Picture yourself on a breezy terrace, overlooking the old city of Amman, the Citadel and thousand-year-old ruins. In your plate, fresh, seasonal, organic ingredients imagined into delicious dishes by Chef Sally Jane. A unique experience curated at the Wild Jordan Center in Amman this summer.
Relish in the fresh colors of the Farmer’s Market Salad, with organic corn purée, feta, crunchy zucchini, red and orange cherry tomatoes, basil, sumac and yuzu dressing, ‘here you will find all the things that make summer,’ chef Sally Jane tells us. In this pop-up restaurant opened until end of summer the chef is delighting visitors with her unique touch of local dishes and Mediterranean ingredients revisited with a playful twist. Eggplant linguine, tossed with a ‘makdous’ style mix (walnuts, garlic, olive oil), maftool (whole wheat pearls) paired with seafood, lamb meatballs with golden raisins, she tells us most of the ingredients are organic. They are sourced from a local farm, Mujeb, which boasts fields of fruit trees in the mountains of Jordan, watermelons and grains in the valleys, greens and herbs across the suburbs of the city. Chef Sally’s Jane creations are served this summer at The View located on the terrace of the Wild Jordan Center, which also hosts a café and restaurant. ‘During summer evenings it’s pleasantly cool outdoors, around 18 degrees.’ Couples often used to grab a dessert and cup of coffee, and went up to the terrace to admire the spectacular sunset over the city. That’s how the idea of a collaboration came about, bringing together the chef’s Mediterranean delicacies spinned with her innovative touch, and the vibe of this historic city infused with fresh dynamism.
Chef Sally Jane tells us she started her foodie career later in life. After she had already got her masters in non-fiction writing, she decided to go to the French Culinary Institute in New York, then worked in restaurants across the United States, where she is from, to hone her skills. She moved to London to be with her husband, a few years ago, and started working as a private chef. When she came to the region a few years ago, her idea was to open a food business but she felt she was still new to the area and wanted to get a grasp of what people liked, their habits and how they entertained. It was during her six years in Beirut that she discovered her signature style, fresh seasonal fruits and veggies, playing with local recipes and ingredients, revealing their flavors, creating unexpected mixes of Mediterranean staples with a hint of the unexplored. She also became a food consultant and created the menu for Beirut’s Supervega restaurant among others. She tells us her dream now is to open her own restaurant in Amman, which she already started working on, getting a feel of how her cooking style is received, searching for the location she has in mind, ‘something with character, that reflects Amman.’ The menu would evolve with the seasons ‘it is how people ate from hundreds, thousands of years.’ Chef Sally Jane tells us she loves being back in the kitchen, working with her team, seeing her ideas come to life in those plates. Gathering around a shared love of food, bridging cultures through ingredients, recipes and ‘the multitude of ways things can be made’ is what her vision is all about.
