Former Anatoli owner Tayfun Aras published his ‘Anatoli Authentic Turkish Cuisine’ Cookbook in 2018, containing a collection of recipes of dishes served at Anatoli, many still on the menu, and his kitchen secrets. His culinary journey From Turkey to Cape Town is penned as well. Anatoli is one of Cape Town’s longest-established restaurants, still trading on Napier Street, where it opened its doors in 1984. Continue reading →
At the launch of the first book by Denise Cowburn-Levy at Bokeh Creative Space in Sea Point last night, I was lucky to win a copy of her book ‘Around my Table’, for knowing the answer to a question relating to Chef Liam Tomlin, described by Denise as her mentor. The 260 page book is part memoir, part travel book to the West Coast, Greece, Italy, and Thailand, and part recipe book, with food associations with each region and country of her travels, including those of Cape Town. Continue reading →
Well-known and highly respected restaurant owner and Chef Prim Reddy of Cape Town based Indian Chapter Restaurant with Prim Reddy is the writer with Durban-based baker, hotelier, and chef Niranj Pather of the ‘Temptations: Exquisite Tastes with an exotic Touch’ Cookbook. The book is described as ‘fattening the curve’, the launch of which will be celebrated this coming Sunday at 15h00 with a Virtual High Tea.
‘Temptations’ is a lovely name for a book dedicated to Food, and contains 83 recipes from the two writers’ travels, dishes which they have experienced, and their own dishes. The Cookbook has already made the Exclusive Books Bestseller List.
The Toffie Food Festival and Conference, to be held at the City Hall on 3 and 4 September, attracted my attention due to its low-key marketing, odd as it is run by an (unknown) communication agency The President, and as its organisers have had no prior visibility as bloggers or ‘foodies’. Information about the event has been scant, yet I booked immediately when I saw that Julie Powell, of the movie ‘Julie and Julia’ , is the key speaker. 
The movie ‘Julie and Julia’ ran in Cape Town in my early days of blogging, and I loved it, for its humour in presenting the trials and tribulations of blogging. Julie Powell’s blog ‘Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen’ was published as a book in 2005, and that led to the movie being made, and released in 2009. Ms Powell has written a second book ‘Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession’, which was published two years ago.
I asked Hannerie Visser of The President why they were organising the Toffie Festival, with no credentials in the food industry. This was her reply: “Toffie is a series of conference festivals and because food is so linked to cultural heritage it allowed for an interesting conference that everyone can relate to”. Other speakers are:
* Kobus van der Merwe, chef/owner of Oep ve Eet in Paternoster, and previous web editor of Food24 and Eat Out.
* Eloise Alemany, ex-editor of ID magazine and now cookbook specialist, from Argentina (leading a Toffie food tour of Buenos Aires in October).
* Dr Anna Trapido, editor of ‘Hunger for Freedom’, the book that documented Nelson Mandela’s food likes and dislikes in the different phases of his life, is organising a lunch inspired by the book, in association with Woolworths’ TASTE magazine.
* Lin Tung-Yuan of Café GABEE, ‘multi-award winner of the Taiwan Barista Championship, who is renowned for the delicacy and finesse of his coffee and coffee-inspired dishes’
* Renata Coetzee, winner of a 2010 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for her book ‘Koekemakranka: Khoi-Khoin Kultuurgoed en Kom-kuier-Kos’
* Tammy Frazer, a perfumist (an odd link to a food conference!)
* Wolfgang Koedel of Paulaner (a last minute addition, only announced on Twitter yesterday)
Running alongside the Conference are a number of events (oddly this programme has only just been finalised, a week before the Festival), which are free of charge, unless otherwise indicated below:
* Spier vertical tasting
* a SAB beer and food pairing led by Chef Pete Goffe-Wood of Kitchen Cowboys and Denis da Silva
* a workshop by Eloise Alemany (R250)
* a perfume workshop by Tammy Frazer (R350)
* Tung-Yuan Lin barista workshop
The Toffie Festival, with a price tag of R 1710, also includes a Braai lunch, as well as a ‘secret home dinner’, breakfast and two Woolworths coffee vouchers. The home dinners will be held on 3 September, and one will be allocated to dinner at the home of one of the following:
* Cameron Munro from Superette
* Gerhard Greyvenstein and Herman Lampen of Grey Lamp, a ‘pop-up’ supper club
* Sumien Brink, editor of Woolworths’ TASTE magazine, and Cara Brink
* Callie Maritz and Mari-Louis Guy of Cakebread boutique bakery
* Alma Viviers, managing editor of VISI magazine and Kobus van der Merwe, chef/owner of Oep ve Koep in Paternoster
* Tina Bester of Queen of Tarts
* Cleon and Kate Romano of Maria’s Greek Café/Restaurant
* Philip and Lisa Key of African Relish
* Laureen Rossouw, editor of ELLE Decoration
* Will Hobson of fieldoffice, a sandwich-maker
* Aletta Lintveld, food editor of Weg magazine
* Fabio and Luan Lauro of House of Pasta
* Brendon and Suzette Bell-Roberts of art south africa magazine.
