I am a big sci-fi/ fantasy geek and have railed against the ruination rained down on beloved franchises like Star Wars (the last trilogy was utter garbage and that is an affront to garbage – controversially I rather liked the stand alone Rogue One, as I love a unhappy ending and it still riles me that the ending of Die Hard was not Hans Gruber nonchalantly blowing John McClane away and pulling off the heist).

One of my favourite sci fi book is the first Dune novel and when I heard it was being (again) made into a film I had mixed feelings. The first attempt back in 1984 (with Kyle MacLachlan, he of later Twin Peaks and cherry pie fame) was a bit of a curate’s egg (not least because they tried to jemmy a hulking 400+ page universe building book into one film and Sting was in it – got to love Thufir Hawat’s eyebrows mind) and big American film studios haven’t exactly had a stellar track record recently in terms of remakes or book adaptations (or indeed anything). I curse the seeming descendants of Ungoliant who have tried to suck all the light out of the Lord of the Rings Universe by making the abomination that is “The Rings of Power” (how that pile of shxte, again apologise to shxte for this appalling slight, got a second series is one of the world’s great and deeply shameful mysteries – billionaires, unsurprisingly I suppose, have huge amounts of money to flush down the bog it seems).

Compared to the general flow of utter dross coming from US movie makers, the 2021 Dune movie was (at least to my mind) a shining light in the void and thus tickets were booked to go (J taking Mrs. SF’s place, with the latter not a sci fi fan at all, being a  heretic who doesn’t even rate  Bladerunner or Alien, which is a better movie than Aliens) and see Part 2.

Due to Dune 2’s near 25 day (slight exaggeration) run time, pre. or post film sustenance was required. As a cinema hot dog is the food equivalent of the Rise of Skywalker (i.e. filled with stuff of highly suspect origin and only liked by those with very dubious taste), we needed to look further afield.

With Nantgarw the chosen cinema location, the pan – Asian cuisine on offer at Janet’s in (just up the road) Pontypridd seemed an obvious choice, being a place I have wanted an excuse to try for a while. 

A wildly popular choice it seems. We had been warned to book a table way in advance, but were surprised that at over 3 weeks in advance we were unable to get any evening slot, with only the earliest 12.00 lunchtime slot (actually suited us) remaining. Nice to see, in these trying times, a place packed out constantly.  

Now for the non Dune fans, Spice (the most valuable substance in the Dune universe) is also known as melange. Melange in turn means a “varied mixture” and that is exactly the sort of food on offer at Janet’s, with its mix of pan-Asian dishes where spice is always to the fore (well I thought it was good).

The menu is a nice mish mash of Asian cuisines, with a particular nod to Korea

and (as per the website) the Yanbian area (no me neither, but apparently it borders North Korea and thus has a big ethnic Korean population) of China

which hit that sweet spot of causing acute indecision due to wanting pretty much everything.

There are also veggie options,

which we pretty much ignored.

After much humming and hawing, we decided on 2 starters, two mains and one side, which our server confirmed was about right volume wise. The menu makes it clear that stuff arrives when it is cooked and, thus, there is no real starter/main order (one of our chosen starters came last) to the meal. This is not an issue if you are happy to share (a willingness to share your food is pretty much essential here).

First up was a cold dish in the form of the smashed cucumber salad (£4.90).

Lovely fresh flavours here, with plentiful chilli from the gochujang based dressing adding a nice contrast to the cooling cucumber. Nuts added a nice bit of texture. Salt, sweet, sour on top of hot and cold. This dish had it all.

The West (well the US) seems to think it invented seafood and meat combos (with surf and turf), but the East has been mixing meat with seafood for eons and Janet’s pork and prawn siu mai ( £8.90 – the Cantonese style I believe) were testimony as to how well it works

Nicely thin, lye water dough encased a really well flavoured and seasoned filling of mince pork and chopped prawn. Plentiful ginger and rice wine added nicely to the mix. These were great dunked in a sweet soy sauce.

My only quibble was the number of them, with 5 being an odd number not divisible equally by anything other than 5 and 1 (not great when sharing is the order of the day). Even the steamer they came in was begging for its contents to be made up to an even number.

