I've been going to the Fournos Bakery in Rosebank for years. It's one of my grandmother's favourite places for lunch. When we visited with her on a sunny Tuesday morning I chose poached egg and smoked salmon, which for some reason comes served on a scone (note to Fournos: please change this - it's hideously sweet; what's the matter with a bagel?). Gran wanted something eggy, and chose scrambled egg on toast. She received a huge pile of freshly-made, creamy scrambled eggs on hot toast and ate her way through the lot, smacking her lips with satisfaction.
We finished off - oh, the greed! - with three freshly-baked Danish pastries (you simply wander into the bakery shop, sidling carefully around racks and stacks of fresh buns, flapjacks and golden loaves of bread, and pick what you fancy) and three cappuccino coffees: the total bill came to R175 + tip.
The baked goods are wonderful; the Illy coffee superb, but the loveliest thing about Fournos Rosebank is the care and friendliness of the staff, delightful people, who take such effort to look after an elderly woman.
Fournos Bakery
33 Baker Square
Cnr. Baker & Cradock Ave.
Rosebank
Johannesburg
Tel: (011) 447 3392
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
Wednesday, 20 December 2006
1860 Indian Restaurant, Croydon, UK
What a brilliant find!
Tucked on an unprepossessing high street in Croydon, 1860 looks like a slightly sleazy cafe from the outside, and this impression isn't entirely dispersed by the low-key furnishing and sparse decoration. It's run by a husband and wife from Durban in South Africa, and serves a brilliant selection of South African Indian dishes. With their reliance on fresh flavours and aromatic, complex spices, the cuisine of South Africa's Indian population is very different from the creamy, oniony Bangladeshi food that most British "Indian" restaurants serve.
The food at 1860 is utterly wonderful. Our party ordered a selection of dishes which included bunny chow and a range of vegetarian side dishes. Bunny chow was perfect: a rich, densely-flavoured golden gravy packed with soft potatoes and chunks of chicken. Each of the other dishes had individual flavours and spicing - very different from other Indian restaurants, which often use the same sauce for everything; they ranged from the intense aniseed and fennel flavours of the lamb to the gentle, garlicky dhal.
Breads were generously sized and had the steamy golden crust of a freshly-made roti.
I cannot recommend 1860 highly enough. If you've never been to a South African Indian restaurant, don't be put off by the unfamiliar names - put yourself in the hands of the owners and trust them to make you a wonderful meal.
1860
28 South End
Croydon
Surrey
CR0 1DN
Tel. (020) 8688 3839
Tucked on an unprepossessing high street in Croydon, 1860 looks like a slightly sleazy cafe from the outside, and this impression isn't entirely dispersed by the low-key furnishing and sparse decoration. It's run by a husband and wife from Durban in South Africa, and serves a brilliant selection of South African Indian dishes. With their reliance on fresh flavours and aromatic, complex spices, the cuisine of South Africa's Indian population is very different from the creamy, oniony Bangladeshi food that most British "Indian" restaurants serve.
The food at 1860 is utterly wonderful. Our party ordered a selection of dishes which included bunny chow and a range of vegetarian side dishes. Bunny chow was perfect: a rich, densely-flavoured golden gravy packed with soft potatoes and chunks of chicken. Each of the other dishes had individual flavours and spicing - very different from other Indian restaurants, which often use the same sauce for everything; they ranged from the intense aniseed and fennel flavours of the lamb to the gentle, garlicky dhal.
Breads were generously sized and had the steamy golden crust of a freshly-made roti.
I cannot recommend 1860 highly enough. If you've never been to a South African Indian restaurant, don't be put off by the unfamiliar names - put yourself in the hands of the owners and trust them to make you a wonderful meal.
1860
28 South End
Croydon
Surrey
CR0 1DN
Tel. (020) 8688 3839
Thursday, 14 December 2006
Madiba, Brooklyn, New York
I’ve only ever been to one shebeen, when I was a teenager. It was owned by a gentle, permanently stoned poet called Zeke, and occupied one bare room of his mother’s house in a township on the South African coast. Zeke’s shebeen consisted of a fridge, several plastic patio chairs and twenty cases of Lion lager, and on more than one occasion I found my way through the township’s anonymous streets to the house by following the smell of the fragrant, blue dope smoke that escaped from its windows.
