Remember the once-great Singing Fig?
Well, Lunchtastic was right to predict its doom back in August 2007 - the Fig is, unsurprisingly, no more, and has been replaced by Faff. In a pleasing circularity, Faff is owned by Dave Wallace, who was the original creator of the Fig (back in the days when it was a pleasure to visit).
The first aspect of change is the decor - gone are the giant, off-putting nudes, replaced by bright, cartoonish canvases of brinjals and garlic and oranges in primary colours. There are luxurious brocade banquettes at the back of the room which help to absorb some of the sound, although the fact that the restaurant was no more than a quarter-full when we ate - on a Friday evening, nogal; where was everybody: credit-crunching? - kept the background chatter and gentle tango music muted to comfortable levels.
The USP is attractive but risky. Eat off the menu, or go for a Dégustation Plate and select three mini-portions per course on the same platter. Attractive because the menu is so chock-full of good stuff; risky because you need a kitchen full of chefs with good timing, and a highly organised front of house team.
My first course was a delightful slice of salmon tart, but I barely remember it. My attention was fully focused on the main course, for which I chose gnocchi with field mushrooms, brown hazelnut and sage butter; ostrich frittatella (meat balls) on creamed potatoes, roasted vegetables and gooseberry jus; and oven-roasted salmon fillet with braised red cabbage, creamed potatoes and ginger and honey jus. There's a test for any kitchen: meatballs, pasta and fish to go out on the same plate at the same time. And that's not mentioning the choices of my other three companions.
The main course was masterful: intense, gamy, ostrich meatballs with a rich sauce, and fantastic gnocchi whose sauce was packed with flavours of autumn - mushrooms, hazelnuts and herbs. The salmon was perfectly cooked, and came with a spicy sauce studded with tiny shards of cloves, a wonderful combination with the strong flavours of cabbage and salmon. Criticisms? We-e-e-ll... if pushed I might gently mention that the ostrich meat had been over-processed, giving it a slightly pâté-like texture rather than the proper grainy resistance of classic frittatelle.
Desserts did not quite - almost, but not quite - live up to the sublime delight of the main course; the excellent lemon tart did not need the fatty crème fraiche that accompanied it; the chocolate torte, which came with a wonderful drunken berry compote, had a horrible base rendered gritty with undissolved granulated sugar, like eating chocolate truffles on a sandy beach during a gale. My grumpiness at these minor faults was, however, mollified by the flaky apple crisp and its sphere of pale toffee-coloured cinnamon ice-cream.
My evening at Faff was quite the best meal I have had in Johannesburg since the old Singing Fig days. The friendly and genuinely helpful service still needs some tweaking; the minute the manager (?) head waiter (?) left the restaurant (a delightful young man with the most amazing, sculpted hair) the waiting staff relaxed somewhat, to the extent that it took nearly fifteen minutes for the bill to arrive.
Things aren't totally perfect; pastry seems to be the restaurant's only weak point, and even then I managed to finish almost the entire dessert plate, bar the gritty-bottomed torte. No, it's not cool for customers to walk past an untidy linen store in order to visit the loo; yeah, it would be nice to see a couple more dessert wines available by the glass; okay, if your menu needs a glossary to make sense of it, rewrite the menu in plain English. But on the whole, I reckon Faff is currently the finest restaurant in Johannesburg.
Dinner for four, with a couple of 250ml carafes of wine (another excellent idea which should be promoted more actively by the waiting staff) came to a little over R1200 - great value for money by anybody's standards.
Faff
44 The Avenue
Norwood
2192
Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 728 2434
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Louis XVI, Rosebank, Johannesburg
I was all ready to review Louis XVI, honest I was. And then at lunchtime one day last week I used the gents' loo in the TA Centre, which is the weird building on Jan Smuts Avenue where the restaurant is located. You know: where Thrupps used to be. (And had to fight and argue with the security guard before he would let me have the key... The TA Centre also has the dodgiest ever hairdresser - the size of Harrods, about 12 hairdressers' chairs, and never a single customer. I mean that, quite literally, I have never seen any customers in there, which does make me wonder in my cynical way how they manage to pay the rent.)
The TA Centre courtyard
Picture courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/98453206@N00/3028391576/
As I finished peeing, out of a lavatory cubicle, to the accompaniment of flushing, emerged a man in chef's whites and a blue apron. He walked straight out of the gents and entered a door just down the corridor, which appears from the layout of the ground floor to be a sort of back door into Louis XVI.
And didn't wash his hands.
So I skipped Louis XVI.
