Where is Julie McCoy—Love Boat cruise director extraordinaire—when we need her? Last week my plan was to eat dinner at Lucuma, a new Peruvian restaurant in Oakland. I had asked two friends to come with me, but our party blossomed into a family-sized table of seven. To paraphrase the Vicomte de Valmont, the gathering was suddenly beyond my control, but in a good way.
Having celebrated its grand opening only a few days before our arrival, word had already spread about Lucuma. Dare I say the restaurant had been hotly anticipated? Without reservations, the narrow dining room, filled with mostly tabletops for two, couldn’t accommodate us. The disappointed looks I received from the assembled crowd were as cold as a winter sun.
My instinct to panic kicked in, but a solution quickly sprang to mind. Jaji, with its capacious dining room, was only a few blocks away. Everyone agreed that Afghan cuisine was an agreeable substitute for Peruvian. We migrated westward, our derailment averted.
Earlier this year, I attended Jaji’s grand opening to see how the new management had reshaped the interior of Occitania, chef Paul Canales’ brief excursion into French cooking. Sophia Akbar and Paul Iglesias, who also own Parche down the block, kept the long line of green banquettes and several of the artsy light fixtures in place. But they summoned up a different ambiance altogether.
Banners now hang down from the high ceiling, inspired by the colors and petals of poppies. The banners correspond with images of medieval banquet halls. Even though we were celebrating nothing in particular, Jaji’s interior design encouraged conviviality. Just as he did at Parche, Iglesias makes his presence known in the dining room. On this occasion, Akbar joined him at each table to welcome people in.
Our server explained that the dishes on the menu are meant to be shared. After yet another week of dreadful headlines, this shared-plate approach also buoyed the mood at our table. Each subsequent course felt like an antidote to grim political tidings—a temporary feeling of being cared for and comforted.
We started with bolani, a stuffed Afghan bread similar to Indian kulcha or paratha. The cooks sliced one into triangles ($16) and filled them with peas, fava, purple potatoes and crispy leeks. We kept the spicy side of green chutney that came with it until the dessert course arrived.
Two other smaller plates proved just as tasty. Sabzi galets ($16) looked like little pizzas topped with spinach, garrotxa, a Catalan goat cheese, and sprouts. The ducktu dumplings ($30) convinced a non-duck eater to change their mind about the bird. It must have been the miso-ginger consomme and the charred leeks.
While vegetarians won’t go hungry at Jaji, carnivores will find a range of exquisitely prepared meats. Chapli wagyu beef ($30) comes as a trio of patties, sprinkled with microgreens and accompanied with sumac naan. They can be eaten with naan as mini-hamburgers or on their own with pickled onions and chutney. Between the tikka wagyu steak ($22) kabobs and the gosfand, or lamb lollipops ($37), I must admit it’s really hard to resist a lollipop.
Late in the meal, Iglesias arrived at the table with a chicken kabob that we hadn’t ordered. He told us that the kitchen was still working on the recipe, but he wanted us to try it out. We finished the entire plate without any complaints or feedback. Our last choice from the “big bites” section was an entire roasted Cornish game hen ($42). The table ate it down to the last herbed bone.
We ordered three of the four dessert options. A dense and dark chocolate cake ($16) had a layer of a pistachio semifreddo on top. The pairing of tastes and textures was unlike anything I recall. The saffron ice cream ($8) didn’t work for one diner who disliked the flavor of coconut, but it’s a pretty dish to look at—bright yellow at the center and dusted with green cardamom. But everyone agreed that the Basque cheesecake ($16) won the dessert round. It melted onto the fork as a messy, brilliant finish to the meal.
Jaji, 422 24th St., Oakland. Open Sun-Thu, 5–9:15pm; Fri-Sat, 5–10:15pm. 510.922.9147. jajioak.com