Toffie Food Festival and Conference delegates receive a copy of Cape Town ‘MENU’, an interesting book of restaurants and recipes, and is a listing of the Toffie Festival’s ‘guide of the best meals in Cape Town’. Included, for example, is:
* Greek and African food: recommending Maria’s, and Bebe Rose
* Portuguese and Italian food: recommending The Villa Tavern, Giovanni’s, Pizzeria Napoletana, House of Pasta, Hildebrand Restaurant, Chop, Fork Tapa, Meloncino, and Il Cappero.
* Asian food: recommending Hesheng Chinese Takeaway, Chef Pon’s, Yindee’s, Mr Chan Chinese Restaurant, and Takumi
* Cakes and desserts, recommending C’est La Vie, Keenwä, Arno Arpin, Biesmiellah, Queen of Tarts, Cassis Paris, Bird’s Boutique Café (may no longer be relevant with new chef opening with new menu on 1 September), Cakebread, Giovanni’s, Willoughby’s, fieldoffice, Lindt Chocolate Studio, San Julian, and Il Cappero.
Worrying is the low key marketing of the event, which is not yet sold out, and that speakers are still being added to the programme. The printed programme delivered on Friday looks different to the one on the website, and some international speakers seem to have fallen off the programme. There appears to be no theme to the Conference, and it looks like a randomly thrown together collection of speakers. Surprising is that no local foodies are on the programme, be they food bloggers or journalists.
POSTCRIPT: The Toffie Food Festival was all about over-promise and under-delivery. Read our report.
Toffie Food Festival and Conference, City Hall, 3 – 4 September. www.toffie.co.za
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage
Food bloggers furiously re-Tweeted a link to a Mail & Guardian story on Friday, entitled rather meaninglessly “Going to the Blogs”, and posted angry comments on the newspaper’s site, yet no blogger has stood up to defend the reputation of bloggers attacked in the article! Not everyone in Cape Town was happy with the article, written by print journalist Mandy de Waal, who has no experience of and interest in the food/restaurant industry, and who appears to have been a once-a-month blogger, who last blogged a year ago on her two blogs MandydeWaal and MandyLives!com.
De Waal is best known for her political and business stories that she writes for Mail & Guardian and the Daily Maverick blog. What she did not disclose in her article is that she is a friend of Rosanne Buchanan, editor of Food & Home Entertaining magazine. Clearly Buchanan was the inspiration for the article, in being quoted extensively, and she shared with De Waal her experience at a recent lunch to launch the new winter menu of Reuben’s at the One&Only Cape Town, which was attended by bloggers and print journalists. 
Surprisingly for a journalist, who should get a balanced view for the story she is writing, no print journalist other than Buchanan was interviewed by De Waal for the article!
De Waal shows her anti-blogging bias throughout the article, with the following loaded utterances:
* “Bitter tension between established food writers and the new food media…” – This does not apply in South Africa, and obviously only is the point of view of Buchanan, who De Waal quotes (unnamed) as saying sneeringly (De Waal’s word) “I truly resent being lumped in with them. They are treated like the media but they have absolutely no ethics. Why are we giving voice to these freebie-mongers who cause such damage?”. What a loaded and discriminatory statement, obviously indicating that Buchanan’s publication could be under threat, and may go the same way as WINE magazine, which is closing down in September!
* “Instant publishing and social networks dealt the industry (unnamed, but probably the publishing industry) a cruel, culling blow”. Any print publisher who did not see the growth and resultant threat of blogging and on-line publishing deserves the inevitable.
* “Gourmet (magazine in the USA) brought epicure to the people – but only some people. Bloggers took it to everyone else, robbing food elitism of its elitism”– another loaded statement, and completely off the mark! The trend is far away from food elitism, given the recession. There is nothing to stop bloggers from writing at the same standard or better than their print colleagues.
* “Perhaps it’s what bloggers write that’s so difficult to digest”, and she quotes an excerpt out of a Real Restaurant Revelations blog review of the Warwick’s tapas lunch Persian love cake – its inclusion in her article is not meant as a compliment to the blogger, one senses!
* “To publish, bloggers only need a free meal, a computer and the will to write. Journalists have to contend with crabby editors, deadlines, ethics, research, a declining market and … miserable pay. Small wonder they’re annoyed at having to rub shoulders with bloggers at elite restaurant openings”! This statement reflects that Buchanan and De Waal have no idea what blogging is about. Most bloggers do not get their meals for free. Most have a day job, and blog for fun, sharing their passion for food and writing with their readers. They burn the midnight oil to stay up to date in publishing their posts. Most do not accept advertising on their blogs, so there is no financial benefit in it for them at all.
* Buchanan magnanimously sees a role for bloggers only in posting ‘comments on food or publishing online recipes’. When De Waal called me and spoke broadly about Food Blogging, I had to explain to her that in my opinion a food blogger is predominantly a recipe writer, and I gave here some examples, such as Cooksister and Scrumptious blogs. What she was focussing on was Restaurant reviewing, and that is why her article included a reference to AA Gill. Clearly, Buchanan sees no role for bloggers as reviewers.
