Tag Archives: Cindy Muller

Noma back as top World’s 50 Best Restaurants! The Test Kitchen Best in Africa and ranked 48th!

World's 50 Best Restaurants logoThe eagerly awaited 12th The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards was held last night at The Guildhall in London, and the Top 50 Restaurants were announced. Restaurants ranked 51st – 100th were listed on the Awards website, which crashed just after the Awards ceremony!

The initiative of Restaurant magazine in the UK, and using 900 judges from around the world, a total of 6552 votes were cast to vote for the world’s best restaurants.  The world was divided into 26 regions, chaired by an expert for that region.  Tamsin Snyman heads the Africa panel of 36 members, who had to eat at 4 local as well as at 3 international restaurants to cast their vote.  No score is required – the vote is purely for the best restaurants they ate at, and must be presented in ranked order.  Every year 10 panelists step down per region, to be replaced by new ones.   For the first time in seven years Snyman did not attend, for family reasons.

The biggest surprise was that Noma in Copenhagen went back to its number one Continue reading →

Eat Out appoints UK food writer Bruce Palling to judge Top 10 Restaurant Awards!

Interesting news arrived in the media release received yesterday, announcing that Eat Out Editor Abigail Donnelly has appointed Bruce Palling, London-based food blogger, and food writer for Wall Street Journal Europe, to ‘assist in judging South Africa’s top restaurants‘ for the 2012 Eat Out DStv Food Network Restaurant Awards.

Last year Eat Out’s decision to fire its panel of judges (MasterChef SA judge Pete Goffe-Wood, MasterChef SA Culinary Director Arnold Tanzer, and Anna Trapido, author of a biography about Nelson Mandela’s life through food), and the announcement that its editor would be the sole judge, was met with surprise and shock, especially when controversial decisions were made, for example, Luke Dale-Roberts of The Test Kitchen was appointed Chef of the Year, and is featured in almost every issue of Taste, of which Ms Donnelly is the Food Editor, while The Greenhouse was announced the number one Top 10 restaurant; the most controversial award was that of the newly introduced Boschendal Style Award, which Ms Donnelly awarded to Makaron Restaurant at Majeka House, her (undisclosed) consulting client!; the exclusion of Tokara, with its top chef Richard Carstens, from the Top 10 restaurant list; and the award of Best Country Style Restaurant going to The Table at De Meye, which few had heard of, had only been open for a few months, and is owned by a photographer which Mrs Donnelly uses for some of her Taste shoots.

Mr Palling writes a weekly column for the European edition of the Wall Street Journal, and amended versions of his newspaper columns are featured on his blog Gastroenophile.  Interesting is that a Google search found no results for anything written about Mr Palling, one just finding links to his blog posts.  For the past six years he has been a judge for the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards.  Mr Palling is Australian born, was a reporter for the BBC World Service in the former Indochina. He was a reporter for a number of publications in South-East Asia, Zimbabwe, and the USA. He then moved to travel writing for Tatler, and created a Travel Guide for them. Thereafter he created a travel company called Western & Oriental, of which he is the Chairman.  He is described as having a passion for ‘fine wine and interesting food’, but also writes about travel.

Mrs Donnelly praised the new judge for being ‘an exceptional food writer’, for bringing ‘extensive international experience and knowledge to Eat Out and our awards – something that we’ve always aspired to‘. Mr Palling will assist Mrs Donnelly in selecting the ‘finalists for the Top 10 restaurants across the country‘. In yesterday’s weekly Eat Out newsletter Mrs Donnelly wrote that Mr Palling will also help to select ‘the winners of the other accolades’, including Chef of the Year, and the Service Excellence Award.

Mr Palling has never been to South Africa, and is quoted in the Eat Out media release as saying: ‘I know from my experience as a judge for the San Pellegrino Awards that South Africa is well represented among the top international contenders and I look forward to experiencing for myself what the local restaurant industry has to offer’. The Eat Out media release describes Mr Palling as an ‘internationally acclaimed gastronome’. Odd then that there is no information to be found written about him.

