TABLE FOR TWO
‘Relaxed fine dining’ is a trickier goal than it sounds, says Keith Miller
Iarrived in Sheffield after lunch, with plenty of time to kill before an 8pm reservation at the perplexingly named Juke and Loe. I took an hour to look at some more or less recent essays in urban regeneration: the failed pop museum, four giant steel drums huddled together like curling stones (this now belongs, like most of Sheffield it seems, to Hallam University); a windswept amphitheatre marking the site of a poignant scene from The Full Monty; the brave Park Hill Estate, half of it zhuzhed and rouged like an old courtesan by the buccaneering property developer Urban Splash, half still vacant and scarred.
But what I really wanted to see was the craggy landscape on the city’s western outskirts. Here I had played as a child, when my aunt lived in a genteel suburb nearby called, hilariously to me then, Dore. I took the bus along Ecclesall Road, clocking the location of the restaurant for later like a sniper casing the scene of his next kill. The bus stops in Sheffield are about ten yards apart: at each one a scrum of schoolchildren boarded and entered into lengthy dialogue with the driver (the city’s ticketing arrangements are of a baroque complexity). By the time I got to the appointed place the light was going. I was never going to make it to the Toad’s Mouth, a giant batrachoidal rock (the resemblance enhanced by a round eye gouged in place centuries ago) that I remember clambering on to, possibly while wearing the rainbow-pocketed double-denim minisuit my aunt had bought me, which I subsequently refused to take off for some time, and to be honest would still be wearing now if it fit me, in about 1974. I had a gloomy trudge across the moor and a pint at the Fox House, then trundled back into town.
Our evening (my partner was in Sheffield for a conference) at Juke and Loe passed happily enough. It’s a kind of archetype of a mod-Brit, relaxed-fine-dining joint: neutral decor (there are big block-mounted photographs of the moorland I’d just visited, or failed to visit, on the walls, and little else); impeccably sourced ingredients that they mention in passing but don’t go on and on about; friendly, skilful front-of-house people. The vibe on a Thursday evening was quite datey, we thought: mostly twos, wine by the glass but plenty of it, three courses (the restaurant does starters/mains/puds rather than small or sharing plates), taxi home – or in our case back to Jury’s Inn for what’s universally known among conference-goers as “room wine”, and a dress rehearsal of tomorrow’s Keynote Speech.
The food was great, too, though it hasn’t quite emblazoned itself on the memory. I am sure I’ve talked here before about a sweet spot, a kind of balancing act that chefs have to pull off if they’re to make a more or less high-end restaurant work in a town or small city that’s likely only to have, or be able to support, one or two such places. You’re not in a country-house hotel where people can come for the weekend of a lifetime, and to hell with the expense. You’re not in London, where there are literally tens of thousands of people for whom eating out is the greatest or only reward for the indignities of their daily lives, and there’s a potential niche market for everyone who’s any good (and plenty who aren’t).
617 Ecclesall Road, Sheffield S11 8PT: 0114 268 0271; jukeandloe.com