* Buchanan continues: “But is their sudden and authoritative voice, which is too often vindictive or ingratiating, that has become an issue. Although I think everyone is entitled to an opinion, it is integrity and professionalism that is at stake”. She could not be further off the mark – it is print journalists that publish a photograph with a short write-up about a restaurant, supplied by the PR agency, and is never critical. Bloggers who write reviews with honesty, as they have experienced the restaurant, have far greater integrity than magazines do. Honesty in blog reviews shows up the bla bla freebie magazine write-ups.
* Buchanan has a further blast at bloggers, saying her publication has been around for 20 years, and that bloggers cannot have her level of ‘understanding of the food industry’– Buchanan and De Waal clearly have no understanding that bloggers are not 18-year olds without a past, but are writers that have (or had) careers in and a passion for food.
* Contentious is De Waal’s broad swipe at bloggers’ ethics (“Then there’s that trifle called the truth”), but more fairly does so too at ‘leisure journalism’.
* 
“But some do rise above the sticky sweetness”, she writes, when restaurant reviewer JP Rossouw disparagingly refers to blogs that can be ‘playful and fun’, but ‘what is essentially candyfloss’! De Waal writes that Rossouw said that he started a blog nine years ago, but there was no blogging that long ago. He is quoted as arrogantly looking down on bloggers, in saying that he has stopped blogging because “I felt the ethics that bloggers were following were dubious. Bloggers love going to launches, restaurant openings and having free luxury experiences but, unlike experienced food journalists, who understand the industry, do significant research and are modulated by ethics and experience, blogging becomes much like ambulance-chasing”! Rossouw was hauled over the coals by bloggers for a controversial review he wrote about La Mouette last year, and changed his blog to a website thereafter, with registered screening of commenters. This may explain his disparagement of bloggers.
* “In an ocean of quantity, only the few, the differentiated and the excellent will eventually rise to the top” is the closing sentence of the article. De Waal does not understand that this is not a race or a competition for bloggers. The only measurement bloggers have of their success is unique readership, but if they do not accept advertising then it is just an academic measure. Making the Top 10 in a category of the SA Blog awards would be another measure of success for some.
I told De Waal about the blogging bitchiness in Cape Town, and told her what price I pay for my honesty in reviewing, resulting in a disparaging Twitter campaign, which she read while we were chatting, and was horrified about. She captures some of this bitchiness in quoting her conversations with Andy Fenner of the Jamie Who blog, and Clare “Mack” McKeon-McLoughlin of Spill blog:
* 
Fenner points a finger (or is it his knife?) at who only can be McKeon-McLoughlin when he says “There is definitely conflict with online media because certain bloggers see themselves as ‘Erin Brockovich’ types who want to be first with the scoop. There is this constant battle about who breaks the story first, and it can get catty and malicious”! 
* McKeon-McLoughlin refused to have her name mentioned in the article ‘if the blogger’s name appeared in this piece, or if an interview with the blogger was included in this article’, clearly a reference to myself, given her calls to PR agencies to tell them to not invite me to their functions, and her threat to them to not attend functions if I attend. De Waal describes her as a ‘former BBC journalist’, but this does not come up when one Googles her real name – she was a chat show hostess on Irish TV station RTÈ. She and her husband Eamon McLoughlin are part of the team driving the malicious Twitter campaign. A wine blogger put McKeon-McLoughlin in her place with a post he published in response to the article. While she claims to only write the truth, she is often cited by fellow bloggers as one who never declares her numerous free meals and bottles of wine on her blog!
So, from the lengthy (and libellous) Mail & Guardian article we read the threat that Food & Home Entertaining faces of potential closure, and that Buchanan is an arrogant journalist who thinks that she is better than bloggers, whose work she probably has not read extensively, yet who may be readers of her magazine. There is less of an issue between print food journalists and bloggers, than there is amongst bloggers themselves, some of whom have become so arrogant that they think that they can stand in judgement of others, seeing themselves as being superior. It also demonstrates that journalists are not to be trusted in a telephonic interview, especially when the discussion has a hidden agenda, and the questioning is dreadfully vague, turning out to be a waste of time, when none of it was published. One wonders why De Waal allowed herself to be bullied by McKeon-McLoughlin, in not allowing my input to be quoted, given the reputation of independence of the newspaper that she writes for! It also indicates that the blogging community needs to collectively improve its image, if a respected writer such as De Waal can write such drivel about bloggers in such a respected newspaper!
What De Waal does not reflect is that both new and traditional media have benefits for the restaurants that are reviewed – bloggers can write almost immediately, with an added benefit of posting comments and photographs whilst at the launch on Twitter, giving a new restaurant instant visibility, and it is therefore no surprise that most entries for restaurants on Google are from blogs, alongside listings on Eat Out and Food 24, and often achieve a higher Google ranking than the restaurant’s own website. Googling is the way the world finds its information. Traditional media has far better reach in terms of its audience size in readership, the average newer blogger not achieving more than 5000 – 10000 unique readers a month, but the magazine story takes three to four months to appear, its major disadvantage. Clearly PR agencies value the benefit of a balance of both new and traditional media to obtain coverage for their restaurant clients.
