Rossouws Restaurants

It is a sad day when I turn from my order (a well-cooked but deeply bland risotto) to eat my wife’s salad. Giovanni’s, for a place with a certain reputation, really let me down. First off, a fabulous wine list, with clever local picks, decent pricing and great foreign wines - but dreck by the glass. Second, the fact that the two home-made options that I asked for, lasagne and tiramisu, were both unavailable. Third, the damn risotto. It’s an old trick of mine to order risotto in an Italian as an acid test. These guys cooked it perfectly al dente, but forgot to add any flavour - how? It had wild mushrooms for goodness’ sake, but it tasted like the stock was water. So I ate a boring undressed salad. At least the foccacia was good (I think you need to stick to the pizza here). A friend’s fish was depressingly bad too, even after a send-back. The only part of their reputation that they did live up to today was the portion size. A truly monstrous pan of tasteless rice. And to top it all their coffee is horrid.