Tuesday 30 November 2021, Day 61 of Level 1 😷
Corona Gratitude 🙏
#grateful for a fabulous day, warm at 22C; for having a morning meeting cancelled, which gave me uninterrupted time to do my client work today; for a walk to Woolworths to buy fruit; for meeting Gary Peterson at my house and driving through to Stonehurst Estate at Westlake, to the home of the Honorary Consul of Finland, Phillip Palmgren, to attend an evening of ‘Fancy Finnish Food’, hosted Continue reading →
On Thursday evening I attended the 2019 Finals of the Patrón Perfectionists tequila cocktail competition at Cause Effect Cocktail Kitchen and Cape Brandy Bar in the Waterfront, after a first part of the event had been held at Foliage in Franschhoek earlier in the day. Despite the largest number of female finalists over the past three years of the South African participation in the competition, the 2019 SA finals was won by David van Zyl, mixologist at Cause Effect Cocktail Kitchen! Continue reading →
I could not think it possible that the Eat Out Awards 2018 could be so refreshingly different, but it appears that new Head Judge Margot Janse has created a fresh new look at the restaurant judging criteria. Many of our top old-guard chefs took a severe beating at the Awards last night! Continue reading →
The WORLD CLASS Bartender of the Year Global Finals is currently underway in Cape Town, bringing the world’s top Bartenders and Mixologist professionals to our city. It is the largest and most prestigious global Mixology event.
The largest number of female Bartender Finalists is competing for the title of the WORLD CLASS Bartender of the Year competition, six of the 55 finalists from fifty countries being women, and having won the national best bartender title in their respective countries. The female finalists are Anna Walsh from Dublin, Ireland; Fernanda Tejada of Mexico City; Tess Posthumus from the Netherlands (left); Continue reading →
MasterChef Season 3 is slowly coming to an end, with only three more episodes to go. Last night it was clearly winter when episode 15 was shot in the Cape forests, the focus being foraging. It also meant the end for Mel Sutherland, who was sent home due to an unsatisfactory ‘muscle (sic) ceviche with wild garlic panna cotta and squid ink jelly‘!
On arrival at the MasterChef SA Top 5 were told that they would have to find their own ingredients in nature. Chef Pete Goffe-Wood told them: ‘The first part of this challenge you have to find your own ingredients. And you’re going to do it in the way we’ve been doing it for thousands of years – you’re going to go foraging’. The Top 5 were to go out into nature to gather Continue reading →
Jardine at Jordan Manager and former Sinn employee Riaan Moll told me recently that Chef Thomas Sinn, once an Eat Out Top Restaurant Chef, has closed down all his restaurant interests in Cape Town, and has opened Rivendell Restaurant on the road to Hermanus, near the turn-off to Kleinmond and Arabella. On our way back from a trip to Hermanus my colleague and I found an oasis of 
food, in the middle of nowhere, offering a whale of a good value.
Rivendell is referred to in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, ‘Lord of the Rings’ amongst others, and means ‘deeply cloven valley‘, referring to the Bot River valley lying between two mountains. The wine estate Rivendell is owned by Austrian couple Heimo and Maria Talhammer, and they invited Chef Thomas to open the restaurant on their farm three months ago. The restaurant building is set back on the estate, and is not visible from the road to Hermanus. It was previously the tasting and functions venue, but the Continue reading →