POSTSCRIPT 20/7: Respected and long-established blogger Jeanne Horak-Druiff today posted her impressive response to the Mail & Guardian article.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage
I met the dynamic ‘warrelwind’ interior curator (not designer!) Neil Stemmet from KONCEPT for the first time at Decorex about two weeks ago. There he stole the show with his amazing BOS Tea House that he designed for the ice tea brand, and the stand won an award for the best Green stand. It was here that Stemmet started talking to me about his vision of the Restaurant of the Future, which he had embodied in his BOS stand design, but it was too much for me to comprehend in the busy and noisy exhibition hall, so we agreed to meet at Hemelhuijs with Sonia Cabano, highly respected chef, cookbook writer, and now Twitter fan.
Neil told me that he grew up in Upington, and Hemelhuijs owner Jacques Erasmus did too, and it was at Neil’s Le Must restaurant in Upington that Jacques cut his first chef’s teeth. Neil’s restaurant made the Style Top 10 restaurant list in 2004, unheard of that a restaurant so far from the Cape Town and Winelands could achieve this. He says that his was the first restaurant to introduce “Afrikaanse kos” in Upington. Neil started a blog called ‘Sout & Peper’, a blog solely in Afrikaans, and he is proud in documenting the recipes and stories about food preparation of up to 200 years ago, which he is transforming into a book. ‘Sout & Peper’ food preparation is based on the ‘keep it simple’ principle, a good design principle too he says, and he gives the example of Karoo lamb, which should be prepared in the local way by just popping it into the oven with salt and pepper, and one should not make a Greek lamb out of it. 
Neil’s book will be called “Sout en Peper”, and will be a collection of stories about the origin of South African food, and it will only be published in the ‘volkstong’ Afrikaans, being a ‘kos storieboek’. It will explain how to cook local dishes, and more than one recipe may be provided for a particular item. Neil said his book will be ‘sout en peper’ too in containing both sadness and humour. He will also include recipes from South African cookery icons from many years ago, such as Hildagonda Duckitt and Louis Leipoldt.
Neil is so avantgarde that he put up a sign on his BOS stand to say “Decor is dead”. He explained this as not being the slavish following of design trends, but rather ‘anything goes’, he said, with a focus on sustainability and heirlooms, utilising timeless classics. His mantra is “curate, not decorate”. He is somewhat of a trend setter, and therefore he recently read the work of Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, who spoke at the Design Indaba earlier this year. He was so excited that she forecast the colours purple and green as the new trend colours, and these two colours are the ones he chose for a project to be launched this evening at the new Freeworld Design Center on Waterkant Street, next door to Hemelhuijs. Green symbolises the heart chakra, he said, and stands for universal love, while purple represents the 7th chakra of spirituality. He calls these ‘heirloom colours’. Green is going back to a shade with a black tone added, as it was used 200 years ago, he said.
Neil proudly says that ‘curation’ comes from the heart and the soul, and it is not pre-planned or pre-designed to scale. It just happens. The curator trusts his/her mind, and one should not ‘theorise’ the process. There must be an ‘altar’ as the focus point the restaurant, on which the food is displayed – in the BOS Tea House this was a lit high table, and the food was presented on large platters, Neil getting the Cape Town International Convention Centre to serve food in these that he felt suitable. He became very serious when he talked about the use of purple in making an “anti-Roman Catholic/papal statement”, in retaliation to how this religious group “has raped the world for money”, his view contentious to many, no doubt. But Neil speaks his mind, and has done so for many years. Food is blessed by those eating at the ‘altar’, but it does not mean prayer necessarily, but rather is a sharing and connecting with those that one is having the meal with. Vitally important is what is served – it must be fresh, real and imperfect (in other words, it is no longer the perfectly round tomato from Woolworths, but an odd-shaped one fresh from the farm). ‘New food’ is roasts, and pies for the left-overs. Woolworths is a no-no to shop at, he says, as its products are too perfect! He told Sonia and I that he could feel a shift in energy amongst the people who ate at the BOS stand, due to his curation, which was focused on “designing a space to accommodate and enhance human life”. “Altar Music” is vital too, and he often uses film scores (e.g. from ‘The English Patient’), ‘chakra music’, or Lebanese music, as he did on the BOS Tea House stand.
I ordered the pork and chicken liver terrine with the most unusual accompaniment of orange preserve at Hemelhuijs, and Neil was very envious of my choice, saying it embodied ‘food of the future’. Neil said that the restaurants can no longer be run as currently, and he sees neighbourhood restaurants springing up, which are supplied by the residents in that neighbourhood, and supported by them too as customers. This creates a relationship with one’s social community, and waiters must know their patrons, and serve them accordingly. Neil also talks about ‘lardering”, using fruit and vegetables of this season for next season, by preserving them, and making relishes, keeping all of this in the ‘spens’. “Real’ bread will be baked at home again instead of supermarket bread being served, simple cuts of meat will be served, and gas will be used as a means of cooking to conserve electricity, and all one’s baking will be done on one day for the week ahead, to save time and energy. Consumers will become more independent in their supply, growing their own vegetables and herbs, and turning them into long-term sustenance. Restaurants will not have menus any more – the chef will decide on the day what he can prepare, given what fresh supplies he has. Clients will learn to be brave in trusting the chef in his food preparation choice, and clients will be in the kitchen inside the restaurant, with the chef, while he prepares their food.
