Salty Cracker Club

Sloppy Sam

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Choice, Jo's choice, Outings, Reviews, Seapoint | No Comments

I wanted a comfy, homey, snuggly vibe, with no sign of pretentiousness and giant portions. Check. Sloppy Sam’s is all those things, delivered with a mediterranean flair and plenty of lamb. Lamb, lamb, wonderful lamb, rolled with garlic on kebab sticks (Jess and Stv), slowly braised into melting goodness (EL), its ribs crisped with garlic and lemon (next time, next time) or in an iraqui abgusht stew with dried limes (yet another visit needed).  Defiantly, I had calamari, which were lemony-sour, garlicky and awesome.

Food is simple, large and tasty, with beautiful flavours and the minimum of fuss. For starters, it was various culturally-appropriate things, which were very good: tsatsiki (nice but not outstanding), pickled calamari (not nearly as rubbery as all that but still kind of rubbery), deep fried crispy sardines (I have a deep fried fondness for deep fried sardines, they are wonderful), and a tomato, red onion and anchovy salad that was tasty but a little too simple for the price.

Service was friendly, casual but attentive, very good.

The venue is lovely and belies the name - nothing sloppy about this creatively decorated space. Lots of food paraphernalia (tins, bottles, vegetables, things) strung out all over the place, backed by warm paint tones and an open kitchen. Only complaint: we were seated in the window and the curtain of fairy lights made it hot hot hot. Bonus on window seating: the building across the road has really awesome coloured lights which we spent most of the night figuring out.

Overall: great place, great experience. Yay! Also, chalk up 1 to me for restraint, of alcoholic* kind, and actually driving to salty cracker for a change. Jo: 1, Stv: 37. She edges in. She’s getting there.

Atmosphere: 8 / 10 (target: mediterranean relaxation. Mission: accomplished.)
Staff: 8 / 10 (friendly, relaxed, attentive)
Service: 8 / 10 (see: atmosphere)
Food: 7 / 10 (simple but hits the spot)
Value for money: 9 / 10. (that means good, i.e. cheap :))

*Full disclosure: Drinking copiously at lunch and being unable to face much more alcohol may have had something to do with it.

Five flies review

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Reviews | No Comments

Oops, been a while since the actual eatings.

So, http://www.fiveflies.co.za/.
In a very cool, many-roomed, many-bar-ed (although we just went for din-dins), big ole building in the middle of town is Five Flies.
I’ve heard varying things, mostly since going there, about the snootiness of the staff. We had a great experience - our waitress was lovely, and the one or two others who flew around our table were jovial and friendly. The maitre d’ looked a bit offish, but we only exchanged a word or two with him, so no probs there.

The food, you say?

Starters:
me, jess - Smoked salmon and cod fritters with rosti, watercress and garlic aioli;
jo - Pan-fried prawns with chilli, garlic linguini and squid ink lemon butter;
eck - Grilled field mushroom with gorgonzola, caramelized onion and creamy artichoke, truffle sauce.

Mains:
jess, jo - Springbok Wellington with mushroom duxelle, roasted butternut and foie gras, truffle jus;
me - Grilled ostrich fillet with potato gratin, mange tout, sauteed spinach and red wine sauce;
eck - Herb crusted, roasted rack of lamb with creamy garlic potatoes, fine beans and tomato jus.

Dessert:
I seem to remember that we did somehow squeeze it in, but I can’t remember who had what, when, why, or whicheeba.

The food was great. All round good with no duds.
Particular highlights were the ’strich and Eck’s lamb (informally voted overall winner).

Odd thing to note, but not really a bad thing, was the speed.
They must have an entire team of chef whipping boys / girls because that kitchen can turn stuff around like a professional ice skater, on happy juice, going downhill, blindfold. Fast, I mean. Very fast. We didn’t feel like we were being rushed, but we were surprised when our starters arrived maybe 10 minutes after we ordered them. And the mains maybe 15 minutes after the starters were taken away.
I suppose you could argue that that’s what restaurant kitchens are supposed to be like (you order your food, you get it!), but we’re used to a more leisurely pace of noshing.
I’d quite like to pop back there for lunch to see how the experience compares.