Madiba is a world away: they don’t let you smoke dope, for a start. The restaurant is on Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn, a short subway or bus ride from Central Manhattan, and was filling up by the time we arrived, early on a drizzly Saturday night. The interior is shebeen-chic—kitchen tables and chairs, and jam-jars instead of drinking glasses—while the lighting is rather like Jade Goody—dim, starts off cute, but quickly becomes irritating. (Later we watched, trying not to snigger, as guests on a nearby table passed round a miniature keyring-torch to read the menu.)
Since all three South African beers on the wine list were out of stock, the waiter suggested that we tried Krait beer, which he described, straight-faced, as Indian beer brewed in South Africa. In fact, it is British—Krait is the export version of Cobra—and is brewed in Poland, as he could have realised if he read the label. Sadly, the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that litter the menu suggest that the ability to read, write or use the spell-check function are not seen as a priority by Madiba’s owners (the web site boasts proudly, “Our restaurants boast a South African atmosphere and traditionally prepared specialities like none other offering The South African Experience, first of its kind, in the United StatesMadiba [sic]”, while the menu offers, among other things, mushroom saurce, baked potatoe and yello rice).
The menu covers South African cuisine from traditional Cape Dutch and Malay dishes like bobotie and pickled fish, to Indian cuisine like samosas and breyani, and includes home-style dishes from the black culinary tradition like uputhu (maize porridge) and chakalaka (a sort of spiced vegetable salad) that rarely appear on restaurant menus even in South Africa. The South African wine list offers a reasonable selection from US$28 (£15) per bottle upwards.
I chose hake and chips with calamari, while my companion had mutton curry bunny chow. The curry was drier than most Durban versions, but tasty and presented in a generous half-loaf of brown bread. The large portion of hake was perfectly cooked, with wonderful, vinegary chips wittily served in a newspaper wrap, but the calamari rings had been hastily dumped into the fryer in a single handful and had fused into an inedible accretion of over-seasoned batter the size and shape of a Scotch egg.
From a list of desserts that included koeksisters and Dom Pedro (an ice cream confection known as the alcoholic’s milkshake) we chose malva pudding and melktert. The melktert was superb: a thick, creamy filling topped with swirls of cinnamon. The malva pudding was served with a rich rum sauce, also excellent.
Our bill appeared while we were eating pudding. Irritating, and also poor business practice, since high profit margins make after-dinner coffee and drinks lucrative sale items. Not that the utterly disgusting coffee served by Madiba would encourage any customer to linger. Including a cash tip of slightly over 15%, the bill came to US$85, or about £45 for two main courses, two puddings, three bottles of beer, and one cup of coffee. After paying the bill I discovered that US$2 had been added, presumably in error, to the credit card total. Perhaps this was the percentage of its proceeds that the restaurant tells us it “is honoured… to give… back to the people of South Africa”, although if you are making a boast like that on your web site it might be more convincing if you tell your public precisely what percentage you are donating, and to whom.
Dinner at Madiba isn’t the most expensive meal you’ll ever eat in New York, but the bill was rendered bearable only by the weakness of the dollar against the pound: some months earlier, when the dollar was stronger, the same meal would have cost nearly £55. That is a lot of money to pay for street food. At Zeke’s, his mother used to make you a plate of golden uputhu and tasty tripe stew for a couple of rand. And I bet she knew how to spell sauce.
Madiba
195 Dekalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
11205
United States of America
Tel: (718) 855 9190
Madiba is a world away: they don’t let you smoke dope, for a start. The restaurant is on Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn, a short subway or bus ride from Central Manhattan, and was filling up by the time we arrived, early on a drizzly Saturday night. The interior is shebeen-chic—kitchen tables and chairs, and jam-jars instead of drinking glasses—while the lighting is rather like Jade Goody—dim, starts off cute, but quickly becomes irritating. (Later we watched, trying not to snigger, as guests on a nearby table passed round a miniature keyring-torch to read the menu.)
