What: Described as urban restaurant influenced by nature, JÖRO is an ambitious Nordic/Japanese restaurant located in the Sheffield’s impressive Oughtibridge Paper Mill development within a renovated 19th-century paper mill.
Who: The restaurant is the passion project of husband-and-wife Luke French and Stacey Sherwood-French, and marks the latest milestone in its history. Dubbed JÖRO 2.Ö, the restaurant is an evolution of the couple’s original JÖRO, which was located in a shipping container in Krynkl in Kelham Island in Sheffield. French has an impressive CV that incudes time at Alimentum and Daniel Clifford’s two Michelin-starred Midsummer House, both in Cambridge, and at The Milestone gastropub in Sheffield, where he met his now wife. In 2016 the pair founded JÖRO.
The food: JÖRO serves signature tasting menus alongside a terrace menu that will showcase live-fire cooking using birch wood and charcoal. The menus kick off with a welcome broth of wild mushrooms and feature dishes such as a trout belly, fennel and ‘crispy seaweed’; beef tongue, oyster and grilled broccoli; Hampshire trout with yuzu kosho beurre blanc, pike roe, parsley and ginger butter; and Thirkleby duck with kampot pepper, blackcurrant condiment and mustard leaf morel farci. Menu öne, as it is called, is the shorter express tasting menu, priced at £45, while the full blow out menu twö is much longer and costs £125 (it is also available as a vegetarian option).
The vibe: The couple have gone for a natural look, making the most of the dining room’s historic surroundings. The uneven stone walls are whitewashed while the more modern breeze block walls have been painted black, the wooden tables have been kept bare and throws and rugs add texture to the wooden floors and furniture, all of which plays into the Scandi minimalist aesthetic that they have tried to create. By contrast, the stainless-steel clad kitchen is a modern, state-of-the-art installation complete with stove-top mini Green Eggs, glass-fronted meat ageing cabinets and decked out in smart black tiling that echoes the serious culinary intent of the restaurant, which no doubt has a Michelin star in its plans. Compared to the Kelham Island shipping container, JÖRO 2.Ö is a much more grown-up restaurant, but yet it manages to maintain some of the charm of the original. In a first for the couple, JÖRO at Oughtibridge Mill also has seven apartments above the restaurant on its first floor, becoming the restaurant with rooms the pair have dreamed of.
And another thing: The size of the new venue means that the pair have been able to create SHÖP by JÖRO, which sells a range of deli products, such as barrel-aged soy sauce, wine – including a sparkling rhubarb wine, jams and spreads, chocolates and sweets, and oils and vinegars, as well as JÖRO’s house-made gin.
Oughtibridge Paper Mill, Main Road, Wharncliffe Side, Sheffield, S35 0LB