Rossouws Restaurants

Welcome to the new home for Rossouw’s Restaurants, your independent, “tell it like it is” guide to the restaurant scene. As you may know, Rossouw’s currently only reviews the eateries of the Cape, Winelands and Garden Route - but my team and I are now diligently eating to bring you the very first national Rossouw’s later this year. Updates to follow, and much more.

In the meanwhile, please send me reviews of any restaurant you visit by filling in the feedback form - your comments are always appreciated - and ten or more gets you a free copy of the new guide!

Today, The Hungry Man and I ate here. I have heard a good deal about it, and I’m a great fan of the spirit that the owners (the Dalla Cia’s) have brought to the Cape (and I’m not not only speaking about their tasty grappa, tsha-boom!). The Hungry Man suggested we eat here, plus drew my attention to a red that they sell called “Special Reserve” which at R100 is great drinking and therefore good value. It’s a real wine, and while “keeping it real” has rapidly entered the murky waters of marketing-speak, the Hungry Man lives this ethos, and, in many respects, so do the Dalla Cia’s.

You may not have heard of Pane e Vino, but you’re likely to have heard of the Dalla Cia family, dad Giorgio the legendary erstwhile wine-maker for Meerlust, now busy with his own operation, which now has a base in Bosman’s Crossing, Stellenbosch, with son George also involved, and his wife Elena cooking at this eaterie.

Don’t know where Bosman’s Crossing is? Well, that is a part of the problem that the wineries and businesses here face. This precinct is supposed to refresh a part of Stellenbosch that has languished, and a few wineries have led the charge, including Stellekaya, Dalla Cia, Vilafonte and the large distributor, Vinimark. In brief, it is behind the Oude Libertas, but has little presence.

Dalla Cia features a couple of wines and that line of grappas. Part of the family, Pane e Vino is a restaurant that sits alongside the Dalla Cia operation and doubles up as their tasting room. It’s directly Italian, in the spirit of keeping it real. When the throngs have arrived, it is a little too real, with Elena trying to slice the cold cuts and attend to the sauces and boil the pastas seemingly on her own (and falling behind an honest hunger). They also post all their meals on one small blackboard at the deli counter, which necessitates unwelcome repeated trips, especially when you see ready-made plates behind the counter (and then wonder, when the microwave pings, if the bell tolls for you).

The Hungry Man and I spoke about a number of issues, mostly rather momentous, so they don’t make great blogging material… the loss of someone close, the dangers of loose lips, the questions of where to be in five years. In a nutshell:

Tagliolini al Limone - a masterpiece of fresh pasta with bright lemon, fresh and springy. Melanzane alla Parmigiana - tough and obviously reheated. Gnocchi di Semolino - rounds of plain semolina, a real Italian dish, naked, all about texture but lacking the diversification of some fantastic parmesan. Saltinbocca alla Romana - chicken given the treatment, tasty enough, but with some tired looking spinach and mash. Vitello Tonnato - a big helping of some rather bland tonnato, though the veal was well poached. Tortellini al Pomodoro - maybe the best dish of the meal, again the pasta was fresh, and the filling good.

It’s an unprepossessing place, so that’s no reason to return. The food quality could do it, but all the plates we tried were R50 plus for a small portion, so they consistently needed to be good to great, which they weren’t. Keeping it real? The waitress explaining a dish on the menu as “cold meats that we sommer (kinda) slice up” - that’s real too.

I’ll return in a while. There’s heart here.

South Africa is by all accounts going through an economic wobble. Higher interest rates, higher petrol prices, higher food costs - and the restaurants on a Sunday public holiday, are packed full. So are things not really that bad? Or will people eat cake nevertheless?

Sunday was instructive. On our way to Noordhoek, we tried making a reservation for late lunch at Foodbarn (full) and Cafe Roux (full). We finally snagged a res at Catharina’s, Steenberg, but then they called back to say it was buffet, and by 2pm the display may look a little ragged (no thanks). So we thought we’d take our chances, and stopped at Foodbarn (still full) and Roux (ditto). So we moved on to Hout Bay to try Chapman’s Peak Hotel for calamari (no joy). Surely that emporium of eating and knick-knacks for tourists, Mariner’s Wharf? A half-hour wait. Back to Chapman’s as it was now 3pm. “Still a half-hour wait” we’re told. So we finally found succour at Trattoria Luigi in Hout Bay and were well treated and pretty well fed.

The spontaneous Cape lunch on a Sunday, notably a holiday… be warned.

One of the challenging parts of this job is getting the ground covered. Sometimes I take on double lunches to move along more swiftly, to get to see all the restaurants that may or may not deserve a spot in the guide, or a re-review. Yesterday was a double lunch day. Starting at FSH and continuing at Cranks, both in Rosebank.

Now there are some restaurants you would never compress into a double-header. Yesterday’s were not of that kind. Both FSH and Cranks are flagrantly WSIWYG. FSH is a designer-modern fish eaterie with some pretensions to class (but like many of these, you are safest sticking to the most basic meals, I chose sushi, poor, and fish and chips, good - but also a tomato tart, mistake). Cranks is one of the most idiosyncratic places in Jozi: Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, the place all mad colour and pattern and huge insect sculptures straight out of a William Burrough’s nightmare. The menu is difficult to understand, even when you’re reading the English. The food is often served in plastic crockery, or half a pineapple. And it’s full bore flavour, but not the best ingredients, so all the signification does not add up.