Louis XVI
160 Jan Smuts Avenue
Rosebank
Johannesburg
2196
South Africa
Telephone: (011) 447 6244
The TA Centre courtyard
Picture courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/98453206@N00/3028391576/
As I finished peeing, out of a lavatory cubicle, to the accompaniment of flushing, emerged a man in chef's whites and a blue apron. He walked straight out of the gents and entered a door just down the corridor, which appears from the layout of the ground floor to be a sort of back door into Louis XVI.
And didn't wash his hands.
So I skipped Louis XVI.
Louis XVI
160 Jan Smuts Avenue
Rosebank
Johannesburg
2196
South Africa
Telephone: (011) 447 6244
Friday, 10 August 2007
The Singing Fig, Norwood, Johannesburg
When I first went to the Singing Fig in Norwood's main drag, the restaurant was at the height of its success. Plaudits and prizes, rave reviews in Highveld Style and the Star. A few years on, my cousin suggested that all was not well. "It's changed hands," he said. "My mother-in-law used to go there all the time, but she doesn't like the food there now."
My cousn''s mother-in-law is a Very Scary Woman, so it seemed sensible to get on her good side by visiting and reporting back.
The restaurant has certainly been refurbished (although it ain't air-conditioned yet, sadly): low and spacious, with a sort of stripped-wood, colonial vibe going on, and added life given to the room by the charming array of nudes and other pictures hanging on the wall. We were seated in one corner beneath a giant minge painting - an impressionist daub of a couple of legs topped with the biggest, blackest pubic bush - which reduced my companion to giggles within moments of sitting down. "Is it Lily Allen?", he whispered. Whispering was an unnecessary precaution, as the restaurant was empty. At 7pm. Not promising.
Companion ordered veal scallopina in a Jack Daniels jus with gorgonzola butter, followed by creme brulee with Grand Marnier and berry compote. I had five-spice root vegetables with spinach risotto cake, and fig ice-cream.
A vast portion of veal appeared - five scallopini, or about three-quarters of a pound's weight of meat. They were served on a cold potato salad, not mentioned in the dish's description in the menu, whose cold, thick mayonnaise combined with the hot cream sauce to create an unappetising lukewarm, greasy soup, and which contained an equally unadvertised blast of chili. The creme brulee was lovely, although the thick compote which accompanied it was more like jam than compote.
The vegetable platter was inventive and tasty, although the French-style cream sauce was redundant on a dish containing such strong Oriental flavours and influences. The risotto cake was perfect - I mean, absolutely perfect: creamy grains of just-cooked rice. Unfortunately the accompanying green beans were leathery and inedible. The fig ice-cream would have been far better made with dried figs or fig jam, as the use of fresh figs resulted in a watery, sweet vanilla cream containing slimy pieces of fresh fig utterly devoid of flavour.
Service was cheerful but amateurish, and a far cry from the snappy, NY-style professionalism of our first visit. The total bill, including a bottle of wine from the excellent wine list (particularly strong on dessert wines) was R567 for two + tip.
In general the restaurant has an air of distraction that bodes ill; the cooking (judging by this visit) is distinctly inconsistent; service is sloppy, and its web site (which appears to have been recently suspended for non-payment - that, at any rate, is what the Google cache suggests) is at least 8 months out of date ("Menu will be subject to change in January 2007 when we launch our new menu!!", visitors are told in August 2007). If the owners of the Singing Fig want it to continue as a respected restaurant, they need a little more concentration on the basics of the business: consistently well-chosen and competently-cooked food, served with professionalism.
A little less bush, and a little more rush.
The Singing Fig
44 The Avenue
Norwood
2192
Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 728 2434
My cousn''s mother-in-law is a Very Scary Woman, so it seemed sensible to get on her good side by visiting and reporting back.
The restaurant has certainly been refurbished (although it ain't air-conditioned yet, sadly): low and spacious, with a sort of stripped-wood, colonial vibe going on, and added life given to the room by the charming array of nudes and other pictures hanging on the wall. We were seated in one corner beneath a giant minge painting - an impressionist daub of a couple of legs topped with the biggest, blackest pubic bush - which reduced my companion to giggles within moments of sitting down. "Is it Lily Allen?", he whispered. Whispering was an unnecessary precaution, as the restaurant was empty. At 7pm. Not promising.
Companion ordered veal scallopina in a Jack Daniels jus with gorgonzola butter, followed by creme brulee with Grand Marnier and berry compote. I had five-spice root vegetables with spinach risotto cake, and fig ice-cream.
