The basic definition of a restaurant is a place to eat, outside of the home. From this departure point, countless variations have evolved. Keeping quality aside (for you can often eat worse in restaurants than at home), you get restaurants that serve street food, “home-style” food, food from various nationalities, as well as the fancy food that we normally associate with the word “restaurant”.
We tend to think of restaurant food as food that has been transformed by a chef and a skilled team in the kitchen, and what us diners hope is that this team can make food that is unlike anything we can make at home, so that the experience of dining out clearly justifies the price, and meets the expectation. But it sometimes seems that, in SA, all restaurants seem to be treated as if they are “fancy” in the expectation of the punter (judging by diner’s comments) – and then on the other hand diners seem to relax all expectations when eating in franchises, even though the prices are often not that much lower.
Few of us seem to have an appreciation for, or a relationship with, restaurants that are “simply” be an alternative to eating at home: the neighbourhood local. The relative dearth of these places is no accident. We have very few restaurants that cook food that is “simply” an alternative to home cooking – and that charge accordingly. There is an inexorable creep to “fancy” – either in the aspirations of the kitchen, or in the pricing. One of the side effects of restaurants being treated as special occasion options is that the style of food keeps escalating, becoming less “normal” as the owners and chefs try to meet the heightened expectations of diners. Sometimes they do this through skill, other times they do it through short-cuts like endless creamy sauces or overt richness or special “luxury” ingredients – the concept being that if you feel very well fed, indeed satiated, it should be satisfying. And there are many that are “pushing” the food without the skill to pull it off.
In the end, many of our restaurants are, in fact, difficult to eat at day after day. The relentlessness of the heavy, rich food, the concentrated food, just becomes physiologically testing. Food like this is best as a special, or occasional, event – not a frequent one. Sp where are our “day-to-day” options if we don’t want food from plastic or foam containers? When it comes to “casual” food, two types of restaurant that invariably play this role in SA are the steakhouse and the Italian – and even these are often over-wrought, especially in the R80 pasta with no merit. So between feeling somewhat ripped-off on the one hand, or eating a sandwich or a burger on the other (and even here the “casual” burger can cost too much), many simply avoid restaurants from day to day, which means few “casual” local restaurants at reasonable prices actually arrive or indeed survive. Unless they are chain stores, with different scales of operation.
So where is the middle? The neighbourhood local? A few places that come to mind are Sidewalk Café, Societi Bistro and La Boheme. What are your locals?
Waterkloof redux
The superlative setting (described here after my first visit) has now been supplemented with obvious attention to the service interaction: a very hospitable gentleman in the parking bay who walks you to the door, a greeting at the portal to the spectacular tasting space, and service at the table that is professional but still personal, with character but without officiousness. The wines are decanted and poured at the correct temperature, the tableware is bespoke as are the glasses. The food is served in beautiful crockery and the presentation is artistic.
It is, all in all, a sophisticated experience of undeniable quality. But it is also not everyone’s cup of tea. There’s a starkness to the interface and space that evokes very mixed feelings – in fact, much like the austere wines (you can only drink estate wines here), it’s likely to be somewhat confounding since it is all so very different from the rest of the winelands, and indeed the country.
From May to July, they are offering a well-priced (again, to be taken in context: mains here are R145-R185) menu where you can have three courses plus extras for R190. On the day it was a deconstructed bouillabaisse, chicken breast with risotto and parmesan foam and goat’s cheese pastilla. The bouillabaisse was redolent with flavour, the fish moist. The chicken was just so and the risotto good – as was a risotto starter from the regular menu, a rich one of pancetta and basil butter, R65. Also from the regular menu, a piece of cob (R130) served with avocado, mussels and yellow curry sauce: the fish was on the dry side, the accompaniments served just so, slices of avo, steamed mussels and the merest hint of sauce that also lacked much bite. The style of the food here is modern – sauces are not lavish and the ingredients are cooked in a fresh fashion and placed rather nakedly to show their “true colours”. It’s brave cooking, because it has to be precise; when not, dishes can seem ordinary for the price. Desserts sampled were a very good chocolate fondant and a good hazelnut mousse with an excellent chocolate sorbet (both R65). Espresso very good.