What dates Mr Palling severely is his reference in his profile to Zimbabwe as ‘White Rhodesia’, and his use of Blogger as his blogging platform (used by newbie amateur bloggers)!

In one of Mr Palling’s articles (‘What’ll it be? Wallaby’) he wrote about a visit to Australia three months ago, and local chefs may pick up some tips about what he looks for from it.  He wrote that he was ‘disappointed by the lack of much distinctively Australian-ingredient-led cuisine, except for the occasional piece of well-cooked wallaby. There must be more native produce out there waiting to be used.  Increasingly, what excites me is bold cuisine that belongs to a specific location, thanks to its unique ingredients. This is why the best New Nordic places in Scandinavia deserve all the hype. There is something fulfilling about consuming produce that relates to your region. That’s also why I adore fine wine from around the globe because it speaks of its origins and is nuanced on an annual basis by the weather. For this reason, I also think it is slightly depressing that the most famous Australian wine, Penfolds Grange, is a blend of grapes from dispersed locations rather than reflecting a specific vineyard’. In the same article he refers to his ‘passion for foraged cuisine’.

It will be interesting to see how the country’s top restaurants react to the news about the appointment of the new Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant judge!

POSTSCRIPT 29/7: Doing some further research on the new Eat Out Top 10 RestaurantBruce Palling, we have discovered:

*   Last year Bruce Palling was one of 837 judges around the world evaluating the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards.  He has no specific senior position in this capacity. South Africa’s judges last year were Eat Out editor Abigail Donnelly, MasterChef SA Culinary Producer Arnold Tanzer, Mont Rochelle Hotel Managing Director Erwin Schnitzler, retired market researcher Henry Barenblatt, food writer and previous Eat Out editor Sam Woulidge, ex-Cafe Max owner and now Londolozi Chef Anna Ridgewell, occasional food blogger David Cope, Grand Provence GM Karl Lambour, Chef’s Warehouse & Cookery School owner and Liam Tomlin Food co-owner Liam Tomlin, Principal of Institute of Culinary Arts Letitia Prinsloo, Platter restaurant writer Jos Baker, GOLD restaurant owner Cindy Muller, winemaker and 96 Winery Road owner Ken Forrester, The Test Kitchen and Pot Luck Club Chef and owner Luke Dale-Roberts, Graham Beck winemaker Pieter Ferreira, and Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants co-owner Andy Fenner.  The Academy Chairman for Southern Africa is Tamsin Snyman.

*   Local restaurateurs with UK connections have never heard of writer Bruce Palling

*   Bruce Palling does not appear to have won any awards for his writing, yet is praised by Mrs Donnelly as ‘an exceptional food writer’, not substantiating this accolade.

*   The Wall Street Journal‘s Europe edition has a circulation of only 74800 (in 2011), and is on a decline. Mr Palling is one of a number of food and restaurant writers for the newspaper.

*   In the quote attributed to Mr Palling in the Eat Out media release, he flatteringly wrote that he was aware that our country was ‘well represented among the international contenders’ – ironically, in the 2012 awards South Africa slipped badly, no local restaurant making the 2012 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for the first time in a number of years.  The Tasting Room made 57th position (down from 36th the year before) and The Test Kitchen 74th position, reflecting how ill-informed Mr Palling is!

POSTSCRIPT 30/7: Mr Palling has a-palling-ly retaliated on Twitter to this blogpost, calling me a ‘noisy blogger’, and disparaging our Whale Cottages, hardly a gentlemanly response!  He must be really mad, as he has continued this afternoon with more attacking Tweets, calling me a ‘pig ignorant peasant’!  He is welcome to write a response to this blogpost.  Let the Games begin!

POSTSCRIPT 20/9: As we predicted, Bruce Palling’s involvement in the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards has been a-palling to date, and he left Cape Town under a cloud of controversy on Monday, after 2 weeks of judging the Top 20 candidate restaurants.  Despite his involvement, to help improve Eat Out editor Abigail Donnelly’s image due to the controversy last year, a new bomb has burst about the initial inclusion of The Pot Luck Club on the Top 20 list when it has not been open for the 12 months required in the rules of the Award.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage

noma wins The World’s 50 Best Restaurants for third time, South Africa doesn’t make top 50 list!

