Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse, Midlands, KZN

Let’s get one thing straight. Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse is bloody far from anywhere. Especially at night, when you drive and drive, away, away from the relative civilisation of a place ironically called Rosetta… making this a true destination restaurant, though most people do come and stay for a few nights and don’t drive out just to eat. This is walking and twitching country.

At the same time, it is also a food destination of great repute. Richard Poynton is a well-known chef (who started Granny Mouse and was a leading part of the initial “meander” vibe) and the cookbook based on the cooking at Cleo has done very well internationally (on release outselling Ramsay’s latest, I was told). When you visit Cleo and walk down into the cellar, pictures of the Ponyton’s with various chefs and food meccas put you in the picture: food is the journey and the reason.

It’s an odd place, very personal (but now managed by another host couple and not the Poyntons), decidedly eccentric, and certainly not free of tat or roaming cat. There’s a great love of keys as decor, and the house is well-worn in, sitting between herb gardens and a dam. Wood textures, fire places, books, photographs, music on a simple hi-fi. You’re introduced the daily blackboard menu before moving into the dining room, where your table is laid with the ranks of cutlery you’ll need for the five or six courses, as well as a jug of pristine water (not bottled, what a relief). Oddly, for the cellar and all, the only wines by the glass are a sauvignon and a cabernet from one winery – good wines, but a sadly limited choice.

Poynton has a reputation for rich, traditional cooking. Stocks and butter and masterful sauces. And on this night the sauces were fantastic – and the whole meal was full of flavour. We were given a preamble that the kitchen cooks for flavour rather than look – in the manner of food made with long-reduced stocks and slow cooking – and so it was. Plating is dead-ahead, uncomplicated.

A hot smoked Kamberg trout timbale with cold smoked salmon fillet was essential fish. A soup of pumpkin was deepened by a delicious stock. A grilled prawn and noodle plate was slathered in buerre blanc. An Angus fillet was seared, rested, cooked, rested, and was as tender as meat comes – but then again it was fillet, and I would have loved to see this method employed on sirloin or some other, tougher, cut. The fillet was also masked by a sweet sauce and whole green pepper which totalled my cabernet; and the side of potato was surprisingly lacking in the rich butter and cream that this needed… another side, a Yorkshire pud filled with onion marmalade was ok, but pretty superfluous. Then, a chocolate tart to finish that was an unctuous masterpiece.

And the meal cost R300 before drinks, which is incredible value. Turns out that Poynton was not in the kitchen that night, and rarely is I was informed, so his brigade are pretty well-tuned. Next time, an over-night is calling.

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