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Wine List Confidential: Jikoni

15 October 2024 By Douglas Blyde

Douglas Blyde visits the “far from identikit” Jikoni in Marylebone, examining some of its 65 bin-strong wine selection under the guidance of its curator, Jade Harman.

Opened in 2016 by chef, restaurateur, and writer, Ravinder Bhogal, Jikoni, meaning “kitchen” in Swahili, is a celebration of her Indian and African roots, with a menu which the Good Food Guide praised for its ability to “roam far and wide.” Behind its inviting peach-hued façade, Square Meal described the experience as akin to being hosted by an “insanely talented friend.” As one TripAdvisor visitor, Raj Sehgal, succinctly remarked after travelling from King’s Lynn to eat here, the results are “bloody marvellous!”

Design

In a far from identikit space merged from a former pop-up restaurant and a nail bar, Bhogal, who is also a stylist, and her husband, Nadeem, designed Jikoni’s two storeys themselves, from the open plan sous-sol kitchen where herbs and spices are neatly stacked beside a twelve-seat chef’s table, to the bar counter above, heaving with wines, siphons, and zebra ornaments. Adorned in textiles collected from the couples’ travels in Jaipur, Kashmir, East and West Africa and Uzbekistan, two dining rooms feature a basketweave wood floor which transitions to Lina Stores green terrazzo tiles, lit by a kitsch pink lamp. The soundtrack includes Goldspot’s “Ina Mina Dika”. There is also a cosy heated terrace.

Drinks

Meticulously curated by Jade Harman, the wine list draws from producers who, as declared by the mission statement, “aims to express beautiful, captivating flavours and characters” – many hailing from family-run, organic, and sustainable vineyards. Harman, who has helmed Jikoni’s drinks programme for over five years, previously worked as a senior bartender with Adam Handling of Frog fame, and honed her fermentation skills under Rich Woods and Matt Whiley at Hackney’s Scout (RIP).

Beyond a magnified hashtag-like label, wines by the glass range from the unfiltered Cuvée des Galets, Estezargue Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre 2021 £8/125ml) to Lebanese powerhouse, Château Musar 2017 (£26), via the Norfolk-born, Cambridge-processed, South Pickenham Estate Muller Thurgau meets Seyval Blanc 2016 (£14.50/125ml). The latter, alongside London’s own Forty Hall Brut, and the Kent and Sussex-harvested Horsmonden Dry Bacchus from Davenport, forms a characterful English trio.

Jikoni’s bottle list stretches to 65 bins, starting at £33 for the crisp Bodega Mureda Castilla Dragora Blanco Verdejo and Sauvignon Blanc 2022 from La Mancha, peaking at £146 for Clos des Chênes Volnay Premier Cru 2020, though the producer’s name is absent. For something a little more playful, there’s the crown-capped Tikka The Cosmic Cat 2021, a Grenache-Shiraz from Jauma, McLaren Flat (£95) – a bottle as exuberant as its name suggests.

With meticulously pre-batched elements, cocktails at Jikoni are nothing short of revelatory, with the Seasonal Margarita celebrating the upfront flavours of British strawberries, lime, and tequila, followed by notes of Chihuahuan desert Sotol, rose water, pepper, and a grassy fraction of Ming River baijiu. The latter, along with high ester Agricole rhum, is one of around twenty bottles Harman deploys as seasoning for her minimally presented drinks. “My goal is for them to come across as deceptively simple,” she says.

For a finishing touch, single-origin teas, sourced by Bhogal’s brother-in-law, Jameel Lalani, include a single garden estate sown on a Hawaiian volcano.

Dishes

The “Farm Fresh Set Lunch” at Jikoni is a wholly vegetarian affair, crafted in partnership with Waltham Farm, Jikoni’s biodynamic grower and a driving force behind its carbon-neutral milestone in 2021. Meat and fish rejoin the menu at dinner and brunch. Today, we sampled the best of both menus.

We started with a non-alcoholic Fig Shrub Fizz, featuring the first white figs plucked from Waltham Farm. Presenting a challenge given their vegetal “chlorophyll” flavour, Harman preserved these in raw Latvian heather honey and organic Provençal cider vinegar, resulting in an ethereally balanced aftertaste.

Presented on hand-painted Turkish plates, the staple prawn toast Scotch egg featured a prodigious amount of flesh, a token quail’s egg, and a rich, gingerbread-spiced banana ketchup. With this, Harman enacted a “Bingo!” match. Pépin, a non-vintage, tangerine-scented, orange collage of Alsatian varieties overseen by Domaine de L’Achillée’s Pierre Dietrich calmed the ketchup while enticing the sweet, marine notes of the crustacean, proving the best match of the meal.

With a glazed soy keema bun with seemingly purely visual rings of pink pickled onions, Harman chose another flourishing orange. Subject to wild fermentation, Mac2, a 2022 Côtes Catalanes Muscat, spent months in a transformative, macerative state. So impressed was she by the grapey, grippy, oak-accented results, that Harman began working with its importer, Emile Wines, a “female-founded wine importer and retailer” which, according to their website, sells “to the best of London’s dining scene, from Café Cecilia to Sketch; it might be polite for them to add Jikoni to that list.

The main course featured an ample pressed Cornish lamb shoulder, seasoned with ras el hanout, served with friggitelli peppers, aubergine purée, and pomegranate seeds. Served cool to dial-up its hibiscus notes, Heya (“She” in Arabic) Wines’ Kanz (“Treasure”), carbonic Grenache-Syrah 2023 was born out of the friendship between Michelle Chami and Claudine Lteif, who wanted to shine a light on female winemakers in a world which still undervalues their work.

Finally, Harman resisted an urge to serve a 2019 Sauternes in favour of a big bowled Riedel of another of her creations, encapsulating the last of a celebration of a 20kg haul of Roussillon apricots, fermented on their stalks, combined with Portuguese Muscat, and blackcurrant buds. The tense, complex results worked particularly well with a sticky toffee pudding-like banana cake with umami-rich miso butterscotch and Ovaltine kulfi. Also of note, though not part of the match, was an almost furry ice cream made with condensed cream and pistachios, which Harman herself sourced.

Last word

Guided by her astute palate, the modest Harman, who sidesteps the spotlight, is entirely self-taught in the world of wine. Free from the constraints and dogma of formal training, her selections are refreshingly instinctual. It’s this intuitive approach, paired with Bhogal’s masterful “no borders” cuisine – a concept which could serve as a culinary blueprint for a more harmonious world – that raises Jikoni beyond the ordinary. And with the team now filling 150 coveted seats at Frieze art fair for a third year running, it seems inevitable that this charming Marylebone haven is poised for even greater things. Watch this space.