handtomouth

Aside from appetites that regulate the tick and tock of our days, the Hungry Man and I share the same marque of motor vehicle, and my car’s recalcitrant side window was reason enough to meet at the dealer where HM also left his car from some TLC. We set off to the nearest spot with the potential to satisfy an average lunch hunger.

Steffanie’s Place perches high on the brow of the Somerset West hills with views of the ocean and the sadly unimaginative constructions on its beachfront. The door to S is beladen with signs about where to buzz, how to open and when they would be open, amongst others. “You can see it’s run by Germans” muttered HM. Inside, on a cool winter’s day, the lovely deck outside is forsaken for the tables ranged around the fireplace. The interior is cosy in a domestic brasserie style, very neat and filled with quotidian artworks. Printed menus are supported by blackboard specials of the day, which is where we also found our wine – but not after a very unusual conversation.

You see, the Hungry Man is not drinking wine at weekday lunches anymore. As he relayed this message, I laughed nervously. Was my lunch heading for the cul-de-sac of dire wines by the glass? He must be kidding, was my second thought. Not at all, he answered my thought – the doctor has now given him a serious warning: a serious change of lifestyle to bring some dangerous test counts down, or he’s not interested.

Everything that’s “wrong” with HM’s body, you see, is lifestyle-related. I love the term. Medical science is the game of analysing lifestyle relations, your actions and decisions and your body. In HM’s case, he has decided to drink too much sauvignon blanc before lunch and too much red wine after lunch; and dinner. He has decided to eat too much rich food and he has not decided to exercise. He’s had a great time, but now his body can’t keep up with his lifestyle.

So, his lifestyle has been excessive or his body is weak. But now an equilibrium needs to be found. The torso is waving a white flag. And this means I can’t share a bottle of wine with my friend? The news sinks in, but I begin to see in his eyes that our lunches classify as exceptions to the rule.

I love exceptions, they make life interesting. We order a blackboard bottle of Webersburg Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2002. Hungry Man begins to tell me about some of the culinary experiences in Toronto, Vancouver and London he’s recently had, but he’s left the notes and menus behind. Our starters arrive: a Caesar salad for him (average and not very pure) and a salmon something for me (a potato and salmon cake, deftly deep-fried, with a piece of smoked salmon snaking on top and some tartare-type sauce, not bad).

We talk about his experiments with wild roosters, hunted for the pot, and the resultant stringy coq au vin. He’s quite dejected over the Jeffrey Steingarten 3-day recipe that he followed to the letter. I counter that he should remember that Steingarten, for all his deft writing and fine wit, is, after all, American. All coq au vin recipes of tested tradition only take a day, max. This weekend the HM is going to try a traditional Afrikaans farm recipe for guinea fowl, a soup of sorts.

Our mains. Gnocchi with rehydrated porcini (average, the mushrooms rather stringy this time) and the lamb shank on a rosemary mash. It’s pretty good, been marinated in a sweetish marsala-like sauce, and tender. It also has a clump of sweet onions on the side, yet those layers of rich and savoury slow-cooked flavour that a good shank can achieve aren’t there. Still, for a restaurant, this is as close to home cooked as you get. In other words, a whole lot better than most people cook.

The Hungry Man is strictly not allowed any breads, cakes, sweets. I try the tiramisu after asking the (very good) waiter for his assurance that this was the real deal. Absolutely. And it was good, a little short on booze for me, but certainly proper. Hungry Man had a spoon to taste. His spoon wasn’t still for long after the taste, moving in for another. When it moved for a third time, I moved the plate away.

Rather retreat now and have him around to eat another day.