I’m not quite compote menthol (ahem) enough to do proper numbers, so have some pseudo-random ones:
Atmosphere: 6 / 10 (got a bit loud later on, with a bad table across from us)
Staff: 8 / 10 (speedy, smiley, accommodating)
Service: 8 / 10 (extra points for pace, especially when you known about it in advance)
Food: 7 / 10 (good, solid, fare, and some interesting combos)
Value for money: 7 / 10. (Um… how much was it…?)

Wasabi Review

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Reviews | No Comments

Woo!

The slightly last minute choice to do Cracker at all this month, and the choice of venue, seemed to work out well. Wasabi (official site, @ eat out, @ dining-out) in Constantia Village was great. I’m trying to keep Japanese-ish themes for my picks and not (just) sushi joints as I realise that not all the Crackers love sushi as much as I do :-). We also had a special guest star: Jess Ma!

We had a great waiter - Darren, IIRC - who employed Surfer Zen to deal with the a-bit-mad shenanigans of our table with dignity and aplomb. He was pleasant, attentive, and friendly without being intrusive - a difficult combo to get right. Also, he said Bru a lot, which was schweet :). We gave a healthy tip on the bill, which he richly deserved.

The restaurant is technically in a mall, but it’s not in the main building. There’s a satellite mini-mall thing with a few shops and a few restaurants, with much of it open to the sky (a la Willowbridge, my favourite shopping centre that’s nothing like a shopping centre, where Jo and I often go and nosh when I’m at her offices). The place was bustling but not crowded, and it felt like we had our own space, despite the fact there were a couple of table around us.

For starters, we shared a bunch of Dim Sum and related type things - lamb gyoza, chicken siu mai, prawn har gau, duck spring rolls, some tempura prawns and a Thai beef salad. The actual dim sum ones were well made (and all aufentic and stuff), and were pleasant enough, but not massively tasty. The lamb gyoza were tasty, but unlike any other gyoza I’ve had before - bit dry. The duck spring rolls were great, but the winner for me was the Thai beef salad - the sweet chilli and stuff sauce was divine and the beef was just cooked enough.

The food was a bit slow between starters and mains, but our waiter was good with the wine refills (and the jugs of tap water), so it wasn’t too bad.

For main course the table had Tuna Steak (Jo (seared (the Tuna, no the Jo) and Eck), Crispy Duck (Jess), Grilled Linefish [panga] (Jill), Steamed Salmon (me). Jo’s Tuna came out cooked, not seared, so she sent it back. No questioning from the staff, no quibbling, just apologies and a quick turn around for the replacement choona, which was fantastic. The duck was, as expected, superb - crunchy, crispy, pancakey. The Panga was very tasty - good fish! Winner for me was my salmon (tra la la) which was soft, tasty, and had a delicious delicate sauce - salty, slightly sweet.

Somehow dessert was managed by some of the table. Eck had the restaurant’s signature Peppermint Zen (a big glass of layered peppermint and caramel bits), Jess had Three Lindt Ball Eruption (no sniggering at the back!), Jo had the Sorbet Threesome (no sniggering at the back!) which Jill and I kindly helped with (no sni- um …). The Zen was great, but large - Eck fought bravely, though, and made it to the end. The Balls were good - chocolatey and appropriately messy. The sorbet was very refreshing and unusually flavoured.

I only took a flying glance at their sushi menu as I didn’t want to be tempted, but it looks like they’ve got some interesting stuff, so Jo and I will be returning for raw fish and rice soon.

Using the work-in-progress Salty Cracker Scores On The Doors Restaurant Ranking System ™ (or SCSOTDRRS for short):

Atmosphere: 7 / 10
Staff: 9 / 10
Service: 7 / 10
Food: 7 / 10
Value for money: 6 / 10

Savoy Cabbage review

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Choice, City Bowl, Jessica's choice, Outings, Reviews | 1 Comment

