handtomouth

Dinner on Jens Lehmann the other night because some friends foolishly bet me that Arsenal would beat Barcelona in the Champions League. So I found myself at the Relais & Chateaux property Cellars Hohenhort, where the restaurant is called Greenhouse (it has trees growing through it) and a young Frenchman is behind the pots. The food was good on average, but what interested me more was that the sommelier had organised some wines in advance, knowing my friends were wine-lovers. Brampton Viognier 2005 was their first choice with the starters – a rich and heavy wine, positively smothering itself in an ingratiating desire to be lovable. As a result, I could barely drink a glass. At least the wine was in screwcap.

Then a Backsberg “Pumphouse” Shiraz 2003 which was so named I guess because it was pumped up by… yes, viognier. Put the wine to the nose and that was all you first smelt, second and third too. Not a poor texture on the palate, but again cloyingly sweet and twee.

To rescue the situation and take control of our vinous pleasure, my friend ordered a 1997 Cordoba Crescendo. The winemaker Chris Keet reckons this may be his finest (although the 1995 is superb). It’s a cabernet franc-led wine, and still so incredibly fresh and pure it’s astounding. Besides its obvious class, it had that most winning quality of being drinkable.

What is the world coming to? Just the other day, I heard that the legendary pulque bars of Mexico are closing down. Seems that most everyone wants to drink beer instead. Now, my thoughts on beer are well known – most acceptable while the sun is shining, but not the drink to take you into the heart of the night with decorum. Too much time reading those crappy ads they stick above urinals these days. Continue reading ‘Pulque and not pulque’

Eating out has always been a pleasure for me. Now that it’s also my business (with the restaurant guide) there are times when the pleasure is challenged by the riot of mediocrity that’s out there.

The last few days were unrelentingly grim in food terms. Thursday lunch at Blues, that seaside icon. They’ve changed their menu (“modern Italian”) and the chef. They still seem to need to change the carelessness that still pervades and makes this gem underperform so consistently. Poor pasta, substandard ingredients, polenta like wet rubber – this is not modern or Italian. Dinner that night in a new place, one of these pan-Asian joints “Su-Bar-Shi”. It’s got it all on the menu but that’s where it stays. Flavour, especially, never makes it onto the plate.

Friday lunch: Basilico, a neighbourhood Italian in Newlands. Chilli in the pasta so that the pasta is a mere substrate to pain. Pizza with slices of “parma ham” that look like sides of venison. At least the pumpkin soup was drinkable and they had some cheap Italian wine that’s low in alcohol. Friday dinner: Bertha’s in Simonstown. This place is a catch-all family and tour bus joint that serves coffee from a table at the door. I could go into more detail, suffice my description of their “Chocolate truffles” – chocolate icing sugar extruded into something not unlike a dog-dropping. They didn’t mess up the rocket salad with “parmesan” and pine nut, because that’s all that was on the plate.

The best about all these places is that people eat there, go back, and never complain. Well, I guess that’s why you have journalism.

A visit last Saturday night to 96 Winery Road for their 10th birthday celebrations. Ten years doing anything is remarkable these days, even more the capricious business of running a restaurant. It turns out that the “96” does not indicate the street address, but the founding year. In those days, there were hardly any restaurants worth any time in the Stellenbosch area – and strangely there is still only a handful. The locals are always lamenting the “where to dine” theme tune. It seems part of a cultural conundrum – South Africans are not very happy to pay for food unless it is the most inexpensive burger and soggy chip. Your farmers are very prone to this kind of thinking, and there are many farmers in Stellenbosch.

For the occasion, 96 Winery presented a few of the classic dishes over the decade, and got the three chefs that had worked/still work to collaborate. Green tomato tarte tatin, wild mushroom cappuccino, miso-style Norwegian salmon, crispy roast duck and their rich dessert platter, followed by cheese. Happily, all was tasty in the rustic house style, I particularly enjoyed the salmon (my wife’s even better as it was rare) with a wasabi mayo. The duck was damn tasty too, on a potato and pear dauphinoise, a fun idea.

At the end of the day, 96 Winery is still a good winelands bet for some home cooking. And as other places (slowly) get their act together, their superb winelist will add an x-factor that’s going to take some beating.

“We eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.” So Steven Shapin quotes Michael Pollan, who has written a book about organic food and its production. Seems all is not butterflies and moonbeams in the organic universe, with the industry now running at large scales and according to the same brutal methods of much capitalist endeavour. Is Pollan’s sentiment just pretty poetry, will food end up being the protein gloop of The Matrix or a pill? I have a feeling that factors that currently don’t feature in the debates (like the availability of water) may have the deciding vote. In the meanwhile, I think it helps if food is treated with more reverence or at the very least if people think and talk about food more. The vocabulary of taste needs to develop.

The act of pouring a half glass of 2004 Ernie Els blended red into the spittoon for a more satisfying wine becomes more significant than it should be because this is one of South Africa’s most expensive wines, at over R500. Perhaps I was spoilt for choice, or just spoilt, but perhaps the best wine for the occasion was not necessarily the one that was the most expensive.