J, rather graciously and very unlike her, let me have the spare third one.

A beef bibimbap (£15.90) was topped by a nicely runny egg with a lacey skirt.

Piercing the egg yolk and mixing all the component elements together is essential for a bipimbap, as (whilst not looking the prettiness) it mixes all the flavours into the rice.

Well cooked (i.e. rare) and plentiful rump of beef had been nicely marinaded and had a good flavour, with sauteed veg being a welcome addition adding both flavour and crunch. A relatively mild, heat wise, bipimbap sauce (I think it could have benefitted from being dialled up a bit heat wise) bound it all together. 

My only slight caveat with this dish was that elements of the rice lacked a bit of seasoning, but I suspect this was more due to a lack of vigour in mixing it together on our part rather than anything else.

Good dish to share this, with J much less adverse to this sharing (with me at least) style of food than Mrs. SF.

Sweet and sour pork (£13.90) was a million miles (the right way) away from those vile balls of flabby batter and chewy lumps of pork gristle (with an enamel stripping saccharine sauce on the side) from the Chinese take aways of my youth.

Here, the batter was beautifully thin and crisp (almost tempura in nature), with an interior of juicy tender loin of pork (cooked on point). The sauce had just the right balance of ying – sweet – and yang – sour. Really good dish this, that banished my unpleasant memories of flaccid pork balls to the scrotum of history.

A final dish was one I insisted on, despite J being a little circumspect, in the form of a scallion pancake (£8.90).

I don’t know why, but I was expecting an eggy number🤷‍♂️. What we got was very thin, crisp, pastry base (rather than batter) topped with kimchi and scallions.

The former provided a nice zing of allium and the latter tangy sourness. Really enjoyed this, which was perfect for sharing.

On the booze front, the wine list is short and not that exciting, but wines on it are ones that would (for the most part) go (or at least not clash) with the food here.

What would really excel paired with this sort of food is sherry – an amontillado or oloroso in terms of what we had. If that is not for your thing (foolish person), I would recommend a riesling (if that is not your thing then you can …..). It is a bit of a shame that neither feature on the list here.

If I had to choose (wine wise) from the list I probably would go (white) the pinot grigio (retails at about a tenner, so a fairish mark up at £25.95) or (red) the primitivo (on the list at £25.95 and retails at around £12 mark, so again a pretty fair mark up).

Nice to see local beers and cider on the list  

As we had a marathon film to watch,  J wasn’t drinking (as driving) and the by the glass wine options were not that appealing, I defaulted to green tea (which came spiked with rosehip).

Really refreshing this and it worked rather well with the food. Very floral, with a tangy orchard fruit aftertaste.

J had an orange fanta, which I doubt very much goes with anything (with the requirement for ghastly sugar substitutes in such drinks these days making them nigh on undrinkable).

With us not seeing any desserts on the menu (and a bit of time to kill), we sojourned to Prince’s

for cakes.

I ordered a delightfully old school (pleasingly heavy on the nutmeg) custard tart, whilst J went for a “more in with the in crowd” canoli. We bookmarked the place for a sit down visit based on the corn beef pie with a slice of gravy (in a good way, with extra in gravy boats on the side) which seemed to be the popular choice of those who had bagged a table 

The verdict

Really enjoyable meal at this place, with an excellent melange of pan – Asian flavours, all at very fair prices.

As the saying goes “If you build it, they will come” and the spice certainly flows here, with the place packed when we left at 13.00 and fully booked for the rest of that day and night.

Lucky denizen of Ponty I say, as this is a belter of a place.

For the record, Dune 2 is every bit as good as the first film and is a must see on the big screen (even Zendaya is quite animated as against her usual blandness). My only quibble with both films is the lack of details as to the importance of the Spacing Guild (and with it of spice) and the Butlerlian Jihad (I bored J to death about this). Hopefully, that will be addressed in the third film (which will presumably be based on the second book, Dune Messiah).

I would add that the guild navigators  would be very happy with the amount of spice available at Janet’s.

The details

Address: 3 Market Buildings,  Church Street, Pontypridd, South Wales, CF37 2TH

Website: https://www.janetspontypridd.com/