Hitting a restaurant with a definite reputation for The Trendy is always a bit of a mixed experience - one wants to find out what all the fuss is about, and is also slightly braced for it to be mostly about marketing. The Savoy Cabbage seems to carry a lot of reputation baggage, which makes it particularly ironic that the first problem with the evening was finding the damned thing. This was partly my fault - I’d looked up the address, but hadn’t found a map or anything. In the event “Hout St., near Heritage Square” turned out to be a wholly inadequate designation because the bloody restaurant is one of those coy, understated sort of establishments with a small, discreet and rather pretentious twisted wrought-iron plaque rather than an actual sign. We drove straight past it. Then we spent twenty minutes circling the centre of town in an increasingly desperate attempt to navigate the one-way system and the incredible confusion of the Greenmarket Square roadworks, which randomly close off whole roads at whim. (What are they even doing there, anyway? apart from booting the market out just in time for tourist season?). Eventually I phoned the restaurant to get directions, and I have to say the nice man was very kind and only laughed at us a little bit. We arrived eventually, triumphant and slightly giggly.

I rather like the inside of the Cabbage, it’s got that industrial feel - naked brickwork, giant air-con ducts, interesting spaces - which managed to stay just on the right side of pretentious. The vibe is pleasantly relaxed, and there’s a fairly continual trickle of cheerful guests climbing the stairs to the upper-level bar. I’m not entirely sure that the split-level thing works, though, the giant central staircase means that some tables are tucked away, which seems to require the waitstaff to have orienteering badges as much as the guests: we sat at our table for twenty minutes before a waiter actually worked out that we hadn’t been given a menu. (We had, however, been given a complimentary canape, and after ten minutes of wistful panting a passing waiter took pity on us and opened our wine. Memo to self, screw tops in future!).

The see-saw of the experience really got going with the actual arrival of our waiter, who was a gem - one of those intelligent, amusing guys who seemed perfectly happy to plug into the relaxed and slightly scurrilous vibe which Salty Cracker appears to generate. The menu is delectable, really interesting combinations of flavours, unusual vegetables, meats and cuts. There was much debate. When we finally ordered Jo asked the waiter if we’d picked anything that would disappoint us, and he gave his list a deliberately staged and cursory looking-over at arm’s length before saying “No!” firmly. We liked him. He was also thereafter very good with keeping wine glasses and water jugs filled.

We also liked the starters, which were, I think, on the whole better than the main courses. I’d heard good things about the Cabbage’s signature tomato tart, which was, alas, absent from the menu: the butternut/caramelised onion/goat’s milk feta one I had was, however, very good, and I shall definitely do my damndest to recreate the combination at home one of these days. Jo & the Evil Landlord had the beef tartare, which I think is probably the best I’ve ever tasted - full of celery, strangely, which I don’t usually enjoy but which gave it a wonderful bite and texture. I am, however, wishing I’d ordered Steve’s starter, which was definitely the winner - chicken-liver parfait in a sort of fig sauce thing, and more like foie gras than it had any right to be. (And I have to say, I always wonder what restaurants think about the Salty Cracker tendency to pass forkfulls of a dish promiscuously around the table. And to return the plates with nothing left except fingermarks in the sauce. It’s a toss-up as to whether they’re horrified or flattered.)

Things got a bit dodgy with the main course. On the upside: man, they do large portions. This is the nouveau cuisine sort of presentation, but with portions almost twice the size of those at somewhere like Ginja. Steve’s Three Little Pigs thing was very good -three sorts of pork in a cider sauce, lovely stuff. Jo’s great hunk of veal had, interestingly, a bone sticking out of it, but was likewise wonderful, with an incredibly intense mushroomy sort of pâté thing on the side. The Evil Landlord’s warthog chunk was a bit smaller and slightly boringly presented, no really stand-out flavours. My breast of duck, served on a completely wonderful parsnip mash with endive, which I love … was tough. Overcooked, leathery, dry. I am totally spoiled for duck by the French tendency to sear the outside of a duck breast like steak and serve it rare, and I’d fondly hoped that this might be the same, but I suspect they slightly overcooked it in the pan and then kept it warm long enough for it to dry out even further. Jo, fortunately, is less diffident than I am about this sort of thing, and hauled the waiter over to complain: the restaurant thereafter gained serious brownie points by dealing gracefully with the issue, whisking my plate away to re-do it (a bit of a wait, inevitably, made bearable by being fed forkfuls by everyone else, like a baby bird). The second version was indeed rare, although I suspect they went slightly too much in the other direction; nonetheless it was good, if not as tender as it could have been.

