Eat Like Ushi

It was lucky that the October reservations for The Test Kitchen only came out in September. It gave me plenty of (last minute) time to read about where I wanted to eat in Cape Town and decide if it was worth paying the R2250 + 12% service to go to The Test Kitchen. The alternative would have been to try The Pot Luck Club, and in hindsight maybe I should have tried both. But there were other food places in Cape Town I liked the sound of and food there is otherwise relatively cheap.

When the bookings were released, I (like many others I'm sure) quickly logged in. I had hoped for an early session but somehow after nabbing one, it got taken and left me with 8pm. Oh well - that's not too bad. Actually since the sunset was around 7pm in October, 8pm worked out really well. It gave us plenty of time to return home after the drive to Franschhoek and more time to digest the large lunch and cheese platter from the afternoon.

This developed section of Woodstock is really quite nice. I've read the surrounding streets are not safe (in the evenings), so it would have been nice to come back during the day or even to the development area in the evening for a more relaxing night. There are security there and also designated door people from the restaurants to keep order and safety. It really is well organised.

Immediately upon entering the industrial and relatively indistinct door, there is the dark room. Dark it is indeed with eyes needing to adjust to see the lovely artwork and sketchings in the walls. After a brief hello and introduction, it is immediately onto welcome drinks and a tour of the world starters.

Sour (lapsang souchong old fashioned) was mildly sour, a bit smoky and very nice. Bitter (num-num & rose) was only mildly bitter, a bit sweet and also very nice.

The Dark Room
- Scotland: Billionaires - chicken liver parfait, porcini mushroom and truffle jelly, topped with 24 carat gold. The standout dish from the San Pellegrino website and it was pretty good I must say, if you like/don't mind the liver taste;
- Korea: Ssamjang Veg - marmite crackers and porcini dust are mixed into ssamjang paste of fermented soy beans. Raw micro vegetables are the vessels to eat it. An excellent delicious umami dip to eat tiny beetroot, carrot, cauliflower etc.;
- England: Pork Scratchings - pork scratchings with vinegar and celeriac dust to dip into a foam of Guinness flour;
- USA: Morel Burger - the world's smallest slider made of a morel mushroom patty. Not bad, could have been stronger flavoured;
- Ethiopia: Berbere Curry & Sheep Amasi - very crispy berbere cracker made from sorghum. Topped with shredded lamb. I could eat these all day long. Sheep cheese amasi (fermented) had a mild flavour unexpectedly;
- Mauritius: Coconut langoustine - langoustine piece with coriander paste, shellfish oil and fried curry leaves. Nice;
- India: Tandoori - perfectly textured swordfish on some slightly smoking coals, topped with cucumber, angel hair chilli, jalapeno. It was warm with a strong flavour and crunchy texture peanut salsa. Excellent morsel.

Then it was through the door with a secret knock into the more conventional The Light Room. We were offered the bar or a standard table, and the bar was the atmospheric place to be in front of the kitchen and with some overly exuberant Americans to the side, 2 having a domestic argument over wine, and an older 2 constantly proclaiming it's the best meal they've ever had (they had left by the time I took my photo of the room).

The Light Room
- Sword Belly "Greek Salad" - light and juicy swordfish served with pickled tomato, olive ice, skordalia dip and feta;
- TTK Lobster Salad, Coconut, Thai Aromatics - possibly my favourite dish with a perfectly balanced flavour profile. Poached lobster served with kalamansi caviar (for the sourness), coconut ice, coconut flesh scooped into little balls, chilli, shredded kaffir lime, and tiny basil and perilla. Drizzled with lobster oil and a nam pla dressing. Simply perfect;
- bread - sage beurre noisette glazed bread with snoek butter. Very soft and buttery bread and very mildly smoked fish flavour to the butter;
- Butterfish Bibimbap - teriyaki butterfish which was very soft and served with 3 types of kimchi vegetables, masterstock caviar, mushrooms and sushi rice. Very good to mix all around although I feel like gochujang is needed for true bibimbap;
- Sundy Roast - red wood smoked beef didn't make the flavour smoky but lightly accentuated beef tartare flavour. It was very soft and tender chunks of meat, horseradish cream and celery dust;
or daily special of Beef Sweetbread - pancetta wrapped sweetbread with walnut port jus. I'm not sure which sweetbread it was but they said it was beef. The texture was very creamy and soft (like brain, but it wasn't brain);
- Butter Poached Kingklip, Chestnut Jam, Snoek Extraction - kingklip fish with an excellent tempura cabbage on top. Served with snoek fish stock and a side of saffron mash;
or "Pap En Vleis" - local South African specialty Karoo lamb with a bolognese sauce. Full of flavour. Lamb was ok for tenderness, could have been more so;
- Rabbit & Ham in Two Servings - soft pork belly skin although the skin wasn't that crisp, cooked until only a thin fat layer remained. Tender rabbit rolls and celeriac foam. Served with a strong meaty sauce with rabbit chunks and topped with another micro vegetable.