A vast portion of veal appeared - five scallopini, or about three-quarters of a pound's weight of meat. They were served on a cold potato salad, not mentioned in the dish's description in the menu, whose cold, thick mayonnaise combined with the hot cream sauce to create an unappetising lukewarm, greasy soup, and which contained an equally unadvertised blast of chili. The creme brulee was lovely, although the thick compote which accompanied it was more like jam than compote.
The vegetable platter was inventive and tasty, although the French-style cream sauce was redundant on a dish containing such strong Oriental flavours and influences. The risotto cake was perfect - I mean, absolutely perfect: creamy grains of just-cooked rice. Unfortunately the accompanying green beans were leathery and inedible. The fig ice-cream would have been far better made with dried figs or fig jam, as the use of fresh figs resulted in a watery, sweet vanilla cream containing slimy pieces of fresh fig utterly devoid of flavour.
Service was cheerful but amateurish, and a far cry from the snappy, NY-style professionalism of our first visit. The total bill, including a bottle of wine from the excellent wine list (particularly strong on dessert wines) was R567 for two + tip.
In general the restaurant has an air of distraction that bodes ill; the cooking (judging by this visit) is distinctly inconsistent; service is sloppy, and its web site (which appears to have been recently suspended for non-payment - that, at any rate, is what the Google cache suggests) is at least 8 months out of date ("Menu will be subject to change in January 2007 when we launch our new menu!!", visitors are told in August 2007). If the owners of the Singing Fig want it to continue as a respected restaurant, they need a little more concentration on the basics of the business: consistently well-chosen and competently-cooked food, served with professionalism.
A little less bush, and a little more rush.
The Singing Fig
44 The Avenue
Norwood
2192
Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 728 2434
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Chaplins, Melville, Johannesburg
There is a special hell reserved for restaurateurs who use the word ‘cheeky’ to describe a dish on their menu: a Hades of pastel tints in which demons dressed by Bill Blass torment their victims to an endless Kenny G soundtrack. Kitsch menus invariably tell you more about the person who wrote the menu than about the food itself—and if a restaurant describes a dish as ‘cheeky’ or ‘decadent’ (or ‘vindictive’ or ‘sardonic’, come to that), usually it is just as well to be forewarned.
Thankfully this is not entirely the case at Chaplins, an established restaurant in the upmarket shopping suburb of Melville. The building is a fine 1930s house—old by Johannesburg standards—next door to a lively bistro with the same owner, and is one of the few restaurants in the city open on Monday nights.
Chaplins’ menu is an old-fashioned hybrid in which recipes from the classical French repertoire sit—not always entirely comfortably—next to elaborate contemporary dishes, many of which appear to contain at least one ingredient too many. Steak tartare is flanked on one hand by Entrecôte maître d’hôtel and on the other by a dish of grilled medallions of lamb, venison and beef fillet served with a black pepper, red wine and strawberry sauce… and astute readers already begin to see what I mean about one ingredient too many.
Our party began with chilled lettuce soup and crispy duck and vegetable spring rolls, forgoing the already mentioned “cheeky tomato, basil and onion tart”. The soup was fresh and delicious, but finished with a ball of over-sweet basil and tomato sorbet shot through with ice crystals the size of marbles. The spring rolls were tasty but lacked any discernable evidence of duck.
With nearly half the starters meat-and fish-free, I expected a decent array of vegetarian main courses. It was a disappointment to see just one vegetarian offering (described coyly as being “for our vegetarian friends”)—pancakes filled with cheese, vegetables and a mushroom cream sauce. If this unimaginative artery-clogger is what Chaplins serves its vegetarian friends, I dread to think what awaits its vegetarian enemies.
Our party did better, plumping variously for Beef Wellington from the day’s specials, and sole pan-fried with mushrooms, mussels and prawns in a Pernod and thyme sauce. The Beef Wellington was impeccable: a generous portion of tender fillet, perfectly cooked in a puff-pastry lattice case. The sole was delicious, but to combine five strongly flavoured components in a single dish veers dangerously close to the thin line separating ‘creative confection’ from its evil twin, ‘hodge-podge’.
The prospect of cinnamon ice cream impelled me to try Chaplins’ Cuppa Cappuccino: “layers of frozen chocolate parfait, cinnamon ice cream, toffee fudge sauce, chocolate mousse and Chantilly cream”. Not a success: the sauce had an odd, grainy texture, once again shards of ice crystals were very much in evidence, and the vast size of the portion—presented in a cappuccino cup—diminished its charm. Less is sometimes more: on this occasion I would have been very happy with a demi-tasse-size version featuring half the number of ingredients but prepared with twice as much care.