We were too full for dessert. This almost never happens. We looked wistfully at the dessert menu, which was fabulous, but couldn’t contemplate forcing anything else down.

So, overall this was a very endive/cider sauce experience - bittersweet. On the upside: attractive, unusual setting and relaxed feel, lovely staff, some amazing food, the ability to handle dissatisfied patrons sending food back to the kitchen with a certain dignity, and without bad vibes resulting. On the downside: some poor staff co-ordination, slightly slow service (we waited a while for the starter) and some definitely dodgy quality control in the kitchen. Also, their prices are about 20% higher than somewhere like Overture or Ginja, and despite the increased portion size, I don’t think the flavour/innovation levels of the food quite justify it. Jo’s famous four-point scale comes out thusly:

• Atmosphere: 8
• Staff: 8 (but Service 6)
• Food: 7
• Value for money: 6

Bread and Wine

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Jo's choice, Reviews | 1 Comment

Bread and Wine, at Moreson Wine Estate near Franschhoek, do not take the N2, allow 45 minutes for driving. Minimum. But. Worth it.

B&W has a lovely, shaded courtyard perfect for lunch. When we arrived, it was a little too shady, what with the evil clouds and all. The inside is very nice too, though, giant ostentatious chandeliers in otherwise down to earth, barn-type venue. Bonus points: Watercolours of their favourite menu items on the walls here and there (menu obviously does not change much!). (Edit: They did move us outside when the sun came out resulting in lovely summerly mains under the tree).

They specialise in home-made, cradle-to-the-grave-and-beyond-charcuterie (oh, that one’s not going to be picked up by any food magazines), slaughtered, cured, smoked and otherwise perfected by the chef. We shared a platter for a starter (R95), before the other starters that is. It was lovely and interesting and very munchable. Concensus was that it is entirely insufficient as a main meal though, but then we are piggies after all.

Backtracking, the winelist is lovely and very reasonable, since it is on a wine estate. It is their own wine, but that is not a bad thing - Chardonnay was particularly nice. 3 bottle lunch! New heights, new lows.

Starters - i specifically came back to this place (it was my birthday restaurant last Feb. I think.) because of the risotto, which was a little different this time (peas replaced asparagus, as far as I remember), but still divine. White, truffly risotto, mmhm. Jess’s not-gniocchi (stuffed with yummy green stuff! with yummy green sauce! oh, if any of the ingredients were actually remembered, this would be like a food review!). The menfolk had reddish things: an out of character tomoto-type salady thing Without Any Meat for the EL, and  something auberginy for Stv. Oh dear. I don’t remember any of the stuff! I was eating risotto! It was delectable! It caused temporary other food amnesia! Stv’s was better than Eckie’s, if this helps.

Mains - a polarisation of the table into Ladies’ Pork Bellies and Men’s Gemsbok fillets. Tough one. The bellies were rolled, and very tasty, but we have been overly spoiled by the always different, always amazing, 101 ways to make heavenly things form pig’s stomachs the Overture does, and so the Gemsbok won for me. (Of course I had the marital 50% of it!). Gemsbok had some sort of berry thing going on and was simply divine.

After that, only room for (excellent) truffles and (much needed) coffee, followed by a walk through the winelands and to the river, in which I was successfully discouraged from swimming in. Probably a good thing in hindsight, it was a bit manky, but then what are memories made of if not random bouts of bilharzia? Sigh.

Finally, service: friendly, smiley, helpful, but frequently unwilling to acknowedge the 4-of-July parade acrobatics I had to attempt to get their attentions. I am Sitting Right Here! That’s my Limbs all in the Air! But, for leisurely lunch purposes, it was, you know, leisurely. Came to R1450 with food, wine and generous tip for 4.

Veridict:

• Atmosphere: 7
• Staff:6
• Food: 7
• Value for money: 7

A few thoughts on Cargills

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Reviews | 1 Comment

Okay, so it wasn’t shortly, and this isn’t really a review, but it needs to be said that Cargills (at dining-out.co.za, at eatout.co.za) was fantastic.

