Le Jehanne’s cuisine is quite creative and the dishes very well presented, but with a tendency to overemphasize form over substance that leaves you disappointed in the end.

For my first dinner of the weekend in Rouen, I opted for Jehanne’s because it was open, because its menu was attractive enough and because, unlike far too many restaurants in Rouen, it offered online reservations.

It’s also the restaurant of the Radisson Blu hotel in Rouen, located just outside the city center and a stone’s throw from the train station.

If you’re wondering about the name, Jehanne is an old form of the first name Jeanne, and the allusion to Joan of Arc is easy enough to understand. But that’s as far as it goes, because this isn’t a barbecue restaurant.

You’ll find all the articles about this weekend in Rouen at the bottom of the page.

The concept of the restaurant

This is a fairly modern and creative French cuisine restaurant with references to local cuisine too.

The setting

While the building housing the Radisson is modern and charmless, the restaurant is housed in an old building adjoining it, and communicates with it.

It also offers a pleasant terrace when the season permits.

The interior, on the other hand, is more disappointing. There’s a desire to do something stylish, quite streamlined, but in the end the prevailing impression is that of a big canteen with no personality.

It definitely lacks warmth and charm.

The menu

As advertised, the menu features Norman specialties and creative French cuisine.

The dinner

I had booked online but the confirmation email I received was rather cryptic. “We acknowledge receipt of your reservation”, nothing more, no reminder of date or time. Confirmation of my request? Booking confirmation ? We’ll see.

I arrive at the restaurant on time. I enter through the hotel bar. I stop as soon as I cross the threshold, waiting for someone to take care of me. The head waiter turns his back on me and looks around the empty room, not paying the slightest attention to the people arriving. He will notice my presence after 3 minutes, which will seem interminable.

They seat me at my table and immediately ask if I’d like some water. Good point. And the menu is brought to me almost immediately. I find it very interesting and would have a bit of trouble making up my mind as there are so many dishes that appeal to me.

When I ordered, the waiter, who was extremely friendly, also recommended a wine by the glass.

Unlike the room, which is pretty but suffers from its rather unwelcoming configuration, the table is well laid and the crockery pretty. It’s simple, sober and beautiful.

While waiting for my starter, I’m offered a choice of three breads: traditional, buckwheat or cereal. Very good.

On the other hand, the mobile phone connection in the room is 2G, fortunately you can freely connect to the hotel wifi.

My starter is coming.

White asparagus, broccoli and wasabina coulis, almond ice cream and trout roe

First comment: the presentation is really beautiful.

The asparagus is okay, the coulis not spicy enough (where’s the wasabina mustard?), the ice cream so tasteless you wonder what it’s for. Cooking is neither hot nor cold, somewhere in between, which is a pity.

In the end, it’s the asparagus that enhances the dish more than the coulis enhances the asparagus, although I’ve experienced asparagus with a stronger taste.

In the end, it’s rather bland and flat, not bad but much more beautiful than good.

Let’s move on to the main course…

Langoustines, ricotta gnocchi, bisque and broccolini, spicy rouille toast and fennel seed cream

Once again, a very successful visual.

I’ll start with the toast, which is very good.

Then there’s the dish, which has much more taste than the starter, the accompaniment doing its job well and spicing up the dish even if the gnocchi are rather bland.

Really not bad.

Last but not least, dessert.

Calvados Baba

Is calvados what’s in the pipette? Rather stingy, it’ll hardly be enough to soak the cookie, not at all in the spirit of the dish.

In the end, it’s decent but not transcendent, and I can barely detect the calva.

I’ll have a coffee to finish. Or rather, I’ll try. The waiter forgot all about me, perpetuating the tradition that once a customer has only to pay, he is forgotten in favor of those in the middle of their meal.

After a good ten minutes, I manage to catch his eye and wave to him. He’ll be back shortly afterwards with the bill.

“I didn’t ask for the bill”.

“Ah I thought so”

“If you’d been to see me instead of running off to print it without talking to me when I called you, you’d have known”.

He’ll be back soon with a cup of coffee that will be offered to me as an apology.

And the bill? I had to wait another 5 minutes before I managed to ask him. 72 euros with the feeling of being invisible once I finished my dessert.

The service

Very average welcome by the head waiter, then a waiter took over with excellent service right through to dessert. After that, it became a mess.

Once again, the impression that once you’ve finished eating and aren’t going to place any more significant orders in terms of price, no one is interested in you and you’re left to die in a corner, because it’s more important to take orders from those who arrive and serve the others.

Mistake, because in the end it’s this last interaction that makes my opinion definitively on the wrong side at the end of the service.

The atmosphere

Not particularly atmospheric. A large room with people eating in a row, like in a large brasserie but without the charm that goes with it.

Oh, yes, I forgot. A table with two noisy, unmanageable kids nearby, who will spend their time playing in the aisle without the parents being concerned.

Bottom line

An attractive menu and a fine promise, hardly kept.

A lot of effort was put into creativity and presentation, but in the end the taste was rather common and proportionately disappointing. It’s all very well to think you’re in a cooking competition on TV, but don’t forget the basics that are taste and service. I’d have preferred more simplicity but better execution.

The end of the service finished making me grumpy and sealed my opinion of the restaurant.

Shame.

The articles about this weekend in Rouent.

#	Type	Post
1	Diary	Planning a weekend in Rouen
2	Train	Paris-Rouen – SNCF TER Nomad – 1st class
3	Hotel	Hotel de Bourgtheroulde – Rouen
4	Restaurant	Le Jehanne – Rouen
5	Restaurant	Les Nymphéas – Rouen
6	Restaurant	Pascaline – Rouen
7	Diary	Visiting Rouen
8	Train	Rouen-Paris – SNCF TER Nomad – 1ere classe (no review, not interesting)
9	Diary	Debriefing my weekend in Rouen