Foxcroft
There’s a notion in the food world that the simplest things, like grammar, shouldn’t be fucked with. Because mostly you end up with something that’s more complicated than it need be, and which conjures a mess of adjectives like sublime, and juicy, and briny, and umami-ish, and AMAZEBALLS, and it’s generally rubbish.
Except when you take something as simple as oysters, and make them champagne. Who knows even what that is, but let’s just say it involved a warm oyster served in some kind of sauce. With foam. Tasting of champagne. And the sea. And it made everything better. Especially for people who don’t (normally) like oysters. Good God was that a fine oyster.
It was also the only thing on the menu we didn’t order.
What we did order for tapas (a.k.a. two starter plates per person, per their current special, which is two “tapas”, followed by one main, and one dessert, for the excellent price of R350pp), was the smoked pig’s head croquette, calamari and chorizo with stuff, yellowtail “ceviche” with “kohlrabi kimchi”, and angry beef with stuff.
And they were all fantastic, but tapas they were not. It’s not polite to complain about quantities of food, but any one of these would have been enough to satisfy any self-respecting ladyperson. They were way too much more than just a tasty morsel, which doesn’t matter unless you are a completely self-serving middle-class idiot with nothing more to worry about than your waistline. And the “ceviche” was a tasty starter of cured yellowtail with some pickled kohlrabi, but it wasn’t ceviche, and the pickled kohlrabi wasn’t kimchi.
ALL GOOD. Just don’t call things what they’re not.
Plus, things didn’t really start off that well. No need for incriminating details here, but let’s just say that we sat for a while without wine to drink together as we commiserated about the armpit that was 2016. That part was shit because a) service was slow (OK, early opening) and b) their selection by the glass is frankly also rubbish. One by-the-glass per varietal? Sure, go for it. But then make it the best expression of that varietal, rather than … what it is.
But being (complaining) Ladies Who Lunch, we soon got the attention we deserved. Like the oysters we never ordered. And someone who knew how to talk wine, including an off-the-by-the-glass-menu wine selection. Lunch immediately became better.*
Mains were pork belly and duck. They both came with stuff, some of which may have been blobs of potato puree (aka mash), apple, fennel, onion and sage for the pork, and turnips, gem squash and kale for the duck. Both very good, but difficult to enjoy with the gusto they deserved after such generous starters.
(Sidenote that we discussed, seriously — why not offer one starter, one main and a glass of decent wine for the same price? Or main, dessert, and wine, etc?)
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About the spot: delightful. It’s on a road, and in a “strip mall”, which in this context is a small strip of salons and restaurants in Constantia on a corner of a road leading to Groot Constantia wine estate. So there are cars, but they are going to or coming from where you are, or to or from a wine estate, and there are people eating, but they are there because they live in Constantia, or because they have trekked there like you to sample the hottest new place in the ‘burbs by the chef of the excellent La Colombe. It’s pretty inside too.
Fortunately the mains were delicious, and not huge, even if only one of us did the ladylike thing of not finishing everything on her plate.
So far, so full, but dessert! 1 times gypsy tart, and 1 times raspberry beignets with a basil cheesecake (how can you not?), and perhaps a coffee and grappa. For good measure.
For the beignets, think churros that taste faintly of raspberries, served with the inside of a cheesecake that tastes like basil. A frankly inspired combination that you probably wouldn’t think of yourself, which is the best kind of thing to eat off a plate in a restaurant. The gypsy tart was condensed milk squeezed into a triangle on a piece of pastry, with some refreshing granadilla sorbet. In a very good way. And the grappa serving was bigger than the coffee.
We asked and paid for the paper of doom, and concluded it was one of the best examples of excellent service, because they pulled it back so neatly from a potentially shit afternoon. Then we went home to the men, and homemade pizza.
Waistlines be damned.
*Hello cynics! We don’t court freebies, but why should we refuse them? We’re paying customers like everyone else. Would you say no to champagne oysters? I didn’t think so.
Originally published at 2ladieswholunchblog.wordpress.com on December 23, 2016.