It’s in the distant past now, so I unfortunately can’t remember much detail (that’s my advanced age for you), but the general standard of food was excellent. The waiter was attentive and friendly without being clingy (important in such a small venue) and the chef was pleasingly cheery when he came out to see how the food was going down. Slightly short, slightly round, very smiley. :)

I think there were mussels, Camembert, and mushrooms for starters - nummy!
Main courses were Sole with parsley lemon butter (gentle and subtle and cooked to perfection), Springbok with mixed berry jus (great red flavours to match the red meat), Confit of Duck (Jess, comments, as our resident duckspert?) Beef Fillet Bordelaise (good cow!).

There were five of us, so I’m sure I’m missing some things.
Like the stir fried veggies that are served as sides instead of the standard meh creamed spinach and fries. Very tasty.

Om nom nom!

Fujiyama review

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Reviews, Steve's choice | No Comments

Or,

A Tale Of Two Restaurants

It was the best of Crack, it was the worst of Crack.
No, wait.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a Salty Cracker.
Uh… no.

This is not a review of Kubo’s Little Japan on Riebeek St in town, even though that was my choice for June Crackage.
Jo’s eagle eyes spotted it tucked away near the corner of Buitengracht and Riebeek street, and we hung a U-turn to park smartly right by the front door. It looked kind of quiet (and dark), but we ventured in anyways. Turns out Kubo’s is shut for the next few months, as the kind gentleman in the Boom Boom Shakalak bar on the floor above informed us.

Walking briskly back to the car, we shot off for my back up plan: Fujiyama (conveniently located under Cedar Cafe). Also looked kind of quiet (and dark), and had a “To Let” sign in the window. Twas not boding well.
However, they were open - huzzah! And tasty - hazzuh!
We were the only people in the front room all night, which was kind of strange, but kind of entertaining too. Noticed right at the end of the night that there were three other rooms there, including a traditional shoes-off, low-down-table one. Squee!

We got a little bowl of some marinated nummy, soy saucey, slighty sweety tuna for an appetiser, then dove into a table-shared two big plates of veggie and fishy tempura and a plate of chicken katsu. Nom!
The chicken was good, but the tempura was ace. Very light and crispy.

Main course action was: beef soba (soup w/ thin noodles) for Jo; beef udon (soup w/ fat noodles) for me; chicken nabe (brothy soup w/ noodles) for Jess; fillet teppanyaki for Eckhard.
My soup was very, very, tasty and had a nice, thinly sliced, chunk of meat and a few crunchy veggies in.
Eck’s fillet cubes were medium-rared to perfection.

The wine list was also reasonably priced. It is, of course, marked up from farm price, but not by a nosebleed-inducing amount (unlike someplaces *cough* myoga *cough*. Well, to be fair, most restaurants.).

The bad news is they’re closing, sort of, in the next few days. Actually, they’re moving to two spots on Long Street. One on Long, opposite the Purple Turtle, for take-aways, and one around the corner for sit-downs (the head waiter gentlemen kindly informed us on our way out).

All in all, a successful Crackage, despite the initial impending doom feeling when 1st choice was closed.
I look forward to trying their new place. Japanese food FTW!

Tags: japanese

Myoga review

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Claremont, Jessica's choice, Reviews | 1 Comment

Our enthusiastic applause for the Ginga experience prompted my choice of Myoga, the larney restaurant at the Vineyard hotel in Claremont. I’d originally wanted to try La Colombe, which was booked solid (apparently two weeks’ lead-in time for a weekend booking is required, ooh la la), so the general plan was up-market. Up-market is certainly what we got.

Myoga has a lovely feel - luxurious, carpeted, highly-designed, all warm and orange and plush - it’s something of an antithesis to Ginja’s we-slapped-the-red-paint-on-the-wall-ourselves aesthetic, but retains at least partly its comfortable feel. The kitchen sits in the middle of the restaurant, so one can watch the controlled chaos of the chefs and catch them rather endearingly sticking sauce spoons into their mouths and then back into the pot. (I always do this, and have hitherto always felt madly guilty about it). The restaurant’s bathrooms rate a special mention for the décor dubbed “futurist nightclub” by Jo - if the joint was ever raided, heaven forfend, by the timecops, the loos could simply fire up their blue lights, rotate a few chrome fittings and glide quietly back to the mother ship. Also, there are screens on the back of the toilet doors which show a live feed to the kitchens, which is curiously disconcerting while communing with one’s bodily functions.

