Barbara Ludman : Moveable feast
Once, a couple of decades ago, there was a vegetarian restaurant in Hunter Street in Yeoville, Johannesburg. I thought it absolutely terrible, with an ambience that spoke of “pulses”, a non-foodie term for good stuff like chilli beans and lemon dahl. Besides, nothing was ever hot enough.
Long after the Hunter Street place closed, a restaurant opened on Rockey Street, and that one was terrific. The ambience spoke of an occasion: good-tasting food consumed in a restaurant among friends.
We are talking atmosphere here, and semantics, and ghettoisation.
A lot of vegetarians take exception to a special section on menus devoted to “vegetarian food”, rather like setting aside a section for “dog food”, or perhaps a children’s menu. I personally don’t mind; at least one has a fighting chance of coming out alive.
Once restaurateurs concede that vegetarians don’t eat meat or chicken and/or fish, they’re not likely to throw a marrow bone into the soup on the assumption that a cow is actually a vegetable.
Many vegetarians dislike being restricted to something called a “vegetarian platter”. For one thing, it makes them sound really wimpish in a company of diners ordering fancy dishes like coq au vin or boeuf Wellington or, for the brave, steak tartare.
For another, it’s usually awful.
The worst vegetarian platter I’ve ever had was in an otherwise fabulous resort on the banks of the Crocodile River. Everything was either green or white, and all of it came out of cans. We had canned green beans, canned peas, canned flageolets, canned button mushrooms and canned asparagus, all served awash in their canned juices. The platter came with a couple of slices of white bread and a bit of margarine. I believe the place has improved, but I’ve been afraid to find out.
Cento in Kensington, Johannesburg, makes the best vegetable platter I’ve ever eaten – or at least they did last month, on the day I lunched there. One goes there for fish, but here’s what you get, if you’re lucky, when you order the vegetable platter: leeks, butternut, peppers and other vegetables, brushed with olive oil and herbs and grilled – the leeks alone are worth the trip; grilled polenta with Napolitana sauce; a not-huge black mushroom stuffed with feta and spinach; melanzane parmigiana; the odd bean, split pea or lentil.
Retaurants that claim to serve “Mediterranean food” are generally pretty safe. For example, Sam’s Caf in Melville, a really good restaurant generally, is also particularly good to vegetarians. But then such places rarely ghettoise vegetarians with “platters”.
Most vegetable platters err on the side of stodge. I suppose a grey baked potato, a mountain of Tastic and a pile of stamp mielies side by side fill up the plate, so chefs assume it will fill up those diners silly enough to pass up the mutton curry. Add a huge, watery black mushroom and you’re there. Vegetables? They come in two versions: tasteless and overcooked, or tasteless and undercooked.
You don’t like it? Why don’t you stick with ethnic restaurants, like other vegetarians? I hear you ask. Answer: I often do. But dangers lurk even there.
Try questioning the waiter in a Chinese restaurant on what sort of stock the chef has used in an allegedly vegetarian soup.
Just try asking the owner-chef of a gourmet Italian eatery whether he’s enhanced the fabulous sauce on the gnocchi with chicken stock.
Tell you the truth, I’ll opt for the ghetto.