in Melbourne, but it is also defiantly alternative in the way it looks, feels, and even sounds. A relative anomaly in a city that concentrates so heavily on Asian and European cultures for its cuisine, I hoped my visit here would be well worth its detour.
That things are a little off-centre at Yeah Maan is immediately evident. Decoration is voluptuous and varied; posters of Jamaican heroes vie for attention with landscape paintings that come blasted with reds and blues and yellows. It is different, certainly, but also slightly incomprehensible; in truth, I felt as if one of the house cocktails had exploded in my face but, with a packed Saturday night crowd who seemed to be happily tucking into their meals, I was more than prepared to re-focus my attention and get down to business.
Before we could eat, however, there were several tests still before us. First was the trick of getting used to music that, in trying to be absolutely representative of Jamaican culture veered wildly amongst the country’s leading creative lights. Mellow Bob Marley at one minute was ramped into raucous rap the next; that might then slip into the smooth pop etchings of Shaggy before we were blasted by some local big band music. I understood that the idea was to bring a little slice of Jamaica to another world entirely but, by speaking about so much at once I felt as if I was able to understand nothing of the ideas and influences that might have shaped the nation.
And somehow before we ate, worse was still to come.
Like so much else at Yeah Maan, even the menu itself, worded in a tar-thick Jamaican patois, took some getting used to. Starters, for example, became “entrees n’tings”; a main of Jerk Chicken threatened to make my taste buds “start quarrelling & dancing & mingling with one another”, while Caribbean Coconut Prawns were likely, apparently, to start “ja making you crazy”. It was here that ‘chilli’ became ‘chilly’ and ‘restaurant’ was even turned to ‘rastarant’. It was another blunt and boring attempt at imparting some personality to the place which, again, ended up veering closer to incomprehensible than incisive.
After all that, I definitely needed a drink, but even that was disappointingly done at Yeah Maan. In suitably scatter-gun fashion, water was at our table when we arrived but glasses didn’t arrive until after our starters. Alcoholic drinks were a touch on the expensive side ($6.50 for a bottled beer) and a tropical fruit cocktail that I was hoping would be bursting with all the sun-ripened flavours of the Caribbean arrived looking drab, with little love or life to it and, truthfully, tasted about as fresh as carton concentrate.
And yet, the food still looked and smelled fantastic and we had high hopes as a shared starter of Chilli Janga Roti – spicy prawn mix wrapped in roti bread – at last arrived. Once again on what was turning into an exasperating night, we were, however, left confused as four tiny morsels for which we’d paid nearly $15 sat before us. Yes, the bread had a nice, just-baked softness and the spicy prawn and vegetable inner had a just-right kick, but it was still impossible not to taste some bitterness at paying so much for so little.
It was an unfortunate frugal approach that seemed to continue throughout our meal. Stock foods like rice and beans were abundant, yet many of the more crucial ingredients seemed to go missing. Rasta Ginger-Tamarind Chicken, for example, made little of the eponymous duet of spices that it was supposed to triumph – had this dish been labelled as chicken curry and charged at half the price, we might have been impressed but as it was this tasted like another element of Yeah Maan that had somehow lost its sense of proportions.
Curried Chana and Potatoes were good but nothing I hadn’t tasted many times before at any number of Indian restaurants, while the much-trumpeted Jamaican rice and peas might just as well have been a boil-in-the-bag Mexican mix so short was it of the coconut cream, herbs and spices that was supposed to define it.
That we then waited ten minutes or more after paying our bill only to see our change returned to the wrong table was a suitably scrambled finish to our evening. Whether you’re eating Jamaican food for the first time or Italian for the thousandth, I still expect fair value, good flavours and efficient service when I eat out. Inelegant, expensive and surprisingly unoriginal, Yeah Maan had none of these and truly felt like it had no idea.
Yeah Maan
340 Punt Road
South Yarra
That things are a little off-centre at Yeah Maan is immediately evident. Decoration is voluptuous and varied; posters of Jamaican heroes vie for attention with landscape paintings that come blasted with reds and blues and yellows. It is different, certainly, but also slightly incomprehensible; in truth, I felt as if one of the house cocktails had exploded in my face but, with a packed Saturday night crowd who seemed to be happily tucking into their meals, I was more than prepared to re-focus my attention and get down to business.
Before we could eat, however, there were several tests still before us. First was the trick of getting used to music that, in trying to be absolutely representative of Jamaican culture veered wildly amongst the country’s leading creative lights. Mellow Bob Marley at one minute was ramped into raucous rap the next; that might then slip into the smooth pop etchings of Shaggy before we were blasted by some local big band music. I understood that the idea was to bring a little slice of Jamaica to another world entirely but, by speaking about so much at once I felt as if I was able to understand nothing of the ideas and influences that might have shaped the nation.
And somehow before we ate, worse was still to come.
Like so much else at Yeah Maan, even the menu itself, worded in a tar-thick Jamaican patois, took some getting used to. Starters, for example, became “entrees n’tings”; a main of Jerk Chicken threatened to make my taste buds “start quarrelling & dancing & mingling with one another”, while Caribbean Coconut Prawns were likely, apparently, to start “ja making you crazy”. It was here that ‘chilli’ became ‘chilly’ and ‘restaurant’ was even turned to ‘rastarant’. It was another blunt and boring attempt at imparting some personality to the place which, again, ended up veering closer to incomprehensible than incisive.
After all that, I definitely needed a drink, but even that was disappointingly done at Yeah Maan. In suitably scatter-gun fashion, water was at our table when we arrived but glasses didn’t arrive until after our starters. Alcoholic drinks were a touch on the expensive side ($6.50 for a bottled beer) and a tropical fruit cocktail that I was hoping would be bursting with all the sun-ripened flavours of the Caribbean arrived looking drab, with little love or life to it and, truthfully, tasted about as fresh as carton concentrate.
And yet, the food still looked and smelled fantastic and we had high hopes as a shared starter of Chilli Janga Roti – spicy prawn mix wrapped in roti bread – at last arrived. Once again on what was turning into an exasperating night, we were, however, left confused as four tiny morsels for which we’d paid nearly $15 sat before us. Yes, the bread had a nice, just-baked softness and the spicy prawn and vegetable inner had a just-right kick, but it was still impossible not to taste some bitterness at paying so much for so little.
It was an unfortunate frugal approach that seemed to continue throughout our meal. Stock foods like rice and beans were abundant, yet many of the more crucial ingredients seemed to go missing. Rasta Ginger-Tamarind Chicken, for example, made little of the eponymous duet of spices that it was supposed to triumph – had this dish been labelled as chicken curry and charged at half the price, we might have been impressed but as it was this tasted like another element of Yeah Maan that had somehow lost its sense of proportions.
Curried Chana and Potatoes were good but nothing I hadn’t tasted many times before at any number of Indian restaurants, while the much-trumpeted Jamaican rice and peas might just as well have been a boil-in-the-bag Mexican mix so short was it of the coconut cream, herbs and spices that was supposed to define it.
That we then waited ten minutes or more after paying our bill only to see our change returned to the wrong table was a suitably scrambled finish to our evening. Whether you’re eating Jamaican food for the first time or Italian for the thousandth, I still expect fair value, good flavours and efficient service when I eat out. Inelegant, expensive and surprisingly unoriginal, Yeah Maan had none of these and truly felt like it had no idea.
Yeah Maan
340 Punt Road
South Yarra
| 53 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