The menu is very similar to Ginja, featuring the same wonderful flavour combinations in a sort of modernist flow-of-consciousness description, and beautifully-sculped piles of strange shapes and colours presented with a flourish in a lonely island in the middle of a giant plate. My smoked duck-breast starter (the quest for Cape Town’s Best Duck continues) featured piquant, vinegary flavours in addition to wanton touches of toasted peanut, pomegranate seed and turkish delight, with foie gras crouton-thingies on the side. It was delectable - complex, playful, unexpected. The dessert chocolate plate was also quite possibly better than sex, with coffee ice-cream, variegated mousses, dense chocolate tart and a molten chocolate death pudding productive of helpless orgasmic noises and a liberal coating of chocolate all over my hands and face. (The second visit to the Ablutions of the Future was necessitated at about this point). Jo’s assiette of desserts included a sort of frozen berry explosion thing that cut the chocolate death very nicely, and a not entirely successful pound cake effort - stodgy, confusing. I was wrapped up enough in my duck that I didn’t really taste anyone else’s starter, but the Evil Landlord seemed to enjoy his scallops, and stv his tuna - I am entirely unable to remember what sort of flavours they came with.

I have somewhat deliberately skipped from starter to dessert because the main course, frankly, disappointed me. The trio of veal is apparently something of a Myoga signature dish, and the flavours were lovely - three medallions each with a separate saucing, including an intense mushroom/truffle thing, lemon and anchovy with aubergine, and a green pepper sauce. The potato croquettes, mashed potato with subtle herbs in a fried crumb crust, were incredible. But the meat was arb, a sort of vague, tasteless carrier for the admittedly vivid and interesting sauces. I’m rather wishing I’d gone with the Evil Landlord’s venison in chocolate sauce with plums, or stv’s incredible beef fillet with duck liver pâté.

That wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, though - the sauces were definitely worth it, and the whole meal thing, at just over R200 for three courses, was not badly priced for the larney experience it is. The problem, and the reason why Myoga isn’t up there with Ginja in my estimation, was the wine. Myoga has a sommelier, which is always a bit touch-and-go with me because it’s not really possible to talk about wine without pretentious language. Jo’s Aubergine rant about little fishes going sploosh and the rrrah! of earthy polar bears is always floating vaguely about my head, and I have to be careful not to catch her eye otherwise unseemly giggling will result. Also, fundamentally, while the idea of an experienced wine-fundi pairing the right wine with your meal is all fine and well, in fact it’s a rotten swizz on many levels - you are gently guided into ordering on recommendation, without recourse to the wine list, and thus disempowered on one quite important level of choice, namely price. The wine cost more than the meal did. The sommelier swore he was guiding us to the cheaper choices, but I don’t personally feel that R300 for a bottle of wine is actually cheap. This was the most expensive Salty Cracker we’ve ever had, and the wine was frankly way overpriced. The recommendations were good and interesting (well, I wasn’t a fan of the pinot noir, found it thin and flat), but they weren’t worth that money. It was a huge pity, because you end up feeling that the meal experience has been devalued, and the devaluation had really nothing to do with the actual food.

So, on Jo’s four-point scale I’d score it thusly:

• Atmosphere: 8
• Staff: 7
• Food: 8
• Value for money: 5

Bonus points for the lovely garden and the warning signs about the feral tortoise.

Overture Review

Monday, May 4th, 2009

Jo's choice, Reviews, Stellenbosch | 2 Comments

By common, unchecked consensus, this may be my first choice since the unmentionable purple vegetable related restaurant. Of which we shall not speak. And if it is such, I forgive myself all my brinjally sins! Overture is Redemption!

Overture was on Eat-out’s list of top-10 restuarants of the year, which can or cannot be a good thing. More that that, every single of the 17 people who made comments on eat-out website said things like:

- best restaurant experience ever!

- most wonderful service ever!

- amazingest food ever!

And it was all true.