Since all three South African beers on the wine list were out of stock, the waiter suggested that we tried Krait beer, which he described, straight-faced, as Indian beer brewed in South Africa. In fact, it is British—Krait is the export version of Cobra—and is brewed in Poland, as he could have realised if he read the label. Sadly, the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that litter the menu suggest that the ability to read, write or use the spell-check function are not seen as a priority by Madiba’s owners (the web site boasts proudly, “Our restaurants boast a South African atmosphere and traditionally prepared specialities like none other offering The South African Experience, first of its kind, in the United StatesMadiba [sic]”, while the menu offers, among other things, mushroom saurce, baked potatoe and yello rice).
The menu covers South African cuisine from traditional Cape Dutch and Malay dishes like bobotie and pickled fish, to Indian cuisine like samosas and breyani, and includes home-style dishes from the black culinary tradition like uputhu (maize porridge) and chakalaka (a sort of spiced vegetable salad) that rarely appear on restaurant menus even in South Africa. The South African wine list offers a reasonable selection from US$28 (£15) per bottle upwards.
I chose hake and chips with calamari, while my companion had mutton curry bunny chow. The curry was drier than most Durban versions, but tasty and presented in a generous half-loaf of brown bread. The large portion of hake was perfectly cooked, with wonderful, vinegary chips wittily served in a newspaper wrap, but the calamari rings had been hastily dumped into the fryer in a single handful and had fused into an inedible accretion of over-seasoned batter the size and shape of a Scotch egg.
From a list of desserts that included koeksisters and Dom Pedro (an ice cream confection known as the alcoholic’s milkshake) we chose malva pudding and melktert. The melktert was superb: a thick, creamy filling topped with swirls of cinnamon. The malva pudding was served with a rich rum sauce, also excellent.
Our bill appeared while we were eating pudding. Irritating, and also poor business practice, since high profit margins make after-dinner coffee and drinks lucrative sale items. Not that the utterly disgusting coffee served by Madiba would encourage any customer to linger. Including a cash tip of slightly over 15%, the bill came to US$85, or about £45 for two main courses, two puddings, three bottles of beer, and one cup of coffee. After paying the bill I discovered that US$2 had been added, presumably in error, to the credit card total. Perhaps this was the percentage of its proceeds that the restaurant tells us it “is honoured… to give… back to the people of South Africa”, although if you are making a boast like that on your web site it might be more convincing if you tell your public precisely what percentage you are donating, and to whom.
Dinner at Madiba isn’t the most expensive meal you’ll ever eat in New York, but the bill was rendered bearable only by the weakness of the dollar against the pound: some months earlier, when the dollar was stronger, the same meal would have cost nearly £55. That is a lot of money to pay for street food. At Zeke’s, his mother used to make you a plate of golden uputhu and tasty tripe stew for a couple of rand. And I bet she knew how to spell sauce.
Madiba
195 Dekalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
11205
United States of America
Tel: (718) 855 9190
Ile Maurice, Umhlanga
There are two English brothers, living by the South African coast. The older one needs a haircut, smokes a fair bit of dope and has an Indian girlfriend. He has become progressively more liberal as he has become older, painting his home in bright colours and listening to hip-hop as he builds a new swimming pool. The younger brother is conservative, wealthy and fastidious. He dresses in Lacoste slip-slops and drives a white Jeep. He has just had an extra layer of razor-wire installed on top of the high wall that surrounds his house. He doesn’t know his maid’s surname, but he can tell you the current value of the property next door within a margin of error of plus-minus R5,000.
The first brother is Durban, the stately city that grew up on the shores of the Indian Ocean in the 1840s. The second is Umhlanga, a high-rise holiday resort a few miles north of Durban. In some ways Île Maurice spans both of them—it is a French-Mauritian restaurant that used to be located in Durban’s ‘Restaurant Mile’, Florida Road, but moved a couple of years ago to an old colonial-era house overlooking Umhlanga’s beach.
Seated on the verandah next to a party of beautiful, bored Italians who drank red wine and chatted constantly on cell phones, we were ignored by the owner? Manager? At any rate, by the middle-aged man who squeezed past our table a couple of times to relight the candle lantern behind me without an apology or acknowledgement. Even when I tried to pin him down to ask about the restaurant he shrugged off any attempt at interaction and made his escape as quickly as possible.