Restaurants will have chairs, couches, or even beds in them, with music, books and children – they will no longer be elitist. Good examples of such restaurants are Pierneef à La Motte, Towerbosch (for which Neil did the interior), Babel (seven years ahead of its time, Neil says), and Hemelhuijs. The food served in such restaurants is elementary, honest and sustainable as far as possible (e.g. in New York restaurants grow vegetables on top of city skyscrapers, Dash restaurant is growing vegetables and herbs on top of the V&A Hotel roof, and Dear Me is growing its herbs in special containers hanging from its ceiling). Restaurants are no longer places at which to just eat, but also serve as a replacement of one’s office and home, a ‘connecting space for like-minded people’, our ‘home away from home’! This trend will spread to accommodation establishments too, with guest houses and hotels becoming ‘non-guest houses’ and ‘non-hotels’, making the guest feel at home but in which one’s privacy is not compromised. As customers we will become ‘excessively open’, Neil says, becoming so ‘naked’ that all can ‘see’ one, and one can say “here, this is me”!
It was the accolades and attention that his BOS stand created that led Ravi Naidoo, the organiser of the Design Indaba, to invite Neil to create a pop-up store in the very fashionable Fashion Mall of the V&A Waterfront, for an as yet unannounced project.
POSTSCRIPT 16/5: Neil Stemmet was one of four curators/designers invited to present their interpretation of “Openness to Explore” at the Freeworld Design Centre on Waterkant Street. Each designer designed a pod.
Neil Stemmet, KONCEPT, Cell 082 373 3837. www.konceptdesign.co.za
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
Increasingly consumers are entertaining their guests at home, by shopping at a select number of specialist food shops and delis, and preparing something last minute. This is partly due to the recession South Africans have experienced in the past two years, as well as the general shortage of time, and this has stimulated the production of wonderfully healthy and creative food products for in-home use. It also reflects the greater time that consumers spend on shopping for produce and ingredients than they do cooking or preparing it. This was said by Anelde Greeff, editor of Eat In, at the announcement of the winners of the 4th Eat In Produce Awards, which was held as a Night Market at the Old Biscuit Mill on Thursday evening. 
The Best New Product winner of the 2011 SAB Eat In Produce Awards, as judged by Anelde Greeff, Justine Drake (previous editor of Eat In), Pete Goffe-Wood (an Eat Out Top 10 restaurant judge), Anna Trapido (an Eat Out Top 10 restaurant judge) and Michelle Barry (principal of the Christina Martin Cookery School in Durban), is Totally Wild’s Aloe and Baobab Juice, which contains calcium, iron and vitamins. The South African Heritage Award went to Enaleni Farm in KwaZulu-Natal, and this selection was motivated as follows: “This KZN farm is preserving our heritage by keeping a herd of Nguni cattle, endangered Zulu sheep, growing rare, local maize varietals and the traditional ibhece melon”.
The other 2011 SAB Eat In Produce Awards winners, with the motivation for their selection, are the following:
The 2011 edition of Eat In magazine was launched at the event, the tenth issue, with 850 listings in categories such as bakeries, butcheries, cheese suppliers, delis, cooking schools, kitchen tool suppliers, ‘exotica’ (being spice and imported product suppliers), fish suppliers, farm stalls and markets, organic food suppliers, caterers, olives and olive oils, and tea and coffee suppliers. For the first time quick and easy recipes are provided as well.
For the first time the Eat In Produce Awards were held with a ‘Night Market’ at the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill, with many of the regular stall holders and past Eat In Produce winners selling their wonderful products. I was pleased to meet Richard Bosman (left), making an excellent quality and packaged range of cured meats using pasture reared pork. I bought lovely mozzarella products from Puglia Cheese, and loved the stand for Buffalo Ridge in Wellington, buying their mozzarella too, and trying their yoghurt. It was good to see La Motte’s Farm Shop have a stand too.
To co-incide with the Awards, S A Breweries launched two craft beers at the event – a Newlands Extra Special, and the Sunset Wheat Beer. A lovely sparkling Newlands Spring water was also available to drink at the launch.