Desserts from Light to Dark
- Rhubarb Trifle, Elderflower, Sauvignon Blanc, Rose & Mascarpone - very wine-y flavour and light;
- Pear, Jerusalem, Bourbon Oak, Pine, Sheep's Milk, Espresso - lovely poached pear, pistachio crumb and bourbon ice cream;
- Petit fours 1 - foie gras jam donut, crushed peanut snow and dessert wine
- Petit fours 2 - a tiny trifle to bring the meal back full circle to the box.

There was a creative non-alcohol drinks option of Tea Pairing for R500. Each was served in a wine glass and cold. They all had nice light flavours, a bit of fruity, a bit of sweet, and complemented the food well.

I thought the meal was creative, balanced and overall good, with some definite standout dishes (for me the ssamjang veg, lobster salad in particular). My partner thought it was outstanding. I'm glad we went and experienced one of the best restaurants in the world. I don't feel the need to return though and would do to The Pot Luck Club next time in Cape Town.

Cape Malay is supposedly the local version of Malaysia/Indonesia type food, full with breads and curries and the rest. I had read it was similar but just less spicy and so before a walking tour in Bo Kaap was a good time to try it. It really is up the end of a steep long road up the top of Bo Kaap and sits above a primary school where the children run and scream like mad. At least they are having fun.

Unfortunately they had a buffet and not the a la carte. Hmm. Oh well.

The roti was alright, bobotie was a slightly too salty version of mince lasagne without the pasta, tomato breddie was probably the best of all the dishes as a mildly beef curry cooked until the tomatoes turned dark. Chicken curry, lentils, dhal and butter bean curry were all ok. Nothing chilli at all, and not all that special overall in terms of flavour.

R200 for some starter snacks (all a bit average and not hot) and a very sweet *** to finish. Although the *** sounds good on paper, it wasn’t anywhere near as soft of easy to eat as a donut, being rather thick and heavy. The syrup and coconut didn’t complement as well as they really should.

It suppose it was both good and bad the buffet was on – buffets aren’t really my thing (I can’t eat that much comfortably anymore) and I couldn’t choose what I wanted but I guess also meant I could try a few different dishes.

Indeed it did seem a bit like the plainer cousins of the pure Asian forms. At least I’ve tried it.

Given the beautiful sunny and rainless 24C October days, a daytrip out to the winelands was a must. The options were between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. In the end the reviews online sounded like Stellenbosch is a working town and not so special, whereas Franschhoek is a (potentially artificial) tourist village created but still with French charm.

Franschhoek won in the end for this French vineyard, selected mainly because the food is meant to be good (and the wine was probably alright too). The setting is beautiful with the windows opening onto a lush lawn with peacock roaming around, and the grape trees lining the foreground before the mountains filled the background. Spectacular.

The wine was ok (I can’t really tell), but the local brewed cider was very minimally alcoholic. 3 apples per bottle of cider it said. Nice I guess.

Food was 2 courses for R375 (or 3 for R440 but we were stuffed after 2).

Some too old white bread was served alongside some much fresher seeded bread, basil pesto and a very grassy EVOO but the balsamic was too deeply at the bottom.

Starters
- Prawn cocktail (La Petite Ferme heritage dish) – perfectly cooked and slightly crisp coated red velvet and Kuro ash crumbed tiger prawns. Served with Marie Rose espuma, heirloom tomato flakes, crispy mint, pickled cucumbers, micro cos lettuce, lemon pearls;
- Duo of pate – 3 pieces of black garlic-infused ciabatta toast (couldn’t really detect the garlic) with cured snoek pate and trout caviar on the sides and smoked Franschhoek trout with black caviar on the middle one. Topped with rocket pesto and Viking salted chips, and a smear of lemon curd jelly on the plate.

Mains
- Heritage lamb – slow-braised then pulled, compressed and panfried lamb tagine (quite good, maybe a little more seasoning), charcoal mash (a bit plain), white asparagus (which I think was actually just normal asparagus – nothing white about those on the plate), biltong dust micro peas (tasted like peas) and mint yoghurt gel;
- Duck 6 ways – crispy confit duck leg, duck liver parfait wontons (tasting as expected of foie gras), seared duck breast (meant to be medium-rare but served closer to medium-well sadly), duck pastrami, edamame beans, grilled bok choy, duck jus gras.
- Side of braai corn R – grilled corn. Nice and simple. Nothing too unique. I guess is braai is just the local word of describing it.