The waiting staff on the evening we visited was composed almost entirely of handsome, young white men whose hearts were not really in it; I cherish the memory of one surf-god who managed to carry three plates at the same time—his tongue literally sticking out with the concentrated effort of doing so.) In the tortuous social codes of apartheid-era South Africa, for expensive restaurants to employ white people as waiters or bus-boys was often one of the most effective ways to signal luxury, privilege and—in every sense—exclusivity. Twelve years after liberation, in Umhlanga at least, some things haven’t changed.
All of which I could ignore if the food had exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately it barely met them. The menu veers between French haute cuisine of the most predictable kind (Vichyssoise, soupe crabe) and local fish presented at eye-watering prices. Daube de poisson au Captain Sarno (Salvatore Sarno leads South Africa’s Americas Cup team) was a generous fillet of line fish in a watery tomato sauce which bore no evidence of the promised coconut. It came with a tiny portion of vegetables, and a vast bowl of stewed, wet brown lentils which combined with the tomato sauce to form a sort of grainy, brown soup in which chunks of line fish bobbed.
I turned down the banane au coco flambée, crêpes Suzettes and other sweet offerings that nobody in the Northern hemisphere has put on a menu for the last thirty years. My companion had crème brulée and reported that it was very eggy and barely brulée. Two main courses, a pudding, coffee and a bottle of Steenberg Reserve Sauvignon Blanc came to R440. Good value for money? Hardly.
The logo that the Mauvis family has chosen for Île Maurice is a charming device depicting a dodo. The dodo, you recall, came from Mauritius; it was luxuriantly built, slow-moving and incapable of flight or innovation. It became extinct.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Île Maurice
9 McCausland Crescent
Umhlanga Rocks
KwaZulu-Natal
4320
South Africa
Telephone: (031) 561-7609
The first brother is Durban, the stately city that grew up on the shores of the Indian Ocean in the 1840s. The second is Umhlanga, a high-rise holiday resort a few miles north of Durban. In some ways Île Maurice spans both of them—it is a French-Mauritian restaurant that used to be located in Durban’s ‘Restaurant Mile’, Florida Road, but moved a couple of years ago to an old colonial-era house overlooking Umhlanga’s beach.
Seated on the verandah next to a party of beautiful, bored Italians who drank red wine and chatted constantly on cell phones, we were ignored by the owner? Manager? At any rate, by the middle-aged man who squeezed past our table a couple of times to relight the candle lantern behind me without an apology or acknowledgement. Even when I tried to pin him down to ask about the restaurant he shrugged off any attempt at interaction and made his escape as quickly as possible.
The waiting staff on the evening we visited was composed almost entirely of handsome, young white men whose hearts were not really in it; I cherish the memory of one surf-god who managed to carry three plates at the same time—his tongue literally sticking out with the concentrated effort of doing so.) In the tortuous social codes of apartheid-era South Africa, for expensive restaurants to employ white people as waiters or bus-boys was often one of the most effective ways to signal luxury, privilege and—in every sense—exclusivity. Twelve years after liberation, in Umhlanga at least, some things haven’t changed.
All of which I could ignore if the food had exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately it barely met them. The menu veers between French haute cuisine of the most predictable kind (Vichyssoise, soupe crabe) and local fish presented at eye-watering prices. Daube de poisson au Captain Sarno (Salvatore Sarno leads South Africa’s Americas Cup team) was a generous fillet of line fish in a watery tomato sauce which bore no evidence of the promised coconut. It came with a tiny portion of vegetables, and a vast bowl of stewed, wet brown lentils which combined with the tomato sauce to form a sort of grainy, brown soup in which chunks of line fish bobbed.
I turned down the banane au coco flambée, crêpes Suzettes and other sweet offerings that nobody in the Northern hemisphere has put on a menu for the last thirty years. My companion had crème brulée and reported that it was very eggy and barely brulée. Two main courses, a pudding, coffee and a bottle of Steenberg Reserve Sauvignon Blanc came to R440. Good value for money? Hardly.