Overture is at Hidden Valley wine estate, so named because you will u-turn at least once on the way there and there are windy, dark country roads which seem entirely too long to fit into the space on the map where the farm should be. Overture itself is a summery lunch place, which is why we obviously needed to have dinner there in winter*. We got there on time (40 min from cape town) and it was dark, and cold, and unobvious where to go, and did I mention the cold?

This concludes any negatives I may have had, and at this point we get to the restaurant.

We’ll need to go for a summer lunch. It would have the most amazing views - wraparound balcony high up, with vineyards as far as the eye would be able to see, were there light. In winter, the inside is a modern, wood-and-stone-and-metal type building, with warm light and high ceilings and one of those completely open kitchens for additional entertainment.

The staff were lovely. We had 3 people looking after us, which normally is a bad sign (purple! vegetable! alert!) but wasn’t here. I remember most of their names, which is a good sign (thank you Vision and Brenda!), and they were omni-present, very helpful, knowledgeable and had a sense of humour.

Tap-water test: Passed with flying colours. “Would you like some still or sparkling water?” “A big jug of tap water would be nice?” “Certainly, ma’am.” With a smile. And that was it. And the very lovely Brenda ensured water glasses were never empty. Yay!

Bits and pieces: Lovely, warm bread served straight away with olive oil, and every time we were finishing a plate of food, mop up sauce with!. Also, baby marrow mousse/soup taster thingy served straight after ordering to make sure we were never empty-handed. And delicious things they were!

Wine: This is a no-bring-your-own-place (we checked in advance), but they have, beside wine list, a very recomendable food-and-wine pairing thing. Which I recommend. The deal is, their 3, 4 or 5 course menu can be served with matched wine or not. It is unusually reasonable to do the matching thing, and well worth it. It is so reasonable, in fact, that I was expecting the wine portions to be measly, I mean, elegantly restrained. Instead, they were enormously bountiful and very tasty to boot. The idea, I gathered, was to make sure that we always had something to drink. For example, the Chicken Liver Pate and Snails starter dish came with a glass of noble late harvest on the menu, which was delivered ahead of the food, along with an unexpected and unmentioned glass of delicious chardonnay, to “have something to sip on while you wait for the food”. Bliss! And danger to designated drivers, a position from which I was allowed to abdicate half way through the evening with some relief (thank you, Jess!!!).

Now for food: 3, 4 or 5 courses, as said, where all items from the menu are eligible for the deal. So 2 mains followed by 2 deserts and a starter is fine, IF you are insanely hungry and have a couple of spare stomachs to stuff five courses into. Or your name is Landlord, Evil Landlord. (Though he at least had his starter-starter-main-main-desert in the right order.)

The prices are actually very reasonable, ranging from R195 for 3 courses, no wine, to R350 for 5 courses, with ample rivers of wine. We ended up having around 4 courses each, according to a rather complicated matrix:

Course 1:

(All): The kingklip, smoked, with poached egg and a hollandaisy but not really creamy whitey sauce. Paired with Hidden Valley Rose, which is suprising un-rose like (tastes more like a white, which is how I like my Roses). Lovely. Rich. Mope-plate-with-bread-to-hoover-up-the-sauce-y.

Accidental (involuntary muscle twitches!) stealing of last bit of kingklip from Stv’s plate done by me. I am sorry! There is no excuse!!!

Course 2:

(Jo and EL): Snails cooked in red wine with Chicken Liver Pate. Served with a creamy green (why green? I don’t know!) sauce. Paired with aforementioned Late Harvest/Chardonnay duo. Very very rich, but lovely flavours. Snails not tasting snail like, pate very fluffy and light but rich at the same time. This was kind of the theme for the day. More bread. Mop, Mop.

(Jess): Spinach Soup with bread dumplings with cheese inside. Rich and wonderful. With one of the 2 Sauvingnons.

(Stv): Malawian-heritaged fish from Bredarsdorp (local ingredients thing) something like talepi? tamale? Thumbelini? Something of the sort. With risotto bianco and tomato risotto. Surprisingly, my favourite flavour combination for the evening (cue coveting Stv’s dish. Tuck fingers under seat for dining safety). Yum and light and fluffy and all those things. With another Sauvignon, judged even nicer than the Spinach Soupy one.

Some under-the-tablecloth bread trade observed between the Fish and the Spinach Soup. Just saying.