Overall a lovely setting a bit further out from Franschhoek centre itself. The food was overall good although the menu ingredients made it sound a bit too complicated and certainly some of the flavours weren’t discernible. Nonetheless nice.

After a 1h40m hike through Platteklip gorge to Table Mountain, it was nice to have food up the top and so not needed to BYO. Having said that, a picnic sitting outside in the sun with a cool breeze and the views would be quite spectacular.

Nonetheless the food was supposedly alright, and it was.

Ostrich pie slice R47 had tender chunky meat, florets of cauliflower and some pumkpin with a meaty sauce. Very good actually. 

The buffet section is R25 per 100g. All the grilled vegetables and wedges, spinach and cheese were nice and flavoursome. Decent quality, although a bit on the expensive side. Then again given you're up on a mountain, I guess it's understandable.

On the weekends, Hout Bay is the place to be for the weekend market. Although being described at 100 stalls, it was actually smaller than I expected.

Parking is made easy by the many many attendants shuffling and directing people in and out of spots. For a small donation, they "watch" over your car. R2-5 seems to be the standard, whatever small change you have they are happy with. You can look over Hout Bay and the settlements up on the mountain side that you shouldn't dare venture into.

Inside there's stalls selling clothes, jewelry, artwork, but then onto the food from sweets, bakery goods, burgers and the rest. On stage a cover band was performing beautifully with a particularly memorable rendition of Riptide.

Foodwise, I had my first Ostrich pie R40 (at a Tunisian stall of all things) which was full of meaty chunks akin to a good beef pie. Also a lamb roll which had shreds of meat, still good but paled in comparison.

Seafood came from local Hout Bay calamari fried (simple and flavoursome) and 6 oysters from ... R25 each (quite big with mild flavour and creamy cores).

Dr. Juice smoothie washed it all down well. Then it was time to be off to the next place.

Apparently Kalk Bay is now an outer suburb of Cape Town.

After an afternoon admiring and dipping quickly with the penguins at Boulder’s Bay, a pre-sunset meal at Kalkies was one I had read about. Why was it so famous? Maybe because it has a local institutional feel about it in a shack along the pier next to where the fisherman sell their goods and the seals lounge or swim.

It would be a beautiful spot for a sunset meal, but we weren’t going to wait 2 hours just for that to happen.

- Grilled kob & chips R150 - a meaty thick cutlet grilled and chopped up with nice full flavour, but not in a strong fish taste way. The chips were generally ok, some crisp, some not. For a fish & chip place, they should do this better;

- Fried snoek R50 - mild flavour and more firm than soft, but the flesh was really good and had unusually long longitudinal bones running through. Unusual.

I actually liked the grilled fish more which was unexpected. It also took much much longer to cook - about 20mins whereas the fried ones were being churned out continuously.

Overall it is a really popular place and brimming with people. It has a nice atmosphere and is pleasant to watch the beach and ocean if you can bare the winds. The food is decent without being exceptional.

We walked into the food court at the V&A and were surrounded by burger and pizza fast food joints. Hmm. This can't be right. How could this be the place to be? I looked up online just to make sure - yes there is a place that serves decent food and juices. I asked a security guard where the food court is, and he said "I'll take you". Outside we went past people watching rugby on a big screen, a playground and toward the main road. The building further away right along the waterfront area had the sign for the food market. Definitely not a food court.

Outside I giggled reading a sign for "No Hipsters" with their scraggly beards, vegan diets, tiny feet and beds of hay. Oh, hamsters. No hamsters. Someone is creative up there.

The food inside has limited options but they all look very good. Eventually I settled on the only African stand that served an excellent tender and very mildly spicy beef stew R70 (even after I topped it with more dried chilli), and served with my first exposure to samp (dried and stamped corn kernels) R25. I wanted to try the pap balls, but the server said no, one or the other is enough since they are both roughly the same. Also the bobotie balls eluded me this time around. Maybe next time. It was a very large lunch serve and really great flavours.

The other sampling was Hungarian flatbreads (I don't remember this in Budapest) which were like soft fried roti pizzas. Very nice and this one refreshing with smoked salmon and avocado R75.

Afterwards an outstanding gelato at Unframed (https://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/unframed-ice-cream-cape-town-10-2019) and a refreshing chilli ginger juice from Dr. Juice completed the satisfying lunch venture.

The setting is really lovely with the water and Table Mountain in the background. There was also a drumming band entertaining us throughout lunch in the plaza lined with statues of South Africa's Nobel peace prize winners.