Dinner for four people, including a bottle of Allesverloren Shiraz and a generous tip, came to R1,050. Service was pleasant and attentive, which makes me wonder whether the snottiness displayed when one of our party telephoned earlier (to ask about bringing our own bottle of wine) is characteristic or a singular lapse. BYO is common in South Africa; Chaplins’ menu explicitly discourages it—although it does, confusingly, display a R75 corkage charge for those guests courageous enough to brave the proprietor’s disapproval—but to suggest, as the person at Chaplins did, that a customer’s own wine could not possibly compare with the magnificent vintages available from Chaplins’ own list verges on discourteous.
Cheeky, in fact.
85 Fourth Avenue
Melville
Johannesburg
2092
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)11 482 4657
Thankfully this is not entirely the case at Chaplins, an established restaurant in the upmarket shopping suburb of Melville. The building is a fine 1930s house—old by Johannesburg standards—next door to a lively bistro with the same owner, and is one of the few restaurants in the city open on Monday nights.
Chaplins’ menu is an old-fashioned hybrid in which recipes from the classical French repertoire sit—not always entirely comfortably—next to elaborate contemporary dishes, many of which appear to contain at least one ingredient too many. Steak tartare is flanked on one hand by Entrecôte maître d’hôtel and on the other by a dish of grilled medallions of lamb, venison and beef fillet served with a black pepper, red wine and strawberry sauce… and astute readers already begin to see what I mean about one ingredient too many.
Our party began with chilled lettuce soup and crispy duck and vegetable spring rolls, forgoing the already mentioned “cheeky tomato, basil and onion tart”. The soup was fresh and delicious, but finished with a ball of over-sweet basil and tomato sorbet shot through with ice crystals the size of marbles. The spring rolls were tasty but lacked any discernable evidence of duck.
With nearly half the starters meat-and fish-free, I expected a decent array of vegetarian main courses. It was a disappointment to see just one vegetarian offering (described coyly as being “for our vegetarian friends”)—pancakes filled with cheese, vegetables and a mushroom cream sauce. If this unimaginative artery-clogger is what Chaplins serves its vegetarian friends, I dread to think what awaits its vegetarian enemies.
Our party did better, plumping variously for Beef Wellington from the day’s specials, and sole pan-fried with mushrooms, mussels and prawns in a Pernod and thyme sauce. The Beef Wellington was impeccable: a generous portion of tender fillet, perfectly cooked in a puff-pastry lattice case. The sole was delicious, but to combine five strongly flavoured components in a single dish veers dangerously close to the thin line separating ‘creative confection’ from its evil twin, ‘hodge-podge’.
The prospect of cinnamon ice cream impelled me to try Chaplins’ Cuppa Cappuccino: “layers of frozen chocolate parfait, cinnamon ice cream, toffee fudge sauce, chocolate mousse and Chantilly cream”. Not a success: the sauce had an odd, grainy texture, once again shards of ice crystals were very much in evidence, and the vast size of the portion—presented in a cappuccino cup—diminished its charm. Less is sometimes more: on this occasion I would have been very happy with a demi-tasse-size version featuring half the number of ingredients but prepared with twice as much care.
Dinner for four people, including a bottle of Allesverloren Shiraz and a generous tip, came to R1,050. Service was pleasant and attentive, which makes me wonder whether the snottiness displayed when one of our party telephoned earlier (to ask about bringing our own bottle of wine) is characteristic or a singular lapse. BYO is common in South Africa; Chaplins’ menu explicitly discourages it—although it does, confusingly, display a R75 corkage charge for those guests courageous enough to brave the proprietor’s disapproval—but to suggest, as the person at Chaplins did, that a customer’s own wine could not possibly compare with the magnificent vintages available from Chaplins’ own list verges on discourteous.
Cheeky, in fact.
85 Fourth Avenue
Melville
Johannesburg
2092
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)11 482 4657
Banjaara Indian Cuisine, Johannesburg
I don’t often regret having given up smoking.
Usually it take a great deal of red wine to make me yearn for a puff, but after five minutes in the Banjaara restaurant I was itching for a Camel and a box of matches. I have the architect to thank. You see, whoever laid out the restaurant complied with South African law by providing a wholly enclosed space in which smokers can light up. In a brilliant piece of topsy-turvy planning, the architect decided that the smoking area should occupy the area alongside the only external windows, so that in order to enjoy the view across south-eastern Johannesburg, you must sit in the smoking section. Clearly Bobby Singh, the owner of the restaurant, enjoys a ciggy now and then—or perhaps he simply has a perverse and mischievous sense of humour.