As an invited guest to the Awards, it was disappointing that there was no name tag on arrival, despite my RSVP. The media and “VIP” guests were herded into the back section of the market hall, but there was no one to guide one to the SAB table for the beer, and there was no wine available if one was not a beer drinker. No food was served (ironic for a food-related event), and invited guests had to buy their food. The whole function seemed a little amateurish in its execution, and I had to ask for the media pack on my departure, no New Media Publishing staff member proactively ensuring that all guests received such a pack. The media pack consisted of a selection of SA Breweries beers, a lanyard and the Eat In magazine, but none of the award-winning products! Eat Out editor Abigail Donnelly, who was attending the event as a colleague, and who was one of the writers for the magazine, was most hospitable and helpful, even though it was not her function, and not her duty to do so. New Media Publishing’s Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards’ events have a far longer history, admittedly, but are slick and almost without hiccups, in contrast to what we experienced at the SAB Eat In Produce Awards. Parking anywhere reasonably close to the Old Biscuit Mill remains a challenge, even in the late afternoon.
Eat In 2011 magazine. www.eat-in.co.za
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
The first Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting for 2011 kicks off on Wednesday 26 January at well-known Pigalle Restaurant in Green Point, and ‘pairs’ highly knowledgeable Dusan Jelic from wine.co.za and Linda Harding, who Tweets and blogs as The Squashed Tomato.
Dusan comes from Serbia, yet has the most amazing command of English, and can wax lyrical about wines and their character. He is highly regarded as a wine writer. He has a BA in Sociology and Russian, and a Masters in Cultural Management. He has done a number of Cape Wine Academy courses, and is continuing with a diploma course at the moment. He has worked as a translator, and in administration. Dusan is the Social Networking and Media Manager at wine.co.za
and Tweets as @StefanLuka and @winecoza.
“Superb wines from Dalmatian region of Croatia started shaping my palate some twenty years ago as well as a great passion for wine which my dad always communicated to me”, says Dusan. Dusan’s blog on wine.co.za expresses his special wine moments. His goal is to publish at least one blogpost per work day. Dusan says he works in a field which he loves and enjoys immensely.
Linda Harding is a smart young lady, having passed her matric with straight A’s, and with a Bachelor degree in Business Science, passing her majors Economics and Statistics with distinction at UCT. She started her career in Sales, then became a Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, whereafter she joined market research company TNS Research Surveys. In December she started working at New Media Publishing, as an intern, on Eat Out and Eat In, and writes Tweets, works on their Facebook updates and website, and writes features, articles and profiles. She is also a wine ambassador to two wine cellars in Constantia.
Linda’s started her blog in May last year, and her blog name came from her favourite book as a five year old, called “The Squashed Tomato Joke Book”, which also had some recipes in it, and this is where her love for food writing was born. The Squashed Tomato blog focuses on food, wine and fun, she writes. She was one of top three winners in the Fairview Food Bloggers’ Challenge last year. Linda will talk about the use of Twitter and Blogger in social media, and how to improve one’s readership, connections and gain friends. She will also address “the lack of respect that I see on a daily basis within the industry, particularly from reviewers”.
The Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club was formed to reflect the tremendous growth in and power of food and wine blogs in forming opinion about food, restaurants and wines. Most bloggers do not have any formal training in blogging, and learnt from others. The Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club aims to foster this informal training, and to serve as social media networking opportunity.
Each of the two bloggers will talk for about half an hour about their blog, and what they have learnt about blogging. The Club will give fledgling as well as experienced bloggers the opportunity to learn from each other and to share their knowledge with others. Attendees can ask questions, and get to know fellow bloggers. The Club meetings are informal and fun.
Wines are brought along by the wine blogging speaker, and Dusan will share some of the wines from wine.co.za and from his private collection. Seafood snacks will be served by Pigalle Restaurant. The cost of attendance is R100.
Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club, 26 January 18h00 – 20h00 : Pigalle Restaurant, 57 Somerset Road, Green Point, Cape Town – entrance is from the back of the building, next to the Primedia and Tafelberg Furnishers entrances, off Highfield Road/corner Somerset Road. Parking costs R10. Bookings can be made by e-mailing Chris at whalecot@iafrica.com.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
The Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting held at Brio restaurant last night was a huge success, with five Haut Espoir wines tasted, and Rob Armstrong of the wine estate and Sam Wilson of Food24 informing and entertaining the food and wine bloggers attending. There were lots of laughs, and bloggers attending participated in the discussion. Cape Town was highlighted by Rob as seeing an “explosion” of food and wine writing, mainly via bloggers, which was not evident in other areas in South Africa.
Sam Wilson, Editor-in-Chief of Food24, Woman24 and Parent 24, impressed by doing her presentation using an iPad, which most bloggers had not seen before. She challenged bloggers to find their “barrier of authenticity”, in that each blogger should define how far one can go, who one is via one’s blog, and how much of one’s self one wants to reveal. Each blogger should set their own parameters. “How much of you do you want to be?” she asked the bloggers. She argued for honesty in blogging, and for not following the magazine route of “selling out”, in only writing good restaurant reviews. She said that Food24 would be following a policy of saying it as it is in their restaurant reviews. Brad Ball, chef of Bistro 1682, in discussion of restaurant reviews, said that they welcome the feedback from reviews, and act upon it. He does take the feedback “from whence it comes”, he said. Restaurant owners and chefs were advised to not respond when they have had something to drink! Restaurants should contact the clients posting negative reviews, and sort the issue out as quickly as possible.
