Tag Archives: Robertson’s

MasterChef SA to make a 4th Season comeback after a six year absence!

 

It was a chance remark from a chef that I was alerted to the news that MasterChef SA is to make a comeback…. but the news is scant!

The history of MasterChef SA : MasterChef had three seasons in South Africa, with Chefs Pete Goffe-Wood and Bennie Masekwameng as judges in all three seasons. Chef Reuben Riffel joined the third season as a judge. The filming took place at Nederburg. Robertsons was the main sponsor. Season Winners were Dean Naidoo, Kamini Pather, and Roxi Wardman (crowned in December 2014).  I covered each show of the three seasons on this Blog.  Continue reading →

Celebrating Vegan Month with a B-Well Vegan Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake in a Cup!

 

It is clear to see that the Vegan trend is growing by leaps and bounds.  In Camps Bay, for example, three restaurants out of twenty in the suburb are almost completely Vegan in the fare they offer, particularly okja and Plant Food, while Firefly Café has a large percentage of Vegan dishes. Even regular restaurants have a number of Vegan dishes on their menus.

In honour of Vegan Month I was challenged by B-Well, together with a number of other ‘Influencers’, to bake a Vegan Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake in a Mug, the mayonnaise ingredient intriguing me in particular, and therefore I agreed  to participate. Continue reading →

Taste of Cape Town 2015 offers a taste of the World’s 3rd Best Food City!

Taste of Cape Town logoCape Town has just been ranked third Best Food City in the World by Condé Nast Traveler Readers Choice Awards 2014.  Taste of Cape Town 2015, running at the Green Point Cricket Club until the end of today, gives locals and visitors a taste of what makes our city so special as a food destination.

Hosted for the eighth year in Cape Town, and run by food editor and stylist Justin Drake, Taste of Cape Town hasTaste of Cape Town Jutine Drake Whale Cottage settled in at the cricket club venue after venue changes in early years. Taste of Cape Town is a festive and fun way to eat and drink one’s way around one venue, showcasing not only restaurants and wine estates in Cape Town, but also those in the Winelands.

I was invited by Errieda du Toit PR to attend the Taste of Cape Town, and was joined by Continue reading →

Chef Reuben Riffel: 2014 was a very busy year! More MasterChef to come!

Reuben Riffel Whale CottageYesterday I met Chef Reuben Riffel for a Day of Reconciliation coffee at Crisp in Franschhoek, around the corner from his Reuben’s restaurant, a follow-up from our reconnection at the Mercedes-Benz Eat Out Restaurant Awards.

As he sat down, Chef Reuben apologised for not feeling 100%, starting a cold, and expressing that he is exhausted after a very busy year, but seems to have enjoyed every minute of it. Ironically he and his wife Maryke had planned 2014 last year, wanting it to be a less busy year than 2013, but looking back, he said it was even busier. In the past year he has done the following:

*   filmed MasterChef SA Celebrity Edition, a series we are yet to see, in January 2015, in which he cut his MasterChef judging teeth, apologising that he was still new at being a TV cooking show judge.  Food24 reports that the 10 celebrities, cooking for a prize to be donated to  charity, are Singer Patricia Lewis, Comedian Chris Forrest, Comedian TolAss­Mo, Continue reading →

Open Letter to The Guardian Africa correspondent David Smith: why bring race rhetoric into MasterChef SA Season 3?!

MstrChf 3 Sipho and RoxiDear David Smith

As the Africa correspondent for the UK The Guardian newspaper, I have been most interested in your interest in a relatively mediocre South African cooking show, in which home cooks vied to become MasterChef SA in Season 3.  Twice you have tried to spin a race story on finalist Sipho Mdlankomo, using her skin colour and her career as ways in which to bash our country and its people! Surely Africa could benefit from your writing skills in writing about our exciting loadshedding life, Cape Town making Best City in the world in your competitor The Telegraph, Ebola and its impact on tourism, the birth of the Monaco royal twins which have a South African link, etc.

A week before the MasterChef SA Season 3 winner was announced you started warming up the topic, by quoting Sipho in saying Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 3 episode 17: Roxi Wardman steams ahead to win Finale, praised by Chef Marco Pierre White!

MasterChef 17 RoxiAs we predicted in our blogpost yesterday, Roxi Wardman was crowned MasterChef SA Season 3 winner last night, and has waved her career at Transnet as an assistant train driver goodbye.  While her ‘opponent’ Sipho Mdlankomo is widely liked, there should be no debate about the fairness of the result, as the scoring was shared at every step of the three-stage challenge which the Top 2 had to go through last night.

It was a shock to see the transformation in Roxi’s appearance, from always well-MasterChef 17 Roxi Red pink hairpresented in terms of make-up and bling bling jewellery while she was in the MasterChef SA kitchen, to her red/pink hair, heavy make-up, and proudly-visible tattoos which she did not have as a Finalist.  We had only seen one piercing above her lip in the past.  It seemed as if Roxi could not believe that she had won the competition.

The Top 2 finalists met up in the MasterChef SA kitchen for one last time, and were delighted to see the other 10 Finalists there too, coming in support of the Top 2.  An even bigger surprise was the surprise arrival of Roxi’s parents and her boyfriend Byron, as well as Sipho’s ‘boss‘, as she called him, his wife, and their Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 3 episode 8: MasterRobertsons dominates, Refilwe Tselanyane spiced out!