Course 3: (Wondering if we can actually have any more than this, despite firm 4 course plans)

(Jess): Duck. I cannot remember how it was done or what it came with, only the extreme juicy deliciousness of it. Mmmmhmmm… duck…. And it came with the Hidden Valley Merlot, which was dark and berry-y and the wine winner for the evening by universal, glass-sharing concensus.

(All others): Pork Belly. Rolled into a little rolly thing. With root veg. And other things. Emergency systems kicking in, memory closing down to make room for expanded stomach. It was awesome. With HV Pinotage, which was classic and fitting and unfairly pitted against the Merlot. Poor Pinotage.

Course 4: (Tam-da-Dam!)

(EL): Duck, and Merlot, and going (reasonably) strong.

(Jess): Malva pudding with cinnamon ice cream, under protest, shared with Stv in order to ensure survival.

(Jo): Sits this one out. Moans. Holds extremities. Gets teased by waiters about early defeat. Digests furiously..

Course 5: (To the Escape Pods!)

(EL): Slightly pale. Braves Malva Pudding. Shows no appreciation for cinnamon ice cream.

(Stv, Jess): Sensibly avoid any more food. Not even my most excellent desert.

(Jo): I’m having rib-eye steak for desert! My life is complete! The waiters are impressed! (Or horrified. Don’t care.) I may explode, but: Rib eye steak, medium rare, with a thin sliver of rare liver (!) (It works, but not as course 4. Liver spurned for purposes of retaining a little bit of digestive tract.) With lots of tiny mushrooms and deep-fried gnocci (works!). And Shiraz.

*Falls under table*

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, was a Fine Meal.

*Note for winter: it is small inside, and the outside tables are out of the question. So book early. By all accounts, book early in summer too. They are popular. We booked aweek in advance and got lucky, there was a cancellation! (It’s good good good so do it anyway!)

Benkei Review

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Reviews | No Comments

Review in brief:
food generally good, generous portions, reasonable prices, service a bit lacking.

So, after dipping out off a wine farm lunch on Friday due to time and heat constraints, we decided to Crack our Salty selves on Saturday instead.

I was in the mood for some Japanese food, but specifically not sushi. So, after hitting the Eat Out and Dining Out sites and the EO book, I chose Benkei (menu at DO).

We did our usual frisky food swapping.
Our starters were:

• Tuna, Ginger and Wasabi Spring rolls with Sweet Chilli sauce,
• Chicken Yakitori, kebab-style
• Seafood Yakitori,
• Tempura prawns, fish, calamari and veggies
• Sashimi salad.

All were pretty nummy, but special mention goes to the Spring Rolls (crunchy and good tuna) and the tempura (nice and crispy, good side sauce).
You may notice that there were five starters for four people.
We were hungry :).

Our mains were Teppanyaki stuff:

• Beef Fillet
• Seared Tuna Steak x 2
• Seafood Platter (fish, prawns, calamari steak)

They took quite a while bringing out the starters, and the mains arrived almost the instant they took the starters away, which was not great.
The tunii arrived seared to perfection, but unfortunately a bit cold. So, we sent them both back to be warmed up and they returned pretty much cooked. I was a bit miffed, but the fishies were still very tasty.
The Beefy was done just right (nice and pink and soft and good), and Eck’s seafood-for-two was a decent mix of denizens of the deep. I admit to being surprised that he managed to get the whole lot down - it was a whole lotta fish!

Overall quality of the service could be improved.
The waiters were friendly, but not quite attentive enough - we had to call our guy back to open our first bottle of wine for us (and I get very tetchy when I don’t have a drink in my hand soon after sitting down ;-] ).
And I was a bit annoyed by the fact that they started closing up the place while were still sitting there eating. This was before 10pm on a Saturday evening. Admittedly, we were the last ones there, but still.

So, I’m glad that I chose there, and I had a pleasant evening, but I won’t hurrying back there.
Plenty more Japanese joints to try!

Non-food information confirmed during the meal:
rimshot is the technical term for the bdum-tss at a punchline. Not to be confused with (NSFW) rimjob, (Arnold Judas) Rimmer, or just plain old (bling, mofo!) rims.

Tags: japanese