The logo that the Mauvis family has chosen for Île Maurice is a charming device depicting a dodo. The dodo, you recall, came from Mauritius; it was luxuriantly built, slow-moving and incapable of flight or innovation. It became extinct.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Île Maurice
9 McCausland Crescent
Umhlanga Rocks
KwaZulu-Natal
4320
South Africa
Telephone: (031) 561-7609
Bistro 136, Durban
Has Darwin come to Durban? Are the principles of ‘survival of the fittest’ being played out in that most relaxed of Indian ocean cities? It certainly seemed like it when I visited Bistro 136 on a wet Wednesday night. The restaurant is located on Florida Road—the ‘Restaurant Row’ of the fashionable eating-and-shopping Morningside neighbourhood. Just a few hundred metres away, at the bottom of the hill every available inch of kerb was packed with cars, double-parked by customers queuing to get into the groovy and very stylish Bean Bag Bohemia. But at the top of the road pavements were empty, and every plate-glass window framed a glum waiter staring out of a deserted restaurant into the rain: imagine the shop windows of Amsterdam’s red-light district remodelled by a depressed caterer, and you may begin to get the picture.
As we walked into Bistro 136, which occupies the ground floor of a magnificent Victorian galleried building, the staff snapped to attention: newspapers were whisked under the counter and gossipy conversations ended in mid-sentence at the appearance of the first customers of the evening. The restaurant has recently changed owners, and there was a crisp eagerness on show that contrasted with the complacent air sometimes pervading long-established restaurants. In contrast, the menu reads like some sort of cruel spoof of an old-fashioned, bourgeois German restaurant menu: a list of different body parts of farmyard animals cooked in a variety of cream sauces. No surprise, then, to discover that the previous owner is Swiss, a nation whose enthusiasm for innovation may be judged by the fact that Swiss women did not get the vote until 1971.
My companion, whose childhood holidays were spent eating cream cakes in dull-sounding German cities, fell on the menu with little whoops of longing and, misty-eyed with nostalgia, chose Veal Switzerland. This turned out to be a vast pot packed with strips of veal in a hot cream and white wine sauce with herbs, steaming and aromatic. “Just like the hotel in Bad Muenstereifel when I was ten,” he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. And if the waiter had scowled and banged down the plate in front of him, before walking to the front door and lighting a foul-smelling cigarillo, the authenticity might have been complete.
Being by the sea, I chose fish—curiously, with the exception of the Fishmonger franchise, whose restaurants are of inconsistent quality, it is almost impossible to find a fish restaurant in South Africa. We both began with a rich prawn bisque, chunks of tail meat in a rich soup scented with brandy and saffron, and I followed this with fresh kabeljou (“it came in from the fisherman this morning”, the manager said), simply grilled, with rosemary potatoes. It was perfect, and to my delight came with a pot of properly-made sauce tartare (fresh mayonnaise packed with finely chopped gherkin, capers, parsley and boiled egg, rather than the pale green, viscous, vinegary devil’s spunk usually found occupying a ramekin alongside a portion of greasy haddock).
We picked a bottle of Vergelegen Mill Race Merlot-Cabernet: delicious, cherry fruit with a whiff of cedar and chocolate. And the chocolate theme continued: not only did my companion select an excellent chocolate mousse for pudding, but I chose what was described on the menu as home-made cassata. I suspect the—admittedly excellent—cassata was actually bought in; hilariously, in the great South African tradition of adding unnecessary calories to an already sugar-laden pudding, the generous slice of ice cream had been dipped in dark chocolate before being drizzled with van der Hum liqueur. All it needed was whipped cream and a glace cherry, and I could have had my coronary right there.
This enjoyable three-course dinner for two, served by charming and helpful staff, came to a very competitive R427 plus tip. As we were leaving a second group of customers arrived in the restaurant, but the profit on six dinners will barely have covered staff wages for the evening.
“I think the menu will be changing,” the manager confided to us: well, I hope so. Survival of the fittest, in hospitality terms, means that if your menu doesn’t fit, you become extinct. Adapt or die—not even the Swiss can fight Darwinism.
Bistro 136
136 Florida Road
Morningside
Durban
4062
South Africa
Telephone: +27 31 303 3440
**Please note, since my last visit to Bistro 136, new owner Paul Dinsdale has relaunched the restaurant as the Thunder Road Rock Diner. Best wishes for success, and I am looking forward to visiting next time I am in Durban.