MasterChef 3 8 Three Judges and RobertsonsCan Robertsons be any more dominant in MasterChef SA than in last night’s episode 8?  We have renamed MasterChef SA MasterRobertsons, as the hard sell of the spice brand in this Season 3 is becoming laughable!  One wonders how judges Benny Masekwameng and Pete Goffe-Wood (note his grumpy look in the M-Net publicity shot) must feel to have to push the brand, not an issue which Reuben Robertsons Riffel loses any sleep about, having cashed in on the spice brand for the past three years, thereby losing any credibility he may have previously had as a chef!

The episode started with the Blue Team, which lost the Team Challenge in episode 7.  Filmed on an interesting looking bridge in Umhlanga, directly at the ocean, the five Finalists Penny Fitchet, Refilwe Tselanyane, Roxi Wardman, Francois Zietsman, and Sipho Mdlankomo watching as Chef Benny was wheeled onto the bridge in a rickshaw, clutching a cloche, which he ceremoniously opened to reveal a Bean Curry Bunny Chow.  On the table surrounding the typical Durban dish was a collection of about 20 Robertsons spices and herbs, each MasterChef 3 8 Bean curry Bunny Chow MasterChefcovering a board with a black or a white sticker.  The task of the five Finalists was to each identify one of 15 spices and herbs in the BunnyMasterChef 3 8 Blue Team Whale Cottage Chow, just from tasting it.  The Finalists each drew a wooden cooking spoon with a number on it, to determine the order in which they had to identify the ingredients.  The Robertsons collection stood on a table with the ultimate kitsch tablecloth, in a bright orange, looking like rosettes.  Riffel clearly did not take History at school, confusing the role of Durban and Cape Town in linking our country to the East!

It was said by Riffel that the pressure would be on Roxi to identify the spices Continue reading →

Open Letter to Sarah Khan: Strange Selection of Travel + Leisure ‘Top Chefs in Cape Town’!

The Test KitchenDear Sarah

We are extremely proud to have you living in your newly adopted home city Cape Town, and that you are such a fantastic tourism ambassador for our country in general, and for Cape Town in particular.  You put Cape Town on the world tourist map with your article earlier this year in the New York Times about Cape Town being the number one  ’52 places to go in 2014′, the best free publicity our city has ever had.

I was therefore shocked to see your article about ‘Top Chefs in Cape Town’ in Travel + Leisure, and the choices you made in selecting what you have listed as the top five chefs in Cape Town: Luke Dale-Roberts of The Test Kitchen, Peter Tempelhoff of The Greenhouse, Reuben Robertsons Riffel of Reuben’s x 4 (in Franschhoek, Cape Town, Robertson, and Paternoster) plus Racine, Bruce Robertson of The Flagship, and Franck Dangereux of The Food Barn, in that order. You did not define your guidelines for selecting the five chefs, nor did you appear to use the same criteria in selecting the chefs that are on your list – the justification for inclusion appears more anecdotal and random.  Equally, I am surprised about the chefs you excluded from the list!

You seem to praise Chef Franck for his ‘foreign pedigree, but why single him out when Chefs Luke and Peter also have foreign roots?  Does that make them better chefs?  All of the chefs on your list have worked overseas, so they deserve equal mention in this regard.  You ‘warn’ Travel + Leisure readers to ‘watch out for these five Cape Town chefs and memorize their names now – they’re poised to break through to the global stage any day now‘!

Let me comment on each of your Top Chef choices: Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 3 episode 5: Carrots, carrots everywhere for dessert Invention Test!

MasterChef 3 5 Carrots Whale CottageEpisode 5 of MasterChef SA was long and drawn-out, featuring nine desserts made from a surprise ingredient – a Pantry overflowing with carrots, carrot juice, and carrot powder. Three new contestants will go into the Pressure Test in episode 6 next week, Ndumiso Mncwabe clearly heading for an early exit as he is facing his second Pressure Test.

The episode commenced with a recap of episode 4, Roxi Wardman sharing her euphoria about having visited and eaten at Chef Kevin Thornton’s 2 star Michelin Thornton’s restaurant in Dublin, for having won the best dish in episode 3.  She described it as a ‘mind blowing, life changing’ experience.  Philippa Robinson shared that Roxi’s success and her new confidence from her trip makes her feel intimidated, as she is one of the strongest contestants.

Reuben Robertsons Riffel led the contestants to the Pantry, and they were surprised to see the mountain of carrots, in red, orange, and purple, from which they had to make a dessert, with the carrot the focus, said Chef Benny Masekwameng.  Riffel said that a carrot dessert is not as crazy as it seems, and challenged the contestants to apply their mind.  A time limit of 90 minutes was set, MasterChef 3 5 Contestants Whale Cottagebut the Pantry was closed 15 minutes after the start. Once again the contestants were told that the three weakest dishes will place their creators into the Pressure Test, one of them going home in episode 6.  While there are eleven contestants left, only nine of them were interviewed and the evaluation of their dishes shown, Francois Zietsman and Mel Sutherland receiving no airtime last night. Continue reading →