Tag Archives: Aziamende

How much does Bruce Palling really know about food and wine? Not much, it seems!

Speaking to some of the chefs whose Eat Out Top 20 restaurants were bashed by blogger Bruce Palling in the past few days, a new picture emerges, in that he appears to have enjoyed our South African wines so much that he seems to have made a number of errors in his ‘reviews’ of the restaurants, writing about them six months after visiting them, misspelling wine and dish names, and even getting the meat types he was served wrong!  He has done our country’s restaurant industry great damage and harm, and demoralised our country’s best chefs.

Palling had two bottles of wine per meal on average, and four bottles per day, on each of 15 days, a total of 60 bottles he blogged proudly, now an expert on South African wines too! Some of Palling’s faux pas were the following:

*   Ordering Steenberg at Planet Restaurant, which he called ‘Steenburger’!

*   He couldn’t spell Biesmiellah and denningvleis, even though he Tweeted about his (private) meal directly from the restaurant!

*   He got the Vriesenhof variety he BYO’d at Makaron Restaurant incorrect, mistaking Continue reading →

Controversial Eat Out 2012 judge Bruce Palling tells SA chefs to simplify their dishes!

Given that the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards were presented two months ago, and that its controversial international judge Bruce Palling tasted his way around the country five months ago, it was a surprise to see the article he has written about South African cuisine for British Airways Highlife, published yesterday, now claiming to be an expert about our country’s cuisine, wines, and even its accommodation!

The magazine article, which was sent as a scan from London, differs somewhat from the internet version of it, and has some text, but the most interesting part is the restaurants which Palling praised, and those that he slated. The article bills him as an expert on South African cuisine, given that he ate 200 dishes and drank 60 wines at 30 restaurants in Cape Town, the Winelands, Johannesburg, and KwaZulu-Natal in a period of 15 days, to score Eat Out editor Abigail Donnelly’s Top 20 restaurant shortlist.

What Palling neglected to write in the article was that some of the restaurants he went to were for his private dining, and were not evaluated for Eat Out (e.g. Biesmiellah and Continue reading →

2012: a year of Tourism ups and downs!

Looking back at 2012 on the last day of the year, every business will be grateful that it is still around, given that the international world is still in recession, and the impact thereof has made itself felt in South Africa too.   It is heartening that fewer hospitality businesses closed their doors this year, but it is clear that fewer restaurants have opened, and few top-end ones in particular.   So what stood out in 2012?:

*   The worst winter season ever for the hospitality industry, following a poor winter 2011, not just related to the poor economy and traditional Seasonality, but also to the exceptionally wet winter, which deterred Johannesburgers from coming to the Cape, and prevented Capetonians from taking weekends off in Western Cape towns and villages.

*   No marketing of Cape Town and the Western Cape. Cape Town Routes Unlimited was amalgamated into Wesgro in April, yet no visible marketing has been done for the Continue reading →