Although South African food was high on my priority list, it seemed a bit silly not to seek out the food from other African countries. Interestingly there are only a handful of pan-African restaurants (like Mama Africa, Gold, Marco's) and even fewer specialty ones I could find. Ethiopian is something we've always enjoyed and so we ventured for that.

There's Lucy and Addis both nearby, and I chose Lucy because it was a little closer (and the Google rating marginally higher 4.7 vs. 4.4). For a while we were the only 2 diners on a Monday night. It's a nicely decorated setting full of African tapestries, decorations and faces adorning the walls.

The service was all smiles and banter - excellent hospitality worthy of the 15% tip I gave. The food is good too. I learnt about mitmita, the hotter sister of berbere although the waiter said none of the dishes had it in them. I think by the end what he meant was they save the mitmita for the Ethiopians, under the assumption noone else will enjoy or can handle the heat. That sounds like a challenge for next time, as the berbere was spicy but only mildly so.

- Buticha R40 - I've never tried crispy injera, but here is was deepfried to a crisp porous chip with the distinctive tangy taste and sprinkled with berbere. It was served with two delicious dips of blended chickpeas (although I wonder if it was yellow lentils) and homemade cottage cheese with sauteed spinach. Excellent and unique dish;
- Combo (select 2 half portions of dishes for the injera) R155 x2 - white injera lined the plate and was served with doro wot drumstick (excellent dark scarlet earthy spicy chilli sauce with an egg and a drumstick), yebeg alicha (very meaty-tasting lamb with garlic, ginger and clarified butter), misir wot (red split lentils in berbere with a less intense sauce than the doro wot) and mushroom (cleanly cooked with garlic and delicious). My favourite was clearly the doro wot, but the others were nice and complemented well.

I really wanted to try the special kitfo of beef tartar, but that choice was vetoed. Next time, with doro wat then. Maybe with some mitmita on top.

South Africa is known for braai and meat particularly. One of the things I longed for but never had the opportunity to during the safari trip to Kenya and Tanzania in 2013 was trying game meats. They just weren't offered at the places we went.

There's a few places offering such things in Cape Town - Arnold's, Mama Africa, Karibu, Mama Africa, Gold, Marco's seem to be the names I found online.

Arnold's was extremely close to our accommodation off Kloof Street and so the easy choice for the first night dinner.

- Ostrich goulash soup (slow cooked ostrich, carrots, peppers) R55 - too heavy on the salt, but meaty and flavoursome. It wasn't the most tender meat, but otherwise couldn't be distinguished from beef;
- West Coast mussels (creamy garlic & white wine sauce) R65 - a waste of time. Tiny mussels that looked old and had no flavour and a soft mushy texture. The sauce also needed a good dose of salt and pepper;
- South African Game Platter R249 - grilled warthog ribs (smoked, flame grilled, lightly basted) were a lean meaty version of pork ribs cooked with a sweetened barbecue sauce similar to a ham glaze; crocodile tagine (mild Moroccan style sweet & sour curry-based) were tender pieces of meat, moreso than I've had from crocodile previously with earthy spices; kudu loin (grilled, rolled in cumin & salt) is a type of antelope with the medium-rare meat grainy but a mild game/beef-type flavour; ostrich steak was a very tender piece of meat with a very mild flavour to it, similar to beef eye fillet with the grilled and green peppercorn flavour coming through.

The best part of the meal was easily the unexpectedly tender ostrich steak. Although not the strongest in flavour, it tasted nice and was a dining revelation.

After late-lunching at Hudsons The Burger Joint, a short walk away is Unframed. The open front store with the convenient engraved seating outside in the sun provides a perfect atmosphere to people watch, get asked for money, and listen to the hiphop blasting from the store.

There are a few usual flavours like salted caramel, vanilla but no nut ones sadly. There are also some very unusual ones like lime lemon basil (tastes like a granita) and the two I tried at R38 for a one scoop cone - strawberry coconut (quite sweet with only the tiniest bit of coconut) and turmeric latte (a fluoro yellow offering with a little bit of sweet, a lot of turmeric, and how the latte form does taste). I didn't like the strawberry but I did so the turmeric, although the flavour got a bit much in the end. Maybe it's more the colour and novelty factor.

These vegan ones were texturally quite slick and gummy. Not sure how they did it, but it was ok. Different.

If I went back it would be for a non-vegan one.

Addon 10-2019

I found by chance Unframed at the V&A food market. This time they had flavours that appealed to me more, including a potent vegan matcha and a perfectly coloured and reasonably strong flavoured bronte "just pistachio". A couple of ice crystals were present but that's nitpicking. These were really excellent in flavour and texture otherwise.