As we walked into Bistro 136, which occupies the ground floor of a magnificent Victorian galleried building, the staff snapped to attention: newspapers were whisked under the counter and gossipy conversations ended in mid-sentence at the appearance of the first customers of the evening. The restaurant has recently changed owners, and there was a crisp eagerness on show that contrasted with the complacent air sometimes pervading long-established restaurants. In contrast, the menu reads like some sort of cruel spoof of an old-fashioned, bourgeois German restaurant menu: a list of different body parts of farmyard animals cooked in a variety of cream sauces. No surprise, then, to discover that the previous owner is Swiss, a nation whose enthusiasm for innovation may be judged by the fact that Swiss women did not get the vote until 1971.
My companion, whose childhood holidays were spent eating cream cakes in dull-sounding German cities, fell on the menu with little whoops of longing and, misty-eyed with nostalgia, chose Veal Switzerland. This turned out to be a vast pot packed with strips of veal in a hot cream and white wine sauce with herbs, steaming and aromatic. “Just like the hotel in Bad Muenstereifel when I was ten,” he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. And if the waiter had scowled and banged down the plate in front of him, before walking to the front door and lighting a foul-smelling cigarillo, the authenticity might have been complete.
Being by the sea, I chose fish—curiously, with the exception of the Fishmonger franchise, whose restaurants are of inconsistent quality, it is almost impossible to find a fish restaurant in South Africa. We both began with a rich prawn bisque, chunks of tail meat in a rich soup scented with brandy and saffron, and I followed this with fresh kabeljou (“it came in from the fisherman this morning”, the manager said), simply grilled, with rosemary potatoes. It was perfect, and to my delight came with a pot of properly-made sauce tartare (fresh mayonnaise packed with finely chopped gherkin, capers, parsley and boiled egg, rather than the pale green, viscous, vinegary devil’s spunk usually found occupying a ramekin alongside a portion of greasy haddock).
We picked a bottle of Vergelegen Mill Race Merlot-Cabernet: delicious, cherry fruit with a whiff of cedar and chocolate. And the chocolate theme continued: not only did my companion select an excellent chocolate mousse for pudding, but I chose what was described on the menu as home-made cassata. I suspect the—admittedly excellent—cassata was actually bought in; hilariously, in the great South African tradition of adding unnecessary calories to an already sugar-laden pudding, the generous slice of ice cream had been dipped in dark chocolate before being drizzled with van der Hum liqueur. All it needed was whipped cream and a glace cherry, and I could have had my coronary right there.
This enjoyable three-course dinner for two, served by charming and helpful staff, came to a very competitive R427 plus tip. As we were leaving a second group of customers arrived in the restaurant, but the profit on six dinners will barely have covered staff wages for the evening.
“I think the menu will be changing,” the manager confided to us: well, I hope so. Survival of the fittest, in hospitality terms, means that if your menu doesn’t fit, you become extinct. Adapt or die—not even the Swiss can fight Darwinism.
Bistro 136
136 Florida Road
Morningside
Durban
4062
South Africa
Telephone: +27 31 303 3440
**Please note, since my last visit to Bistro 136, new owner Paul Dinsdale has relaunched the restaurant as the Thunder Road Rock Diner. Best wishes for success, and I am looking forward to visiting next time I am in Durban.
Die Volkskombuis, Stellenbosch
“Stellenbosch is a little like an Afrikaner Disneyland,” my companion said thoughtfully over pre-dinner drinks at Die Volkskombuis. “You expect to see a parade going down Main Street every afternoon, with drum majorettes, dancing slaves and a giant, inflatable Simon van der Stel…”
One of the main differences, I argue, is that the catering is startlingly better at Stellenbosch—and Die Volkskombuis provides excellent support for my thesis. The traditional Cape restaurant has been going for nearly 30 years, and has recently expanded to include a deli and traîteur and fine wine shop. On the evening we ate in the courtyard—secluded enough to feel like somebody’s private garden—the weather was just cool enough to make us thankful for the huge brazier burning nearby, filling the air with the sweet scent of wood smoke.
I was expecting a fiercely formal set-up, and was reassured to see customers of all ages: ranging from a student pair in shorts and T-shirts, to a staid, British couple being entertained by a real estate agent intent on selling them a little slice of South African heaven. The informality was underlined by the professionalism of the friendly staff: solicitous and helpful.
