Jasmin — Restaurant in Bratislava

Simply put: when it comes to Asian food in Bratislava, currently Jasmin is the best restaurant in town.

The restaurant is in the city centre, nested in the area of the city below the castle where the old Jewish getto was. Easily reachable by foot, it gets really difficult to get there by car.

The place: the restaurant is an institution in the city, being open since the ’90. It undertook a complete renovation several years ago together with the implementation of a new concept of Asian food (mostly Chinese cuisine). The renovation was a great success, mixing industrial interior design with clear elements recalling the Asian origins and theme of the place. The result is a cosy and warm place where the guests feel welcome and comfortable. The restaurant also have an outside space (quite a large terrace), that would be perfect if it wasn’t facing one of the main traffic artery of the city centre, making it not ideal.

The service: the service is always nice and professional. Sometimes it can be a bit slow (when the place is packed), but the staff is smiling and great.

The food: the restaurant offers a menu predominantly Chinese with some Vietnamese elements and more recently some Japanese dishes (among all a good sushi for the standards of the city). The Chinese food is overall fantastic. It’s good, but also quite authentic. Portions are always more than fair. A special mention goes to the Dim Sum that is really good. The only downside is that sometimes the food lacks consistency. Not in terms of quality, but simply in terms of taste, like if they were following different receipes depending on the day. Sushi is good but not superlative (still have to find a superlative one in Bratislava). Prices went up after the Covid shut down, noticeably (in the order of 20% I would say), but is still in an acceptable range of price considering quality and quantity of the dishes.

Conclusions: I have been to the restaurant many times and tried half the menu. Dim Sum is really good. Hot plate dishes are great. Sushi is good. I’m waiting for a cold winter night to try the hot pot. Jasmin is a restaurant where I go regularly and always with...

It was a rainy night and didn’t want to spend 10 mins walking into the Old Town so decided to try here as it was close to where we were staying. We were lucky to get the last available table.

Staff spoke English and menu in English too. Huge selection to chose from - in addition to the normal Chinese dishes there were sushi and some Thai dishes too.

Had the tempura prawns and chicken satay for starters and both were excellent- tempura batter was so light and crispy.

For mains I had the duck in Szechuan sauce and my wife the sizzling chicken in hoisin sauce. Both were well cooked and super tasty but we think the kitchen used Szechuan sauce with the chicken dish as well rather than hoisin as the sauce tasted the same as mine. Problem was my wife can’t cope with the spice level so really struggled to eat it (if we had been in the UK we would have sent it back but we felt it was going to be difficult to explain what the problem was).

I’ve still rated Jasmin as 5/5 because we might be wrong about the sauce and everything...

I have a hard time saying this but my experience in this restaurant was truly terrible. The only nice thing about it was how quick we got our meals. As a vegetarian I had limited choices when it came to my food - 2 meals of the lunch menu. I ordered fried cellophane noodles with tofu, veggs and egg which weren’t fried at all. Instead, they were soaked in oil making the whole dish taste only of that. The “vegetables” (if you can call them that) were just some pieces of lettuce and arugula (which looked unfresh). The meal was bland and unsavory. I expected something that was actually fried and crispy. It’s a misconception to use the word “fried” when referring to this. Customer service was not the best as we needed to wait for a long time for our waiter. I enjoyed the interior as it is a beautiful industrial space with Asian decorations, however, I cannot give a positive opinion about my experience in Jasmin, hence my dinner was truly...