In fact, in our climate of confusing quality with stickers (including the cost of bottle sticker), the better wines are often not the most expensive. Continue reading ‘Ernie Els and more’

As I watched the crema mount in waves of tiny bubbles from the bottom of the black liquid to float thick and dense on the top, I realised this was no ordinary coffee in front of me. The bar for good coffee in Cape Town has just been raised. Considerably. Continue reading ‘Crema’

Yes, the future is upon us even before we have shaken off the cork. A machine that can taste and place where wines come from is under development in Denmark. Perhaps in our lifetimes, award judges will be (mere) techies… and perhaps not.

It’s strange that this despatch has taken so long to write, because this foray into the heart of the lunch hour was one of the best that the Hungry Man and I have enjoyed. Now I’m reconstructing it from imperfect memory and in the meanwhile, the Hungry Man has eaten at Fat Duck in Bray, amongst other fine establishments. But more on this when he returns, no doubt.

Shortly before his departure to the northern kitchens, I sent him to eat at Manna Epicure on Kloof Street for a business lunch, and he was not impressed. Continue reading ‘Zanddrift. 3 May 2006′

An entertaining overheard by some world travellers just today in an upmarket restaurant.

Woman (who’s just come back from a trip to Spain): I went to some great restaurants.
Man (fashionista restaurateur): Did you go to Marbella?
Woman: Is that a restaurant?
Man: No, it’s a golf course on the coast. There’s a good restaurant there.

Now I was aware that Spain features highly on the Top 100 Restaurants list, but this collective naivety was taking it too far. And from people “in the know”.

Every year, one of the more rewarding experiences related to a wine show is the judge’s debriefing after the tasting done for the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show (what used to be the Fairbairn Trophy Wine Show). I am not a big fan of stickers-on-bottles-to-sell-wine, so it’s great if a bit of opinion and information comes out of the gathering of a few respected wine persons. This year the international crew were Vanya Cullen of Cullen’s Wines, Philippe Bascaules, the silent technical director of Chateau Margaux, Michael Schuster, UK wine educator and Richard Kelley, of Richards Walford Wines.

Every year one “big issue” seems to raise its head (whether orchestrated for media consumption or not I do not know) and this year it wasn’t a fresh one – but one that is still ham-stringing our industry especially in the fresh white categories. It is, of course, corks and their damn taint. Cullen was particularly outspoken, calling it a “random winemaking element” that stand in the way of pure expression of what the cellar wants to achieve. Bascaules, on the other hand, was silent; when he did speak he cautioned that the effect and interaction of (good) cork on wine was still largely unknown. In other words, it may have a very important role to play in wine maturation.

I say bring on the screwcap – if only to get the cork industry to clean up their act and find answers to these questions.

As our national wine consumption continues to dry up, there is a good deal of talk about how to get more people to enjoy wine, and how to convert imbibers from beer or spirits to wine.

One of the ways to empty the wine lake, some argue, is to make wine styles more populist, more down-to-earth and less stuck up. Once they are turned on to wine through these “casual” wines, they’ll begin to explore the wider wine world. We have no shortage to cheap and cheerfuls on the shelves today, do these wines make converts of previous beer drinkers? Continue reading ‘Britney or Chopin?’

Signal Hill has a certain reputation for maverick action, and no wonder with Jean Vincent Ridon at the helm. A crazee Frenchman in the best Anglo tradition, he continually shows a willingness to experiment, the new cellar in the middle of the Cape Town CBD being a good example. But pedestrians need a view of some honest winemaking while they shuffle away from a bout of bad decisions at Truworths, or Markhams, or PNA. His Malbec 2004 is the reason I began writing this, it’s a taut wine, with great juicy but never bland fruit, sappy in the right refreshing way with ample tannins, again supple and not big oak driven. On the other side of the river, and just when you thought pinotage was regaining its image (or at least being allowed to be a legitimate wine) comes the Durbanville Hills Pinotage 2004. A master class in all that one doesn’t want in this variety, I couldn’t finish a glass. And while I am in the land of the corporates, also sampled Nederburg’s Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 which is a decent wine and priced right. It should come as no surprise that these big wineries do get it right from time to time; they have access to so much juice. I guess it’s just the pomposity that often comes with these wines that makes them look less noble.

Matured only in American oak and still a good wine, this latest Saxenburg comes in their new bottles and screen-print labels. It’s got lovely dark flavours and at the same time an intriguing layer of scrubby garrique – the scrubby, fynbos character that gives a shiraz a gear beyond luscious fruit. But it’s the tannic elegance that really impresses, retaining Saxenburg’s position as a pre-eminent shiraz producer.

Teddy Roosevelt was a man known for two things. OK, three – that he was the President of the USA. But the two important ones were his name and his famous three-martinis-and-let’s-have-a-deal lunches. Being called “Teddy” was a mixed blessing. Continue reading ‘Deal maker’