Our main courses were superb; I was tempted by the thoughtfully composed vegetarian option: baked butternut with spinach, mushrooms and feta cheese, served with oven roasted vegetables and risotto balls flavoured with the South African delicacy waterblommetjie—a pond flower that tastes a little like asparagus. However, I eventually chose a soft, lemony risotto topped with prawns and seared scallops and enveloped in an aromatic saffron sauce.
On the other side of the table my companion sliced a huge rib of pink, juicy Karoo lamb into neat chops, nodding approvingly at the crunchy roast potatoes and scents of rosemary and sweet, caramelised garlic. I enjoyed a dessert platter bearing three sweets: malva pudding, koeksister and—breaking with the theme of Cape Dutch cuisine—sherry trifle. With the exception of the delicious koeksister, these did not quite match up to the perfection of the main course—the malva was a little too moist and spongy for my taste, and the sherry trifle was served in a little sherry schooner whose waist was too narrow for my teaspoon to scrape out the sherry-soaked sponge.
My companion chose white chocolate pudding—a baked confection somewhere between a mousse and a cake. I snatched a spoonful and spent the next twenty minutes grinning foolishly, on a sugar high induced at least partly by the condensed milk with which the pudding had been generously basted before cooking.
One of the pleasures of Die Volkskombuis—in common with most Stellenbosch restaurants—is a brilliant wine list featuring wines difficult to find in the rest of South Africa, let alone overseas. We enjoyed a bottle of Vergelegen Merlot 2003, which matched the Karoo lamb brilliantly and went surprisingly well with the risotto.
The bill, including mineral water and tea after dinner, came to R404 plus tip—a bargain by anyone’s standards.
Die Volkskombuis
Aan de Wagen Road
Stellenbosch
7600
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)21 887 2121
One of the main differences, I argue, is that the catering is startlingly better at Stellenbosch—and Die Volkskombuis provides excellent support for my thesis. The traditional Cape restaurant has been going for nearly 30 years, and has recently expanded to include a deli and traîteur and fine wine shop. On the evening we ate in the courtyard—secluded enough to feel like somebody’s private garden—the weather was just cool enough to make us thankful for the huge brazier burning nearby, filling the air with the sweet scent of wood smoke.
I was expecting a fiercely formal set-up, and was reassured to see customers of all ages: ranging from a student pair in shorts and T-shirts, to a staid, British couple being entertained by a real estate agent intent on selling them a little slice of South African heaven. The informality was underlined by the professionalism of the friendly staff: solicitous and helpful.
Our main courses were superb; I was tempted by the thoughtfully composed vegetarian option: baked butternut with spinach, mushrooms and feta cheese, served with oven roasted vegetables and risotto balls flavoured with the South African delicacy waterblommetjie—a pond flower that tastes a little like asparagus. However, I eventually chose a soft, lemony risotto topped with prawns and seared scallops and enveloped in an aromatic saffron sauce.
On the other side of the table my companion sliced a huge rib of pink, juicy Karoo lamb into neat chops, nodding approvingly at the crunchy roast potatoes and scents of rosemary and sweet, caramelised garlic. I enjoyed a dessert platter bearing three sweets: malva pudding, koeksister and—breaking with the theme of Cape Dutch cuisine—sherry trifle. With the exception of the delicious koeksister, these did not quite match up to the perfection of the main course—the malva was a little too moist and spongy for my taste, and the sherry trifle was served in a little sherry schooner whose waist was too narrow for my teaspoon to scrape out the sherry-soaked sponge.
My companion chose white chocolate pudding—a baked confection somewhere between a mousse and a cake. I snatched a spoonful and spent the next twenty minutes grinning foolishly, on a sugar high induced at least partly by the condensed milk with which the pudding had been generously basted before cooking.
One of the pleasures of Die Volkskombuis—in common with most Stellenbosch restaurants—is a brilliant wine list featuring wines difficult to find in the rest of South Africa, let alone overseas. We enjoyed a bottle of Vergelegen Merlot 2003, which matched the Karoo lamb brilliantly and went surprisingly well with the risotto.
The bill, including mineral water and tea after dinner, came to R404 plus tip—a bargain by anyone’s standards.
Die Volkskombuis
Aan de Wagen Road
Stellenbosch
7600
South Africa
Telephone: +27 (0)21 887 2121
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