If you have the bucks and the hunger, hot-off-the-press handbooks are ready to tell you all about the best places to splash out on the Big Eat-Out, what to order and how much you’ll have to sign off on that platinum card.
Two top restaurant guides have been updated, bringing breezy, up- beat reports of what’s cooking in the world of the high kitchen.
Ace eater-outer Jos Baker is in charge of Wine magazine’s Top 100 Restaurants in South Africa, while Lannice Snyman is editor of Eat Out 2001. Both direct teams of undercover eating agents who scrupulously trek through the South African landscape inhabited by men and woman who wear checked trousers, white jackets and, sometimes, funny-looking hats.
What Baker and Snyman achieve is to accurately chart and assess the finest eating establishments. But these are not suicide-inducing Michelin-style critiques of chefs. When they hand out honours five stars for 20 restaurants in Baker’s case and a Top Ten from Snyman the winners come across as the cream on top of a delicious trifle in which many goodies are blended. There is a remarkable consensus between the two booklets about the best.
The topography of the nation-wide South African feast is interesting. For the classiest food, the Cape has most to offer. And the valley of Franschhoek comes out tops.
In the Top Ten the Boland town boasts Le Provenal (chef Richard Carstens), Le Quartier Fran-ais (Margot Janse) and Monneaux (Reuben Riffel). Baker also awards five stars to Franschhoek’s Haute Cabrire and La Couronne. (The latter won the recent SFW Food and Wine Challenge.)
In Cape Town you will get the best at Blue Danube (Thomas Sinn), The Cellars Restaurant (George Jardine) and The Restaurant (Graeme Shapiro). Included in the Baker line-up are Aubergine, Au Jardin, Buitenverwachting, La Colombe and Bosman’s in Paarl.
So what’s the best in Gauteng? The two ladies agree on Christophe Girault’s Brasserie de Paris in Hatfield, Pretoria, Broughton’s (Michael Broughton) in Sandton and La Madeleine (Daniel Leusch) in Sunnyside, Pretoria, while Baker adds Ile de France in Bryanston and Linger Longer in Sandton.
Both name Andrew Draper’s Har- vey’s best in Durban and Baker gives special mention to Oliver’s near White
River in Mpumalanga.
So what are you going to get when you fork out a R150 plus per person (sans wine or service, according to the guides)?
If you head off to Michael Broughton’s in Sandton Square, for example, expect the perfect sauce. Taking his cue from the great Nico Ladenis, this chef patron believes in precision and perfection and demonstrates it by serving artichoke sauce with wild mushroom ravioli or nantua with seafood casserole. And leave room for his consummate crme brle. In Cape Town adventure drives Graeme Shapiro to flirt with the unusual in his pots. How about water-blommetjie risotto with Parmesan and prawns? Or red China pork with crayfish and shiitake mushrooms?
Working through these guides and putting them to the test with a strong credit card in the back pocket (the only serious quarrel that comes up frequently is over-priced wines) it is clear that this southern tip of Africa may not boast the culinary excitement of a Sydney or a Manhattan, but there are some devoted artists out there in the kitchens.
Top 100 Restaurants in South Africa is published by Wine magazine, Ramsay Son & Parker, and Eat Out 2001 is published by New Media Publishing