Sam warned bloggers to not set themselves up as an expert, as one can easily be ridiculed by others. She advised them to be humble and honest in their writing. She reminded bloggers to not take their blogging too seriously, and not be too earnest, but rather enjoy it and to blog for fun. Each individual blogger’s writing will not change the world, and “does not matter in the bigger scheme of things”. Sam advised that Google Analytics be used to measure the blog’s readership. Food24 has a special page on its website to provide a platform for 440 food bloggers, with 50000 readers and 200000 page impressions per month. She advised new food bloggers to join the Blog platform that had been set up for them on the Food24 website, and then to start up their own independent blogs once they have gained in confidence. Photographs should be captioned and tagged, to help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and should be well-shot in good light. Headlines should have “Googable” words in them, for SEO. The most popular recipes posted on the Food24 Blogs platform are for fundamental meals such as chicken pie, macaroni cheese, bobotie, and anything with chocolate in it. A recent post of a “Braai pie” recipe attracted 10 000 hits for a first-time blogger. Sam concluded that she no longer sees herself as a journalist, but as a “conversation shepherd”.
Rob Armstrong impressed the bloggers by being himself and honest (as was Sam), and is incredibly tall. Haut Espoir was bought by his family in Franschhoek ten years ago, and Rob took the bloggers through an informal tasting of his Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Shiraz Rose (he says they cannot make enough of it), Gentle Giant (named after Rob’s brother) and Shiraz. Half of Haut Espoir is planted with vines, and the other half with fynbos, over 7 000 fynbos cuttings, representing 600 – 700 species, having been planted. The goal is to follow organic and biodynamic farming practices, and Haut Espoir supports the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative. The winemaker is Nikey van Zyl, and Rob says that he is in charge of sales and quality control, in testing the wines. He has a personal relationship with his clients (including &Union and Caveau), and personally delivers his wines to them, so maintaining the good relationship. Rob writes a “Fynbos Friday” post about the wonderful plants they have on their farm. One can do a Fynbos and Vine Tour with Rob, by making an appointment. In contrast to Sam, Rob does not know his website readership, and does not really care what it is. He does however know that they produce 80 000 bottles of wine per year.
It was interesting to hear the Canadian statistic that the average time between buying and drinking a bottle of wine is 17 minutes, meaning that wine drinkers are not ageing their wines any more. In South Africa the statistic is 72 minutes. Rob shared that the number of Vignerons of Franschhoek has more than doubled since 2004, and now stands at 54. Discussions are in place to stretch the new Franschhoek Wine of Origin region, to include such wine estates as Backsberg and Glen Carlou. Rob is the Chairman of the Vignerons’ Sustainability Committee, a joint action by the vignerons to self-audit their sustainability. Wine buyers can check the sustainablity of the wines they buy and drink via the new sustainability seals. Rob is on Twitter, as @Rambowine, while the farm’s Twittering (@HautEspoir) is done by Raoul de Jongh. Rob was asked whether wine sales had increased due to his blogging and Twitter activity, and he said that he could not quantify that, but that it was easier to sell his wines due to the awareness that had been created for Haut Espoir.
The next Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting will be held on Wednesday 22 September, at the Salt Vodka and Champagne Bar, above Salt Deli and across the road from the Ambassador Hotel in Bantry Bay. Food blogger Dax Villanueva from Relax-with-Dax and wine blogger Hein Koegelenberg from La Motte will be the speakers. To make a booking to attend, e-mail info@whalecottage.com.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com
I have come across a blog called “Food Blog Code of Ethics”, compiled by two food bloggers in America, which has raised the important issue of ethics in food blogging, which principles can apply to wine and other blogging too. The Code raises important issues for South African bloggers in dealing with the ethics of blogging.
Brooke Burton writes the blog ‘FoodWoolf’, subtitled “the restaurant insider’s perspective”, and Leah Greenstein’s blog is called ‘SpicySaltySweet’. They got together with other food bloggers to create an ‘union of ethical food bloggers’, setting “Reviewers’ Guidelines” and compiling the Code of Ethics. We do not necessarily agree with all their principles, but welcome it as a foundation for a Blogging Code of Conduct that we may jointly subscribe to as members of the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club.
The blog post on reviewing restaurants states the following principles they subscribe too – our comments are in italics.
1. One should visit the restaurant more than once, and state if the review is based on only one visit – we do not agree that a review should be based on more than visit, as the strengths and weaknesses of a restaurant are usually the same and apparent immediately. Restaurants should strive for consistency, so that the reviewer should experience it in the same way on any visit. Reviews help restaurants improve their food and service quality, if they are smart about facing them and learning from them, not always a strength of restaurants. Multiple visits are expensive, as most visits are paid for by the reviewer. On our Blog we will update our impression with a Postscript, as we did recently for La Mouette, for example, in that the experience was vastly different compared to previous ones, highlighting a consistency problem.
