Moveable Feast Barbara Ludman
SHIMON’S Bistro and Arlecchino have both found the perfect spot for a sidewalk cafe — away from the petrol fumes and panhandlers but nonetheless out under the stars — in Tyrwhitt Mall in Rosebank. They’re separated by four small shops and flanked by a bandstand, non-working fountains and planters. Along, around and in between are tables with garden umbrellas–some for Shimon’s, and some for Arlecchino.
There’s only one serpent in this sort-of Eden: the music.
On Thursday night last week, a lone musician with a synthesiser was doing some vaguely Sinatra-ish ballads for the Arlecchino diners when a quintet set up their instruments outside Shimon’s to play jazz. And so it continued for the patrons, up tempo ballads in one ear and jazz in the other, set after set, until eventually everybody decided it was time for a break, and then there was silence.
Shimon Zilberberg, a former biochemist and Israeli sheep farmer (he made feta and roquefort with the milk) moved his small deli up the arcade in April last year. His dream is to start a jazz club, and towards that end, he’s got groups playing for diners four nights a week, Thursday to Sunday. (On Wednesday it’s a violin and accordion doing music from the Mediterranean, “because that’s what I miss”.) Sometimes there’s a R6 cover charge, sometimes not.
The owner of Arlecchino, who prefers the nom-de-plume of Mateo Maldano (he says the minute his name is in the paper, people start phoning him at home. Odd, that) opened the Rosebank branch of his mother’s and brother’s venerable Orange Grove bistro four years ago; he expanded his restaurant substantially in August last year.
He has had music since the beginning: “It’s part and parcel of what this restaurant is about.” Ed Jordan plays the electric piano on Sundays and a couple of guitarists alternate for Friday night, and sometimes he’s got music during the week as well. The guy on the synthesiser on Thursday night was trying out. Usually “it’s middle of the road commercial rock. Not jazz. Not classical. Rock.”
Either proprietor could blow the patrons away by turning up the volume, but neither seems that self-destructive — yet. On Thursday last week it was the musicians — laid back, amused — who defused the conflict: “Israel two, Italy nil” one musician murmured after they’d pretty much drowned out the guy on the synthesiser, who responded with his own good humoured riposte: as the jazz musicians mooched off on a break, he played Hava Nagillah.
Maldano says his family pioneered the outdoor cafe concept in Johannesburg, long before it was legal to put tables on the sidewalk. He was hiring rock musicians before Zilberberg came on the scene. And his patrons, he says, like rock, not jazz. Not everybody likes jazz.
The expression on Zilberberg’s face, however, when he hears the kind of music played next door is something to see; you’d think it was the screech of a fingernail on a chalkboard.
Maldano says he and Zilberberg came to an arrangement on Friday, but “it’s in a bit of an experimental stage”. They’re going to try to turn their speakers around, back to back, and Zilberberg says he’s going to shift his tables a bit farther away.
Both restaurateurs serve highly affordable, interesting but unpretentious food: at Shimon’s Bistro anything from an Israeli breakfast to lamb kleftiko, Moroccan chicken with olives, steak au poivre, truite amandine, a meze platter — and the best hummos around. At Arlecchino you’ll get the usual lasagna, pasta and pizza: regina goes well, as does a pizza with salami, green peppers, onion, olives, garlic and chilli, and another with roast beef, chourico and green peppers.
Arlecchino has a younger crowd than Shimon’s on weekend nights — 23-28, Maldano estimates–and a full liquor licence. At Shimon’s Bistro you get a more mellow clientele along with the cheesecake, lime and poppyseed cake and “fabulous figs in mystical sweet sauce”.
Shimon’s is open every day but Monday from 8am to late, and Arlecchino opens every day at 10am