The Bedford Centre has changed from the squat, concrete mall where my cousins and I used to go to the cinema as teenagers (which reminds me: the movie director Penny Marshall still owes me for the 1½ hours I wasted there watching her film Jumpin’ Jack Flash in 1986). It is still squat and concrete, but now has covered parking—filled with slightly stoned fourteen-year-old boys trying not to fall off skateboards under the amused, avuncular eyes of the security guards.
Inside, a recent redevelopment has seen the Centre relined with Carrera marble and treated to glass lifts and new, shiny escalators—and with its red silk walls and gilded fittings, Banjaara continues this vaguely decadent theme. The menu, however, is admirably businesslike, focusing on chicken, lamb and vegetables. In fact, Banjaara offers a comprehensive and imaginative vegetarian selection including unusual dishes such as paneer (Indian curd cheese) with cashew nuts and cream, and dal maknie: a fragrant, buttery dish of spiced black lentils cooked with kidney beans. I had a wonderful fish curry, freshly made and suffused with typical African-Indian flavours of aniseed, curry leaves and red chilli. My companions shared a selection of mild curries, of which the typically South African lamb keema masala (spiced mince with peas) met with particular approval.
An outstanding aspect of Banjaara’s cuisine is its breads: naan was light and sweet, with an appetising crunch where its crust had been seared in the tandoor. The huge, flat romali roti (flat griddle bread) was hot, dry and perfectly cooked, while the aloo paratha (flatbread stuffed with spiced potato) was rich with ginger, chilli, mint and coriander. Our friendly (if occasionally slightly distracted) waiter seemed disappointed that we were unable to finish all the food he had put before us: on reflection, three main dishes between four of us, plus plenty of rice, would have been ample.
Indian food in southern Africa is not always the cut-price bargain that it is in the United Kingdom. However, it was a pleasant surprise when the bill for four of us, including beers all round, came to just R402 plus tip. At that sort of price I could almost afford to start smoking again.
Shop M10
The Bedford Centre
Smith Street
Bedford View
Johannesburg
2047
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)11 615 1513
Usually it take a great deal of red wine to make me yearn for a puff, but after five minutes in the Banjaara restaurant I was itching for a Camel and a box of matches. I have the architect to thank. You see, whoever laid out the restaurant complied with South African law by providing a wholly enclosed space in which smokers can light up. In a brilliant piece of topsy-turvy planning, the architect decided that the smoking area should occupy the area alongside the only external windows, so that in order to enjoy the view across south-eastern Johannesburg, you must sit in the smoking section. Clearly Bobby Singh, the owner of the restaurant, enjoys a ciggy now and then—or perhaps he simply has a perverse and mischievous sense of humour.
The Bedford Centre has changed from the squat, concrete mall where my cousins and I used to go to the cinema as teenagers (which reminds me: the movie director Penny Marshall still owes me for the 1½ hours I wasted there watching her film Jumpin’ Jack Flash in 1986). It is still squat and concrete, but now has covered parking—filled with slightly stoned fourteen-year-old boys trying not to fall off skateboards under the amused, avuncular eyes of the security guards.
Inside, a recent redevelopment has seen the Centre relined with Carrera marble and treated to glass lifts and new, shiny escalators—and with its red silk walls and gilded fittings, Banjaara continues this vaguely decadent theme. The menu, however, is admirably businesslike, focusing on chicken, lamb and vegetables. In fact, Banjaara offers a comprehensive and imaginative vegetarian selection including unusual dishes such as paneer (Indian curd cheese) with cashew nuts and cream, and dal maknie: a fragrant, buttery dish of spiced black lentils cooked with kidney beans. I had a wonderful fish curry, freshly made and suffused with typical African-Indian flavours of aniseed, curry leaves and red chilli. My companions shared a selection of mild curries, of which the typically South African lamb keema masala (spiced mince with peas) met with particular approval.
An outstanding aspect of Banjaara’s cuisine is its breads: naan was light and sweet, with an appetising crunch where its crust had been seared in the tandoor. The huge, flat romali roti (flat griddle bread) was hot, dry and perfectly cooked, while the aloo paratha (flatbread stuffed with spiced potato) was rich with ginger, chilli, mint and coriander. Our friendly (if occasionally slightly distracted) waiter seemed disappointed that we were unable to finish all the food he had put before us: on reflection, three main dishes between four of us, plus plenty of rice, would have been ample.
Indian food in southern Africa is not always the cut-price bargain that it is in the United Kingdom. However, it was a pleasant surprise when the bill for four of us, including beers all round, came to just R402 plus tip. At that sort of price I could almost afford to start smoking again.
Shop M10
The Bedford Centre
Smith Street
Bedford View
Johannesburg
2047
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)11 615 1513
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