On Tuesday I heard about Chef Matt Schreuder opening his second restaurant, at the luxury The Andros Boutique Hotel. When I ate at Homespun by Matt in Blouberg one and a half years ago, I predicted that this restaurant was destined for great things, it being one of my best fine-dining eating experiences in our country. 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 arrived in Havana on 3 July 2019, with no preparation of what I wanted to see or do, except that I wanted to learn to dance the Salsa. I was lucky that a slightly out of date ‘Cuba’ Guide by Lonely Planet was lying in the lounge of the San Lazaro BnB I stayed at. I annexed it for the more than three weeks that I stayed there, and found useful background information in it, but perhaps it contains too much information, not just focused on Havana, my only destination in Cuba, therefore making a large part of the book irrelevant to me. Much more useful was the Guidebook ‘300 Things to love about Havana’ by Heidi Hollinger, focused on Havana, divided into the various suburbs of Havana, with an address, a good representative photograph, and largely accurate in its descriptions, even if published in 2018. 
The night before our lunch at Eleven Madison Park, a Michelin three-star restaurant and named in June as third best in the World’s 50 Best Restaurant ranking, I could barely sleep from excitement, the reason for my trip to New York. Of the seven top restaurants I am booked for in New York and London Eleven Madison Park tops them all in stature, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. Continue reading →