2. One should sample the full range of dishes on the menu – this is a hard one to implement, as many menus are excessively big. Taking a partner to lunch/dinner and ordering different dishes helps, so that the reviewer can try a larger number. Recently we were criticised by Richard Carstens’ sister-in-law, Leigh Robertson, for not having a starter at Chez d’Or, and that writing a review based on tasting three dishes only was not fair to the restaurant. I doubt if a starter would have made my review any more positive. Having a wide range of dishes, when paying for it, is a cost and a space consideration.
3. One should be fair to a new restaurant and wait for a month after its opening, to give it a chance “to work out some kinks”, and should qualify reviews as ‘initial impressions’ if the review is done in less than a month after opening – bloggers have become very competitive, and some want to write a review about new restaurants before their colleagues do. Our reviews state when the restaurant opened if it is new, so that the reader can read such “kinks” into it. The first ‘Rossouw’s Restaurants’ review of La Mouette raised the issue of how quickly one can/should review a new restaurant, one of Rossouw’s inspectors having been at the restaurant on its first or second day of opening. Two visits to Leaf Restaurant and Bar on two subsequent days showed their acceptance of customer feedback by moving the ghetto-blaster they have set up on the terrace from on top of a table, to below it, after my comments to them about it. No other business, play or movie has a second chance in reviews being written about it, in that they are normally done after opening night – so why should restaurants be ‘protected’ in this way? No business should open its doors when it is not ready to do so (Leaf held back its opening because it had problems in getting a credit card machine installed by the bank)!
4. One should specify if one received a meal, or part of it, or any other product for free, and should also declare if one was recognised in the restaurant – absolutely agree on the declaration of the freebie, and we have regular Blog readers and Commenters who delight in checking blogs for the freebies. Some bloggers are labelled by such readers as not having credibility, in that they usually only write about meals they received for free, and usually are very positive about them, so that they can be invited back in future! The recognisablity of the reviewer is an interesting issue. I always book in the name of “Chris”, with a cell number. If I know the owner or a staff member of the restaurant, I will state that in the review.
5. One should not use pseudonyms in writing reviews, and reviewers should stand up and be counted by revealing their names – absolutely agree. In Cape Town we have a strange situation of Food bloggers who hide behind pseudonyms. Andy Fenner (JamieWho) wanted to remain unidentified when he started blogging, yet appointed a PR agency to raise his profile, and was “outed” by Food & Home, when they wrote about him, using his real name. He is now open about his real name (probably being irritated by being called Jamie more often than Andy, I assume). One wonders what bloggers using pseudonyms have to hide? Wine bloggers seem to be more open and upfront about who they are. I would like to add here how difficult it is to make contact with Food Bloggers in particular . Most do not have a telephone number nor an e-mail address to contact them on their blogs, and one has to use a Comment box to contact them, which most do not respond to. Yet many of these bloggers are looking to make money from advertising on their blogs.
The Code of Ethics which the two bloggers prepared with their colleagues is as follows:
“1. We will be accountable
2. We will be civil
3. We will reveal bias
4. We will disclose gifts, comps and samples
5. We will follow the rules of good journalism
The above aspects are clear and need no elaboration. The last sentence of the Code is odd though, in that we are “new age” journalists, and must play by the same rules as the print, radio and TV media do. That means we must research our stories, to ensure their accuracy. One can correct a blog post if one makes an error, including spelling and grammar ones. An American food blog recently added a note about getting the name of a restaurant reviewer wrong – she did not change it in the blog post, but wrote an apology at the bottom of her post, highlighting the error, which most readers probably would not have picked up. A controversial issue is the announcement of Reuben Riffel taking over the maze space at the One&Only Hotel Cape Town, which Riffel has denied. No correction or apology to Riffel or the hotel has been posted,
We encourage Bloggers and Blog readers to give us their views on the Code of Ethics as well as the Restaurant Review guidelines, which we will be happy to post. I would like to get the ball rolling by stating that the Code should include the publishing of Comments, even if they are controversial, as long as they do not attack the writer or the subject of the blog post with malice, and the Commenter is identified, as is the family or other relationship of the Commenter (e.g. JP Rossouw’s and Richard Carstens’ sisters-in-law). I would also like to hear views about revealing to the restaurant that one is writing a review, in that I was recently criticised by the co-owner of Oskar Delikatessen for not asking permission to write a review and to take photographs, which contradicts the Code on writing unidentified. A third issue is the acceptance of advertising on one’s blog, or accepting sponsorships for brands, and how this should be revealed.
POSTSCRIPT 22/8 : Reuben Riffel’s appointment as the new operator of the restaurant at the One&Only Hotel Cape Town has been announced in the Sunday Times today. We congratulate Spill blog on having had its ear to the ground in announcing this news ahead of all other media. The One&Only Hotel had denied speaking to Spill about Reuben’s appointment at the time that they wrote the story, and Riffel had denied it too.
POSTSCRIPT 29/8: Since writing this post, the identity of The Foodie as being David Cope has been revealed by Crush!2. Furthermore, Clare “Mack” of Spill Blog (with her husband Eamon McLoughlin) has been identified as being Clare McKeon, an ex-Irish TV chat show hostess, columnist, author of “The Emotional Cook”, magazine beauty journalist, and owner of the Bliss Beauty Salon.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com