Double lunches. Even if you sample, you feel full from the mental appreciation of all that food.

Many of my Jozi friends have expressed a concern when we make reservations: “Have you checked about load shedding?” With our national electricity supplier, Eskom, failing to provide a consistent supply, the country is undergoing cyclical black-outs that last around two hours and have wrecked many a restaurant visit. For the first time, I experienced this phenomenon this morning. People are talking about Tasha’s, in the Atholl Mall on Katherine Street, so I thought I’d slip in for breakfast on a day that I plan to have two lunches and dinner. I arrived hungry, and the manager was quick to tell me: “Order immediately – the power’s going off at 10.” It was two minutes to ten. Would a spot in Cape Town have the sack to pull an order off and to do it with the organisation that saw me with a flat white and a poached egg Florentine and the electronic bill, all done very well, with the power down five minutes after I sat down?

Last night was a quick dinner at that icon of reality, The Radium. I know it’s not really a dinner place, but it is going into the guide for its individualism and steadfast character. Music nights are legendary (as are the faded charms of the acts) and this is a great place to catch a friend for a beer. One of my friends says that it’s the only reason to drive up Louis Botha. He also said that it was wise to stick to bar food here and he was right. Prego rolls and fish and chips are about the limit of the kitchen’s capabilities. I tried some salmon and it was the pale colour of Fish TM. Stephan ate a T-bone and didn’t remember it a moment later. And Shirley stuck to the fish and chips - and even this was not great on the night. A maderised wine to match, and the night was only redeemed by UEFA semi-final footie.

Today, I found myself deep in the belly of the beast, the Mandela Square in Sandton. On a whim, and after careful consultation with a shoe-shine man, I decided to try Pigalle for lunch. A fabulously faux interior pulls out all the stops to be grand in an old school fashion, the service is swift and unctuous, and the fact that they specialise in seafood platters is made clear. A correspondent has mentioned that they do great oysters, and the langoustines certainly looked great, but I was going to put them to the Caesar salad test, followed by some bacalhau, which I was excited to see tucked away at the back of the menu.

The Caesar was a travesty. Cos was advertised, but I got frilly fancy leaves. I also got tomato? The dressing was mayo and the bacon was stone hard. It was a big portion, about the only positive. I told the waiter that this was not a Caesar and he them hurriedly informed me that it was their “twist” on one…

After a long wait, the bacalhau arrived and this was solid and very traditional. In fact you could have “gomes sa” or “a bras” in addition to the grilled with onion and olive that I had. A good plate.

In all, this is an expense account masterpiece of a restaurant as the many business people attested to.

I am in Johannesburg this week, eating for the expansion of the guide. My first stop, with steak fresh in mind, was one of the city’s famous steak houses, the Grillhouse in Rosebank. It’s a foursquare kind of place, another of those that tries to relive the “glory” days of prohibition in look. This one is penumbral and clubby, and again I am struck by the heightened level of service in this city. In waistcoats and aprons, the staff are super-professional, matched to kitchen speeds that are actually a little too fast for my liking, but clearly suit business meetings and the general pace of the city.

The menu is plain and old-fashioned, few choices and mainly meat, but even these are limited. Which is reassuring. My rare rump was good, the chips were excellent. The Grillhouse sauce was clumsy, the Caesar salad to start was a travesty (chard leaves?), and the NY style cheesecake was average. So, a good showing on the main course, but the rest is average to poor. And in light of my recent steak at Belthazar, this steak has to take a place on the podium as good, no more. But I wish more places would base their service on this rock.

Yesterday I spent a very pleasant morning tasting South African pinotages from the 1970s - more on that later. The venue was Belthazar in the V&A Waterfront, and the tasting was followed by lunch from their menu. As many will know, this is a steak and seafood emporium, in all senses of the word. You can get your meal, plus steak knives or books, or a cut to go. The tone is upmarket, the service is slick, and the prices will never strike you as avuncular. After some very fine langoustines, we were treated (yes, freebie alert) to some of their new cuts of Karan beef: a Chicago cut prime rib (which they can do individually, though ours was the whole quarter, sliced); and fillet on the bone. The fillet on the bone is excellent, but still fillet, all about softness before flavour. The Chicago cut is one to try the next time you hear the call of the carnivore in your head.

Dax recently wrote about a tough time at Green Dolphin in the Waterfront, but does mention that Manenberg’s is closed (another poor eating experience spiced up with jazz). What amazes me is how long it stayed open, or to be precise, how long people still ordered the food off that menu.

I wrote about this icon of SA wines for my wine column, and later that weekend (at Mariana’s) drank a bottle of 2000 Meerlust Rubicon which was a delight, and had survived the rather haphazard nature of my wine storage system rather well. It was still padded with pure Cab fruit, but had enough of the austerity that I like in this “serious” style of wine.