Chef Rene Redzepi’s noma restaurant won the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for the third time last night, the tenth year that the Awards ceremony has been held.  The event was sponsored by San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, was held at The Guildhall in London, and was attended by 600 of the world’s top chefs and restaurant judges. A shock was that, for the first time in many years, no South African restaurant made it onto the Top 50 list.

The Top 20 World’s 50 Best Restaurants are the following (with last year’s ranking in brackets), from The Telegraph :

1 (1) Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark

2 (2) El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain

3 (3) Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain

4 (7) D.O.M., Sao Paolo, Brazil

5 (4) Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy

6 (10) Per Se, New York, USA

7 (6) Alinea, Chicago, USA

8 (8) Arzak, San Sebastian, Spain

9 (-) Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London, UK

10 (24) Eleven Madison Park, New York, USA

11 (22) Steirereck, Vienna, Austria

12 (14) L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Paris, France

13 (5) The Fat Duck, Bray, UK

14 (34) The Ledbury, London, UK

15 (9) Le Chateaubriand, Paris, France

16 (19) L’Arpege, Paris, France

17 (16) Pierre Gagnaire, Paris, France

18 (13) L’Astrance, Paris, France

19 (18) Le Bernardin, New York, USA

20 (57) Frantzen/Lindeberg, Stockholm, Sweden

France narrowly leads with seven awards on the top 50 list, followed by six for the USA, five for Spain, and three each going to Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français fell to its lowest ranking, at number 57, after a ranking of 36th last year, and 31st in 2010. Chef Luke Dale-Roberts of The Test Kitchen made 74th position – two years ago he reached the astounding 12th place whilst still at La Colombe.  Last year La Colombe made 82nd position, but did not make the top 100 list this year.  Last year Chef David Higgs’ Rust en Vrede achieved a ranking of 61st, but sadly he left the restaurant two months later.

The Award-winning restaurants were evaluated by 27 panels around the world, each with 30 members.  In South Africa the panel is chaired by Tamsin Snyman, stepping into the shoes of her late mother Lannice Snyman.  Members of the local panel are known to include Jos Baker, MasterChef SA Judge and Chef Pete Goffe-Wood, and owner of GOLD restaurant Cindy Muller.  Panel members had to evaluate four restaurants in their own country and three elsewhere in the world in the past eighteen months.

William Drew, editor of Restaurant magazine, organisers of the awards, said that the trend was to ‘much more diversity, both geographically and in terms of style.  We’ve seen twin trends. There’s globalization, in the sense that if someone in Japan is doing something interesting now, someone in South America may know about it quickly. Yet at the same time there’s a move toward local cooking’.

Attending the event was Ferran Adria of El Bulli, which he closed down last year.  The restaurant was named the World’s 50 Best Restaurant five times in the past ten years.  He said of the award: “There is no doubt the World’s 50 Best Restaurants has changed the history of gastronomy“.

In addition to announcing the World’s 50 Best Restaurants (and the 51 – 100 restaurants bubbling under), three additional awards were made last night. Elena Arzak from Arzak restaurant in San Sebastian in Spain was named as Veuve Clicquot World’s Best Female Chef. Thomas Keller, founder of Per Se and French Laundry in Yountville in California, won the San Pellegrino Lifetime Achievement Award.  The Slow Food UK Award went to Steiereck in Vienna, awarded for the first time last night.

What has been interesting over the past years has been the disparity between the performance of South Africa’s best restaurants on the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurants and on the World’s 50 Best Restaurant lists, Le Quartier Français always performing better on the international than on the local restaurant awards list.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage

Gold Restaurant Sweet and Cape Talk Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award goes to Gold Restaurant on Strand Street, its owner Cindy Muller, and its PR agency Hazell PR’s Jacqui Jones, for the invitation to a dinner at the Africa-inspired restaurant.   The welcome after one has walked through the Gold Museum, the facade of the building to the outside world, is by means of a surprise hand wash and dry by the staff – a nice touch.   Prossy, who hails from Uganda, took us on a Cape Malay and African Taste Safari throughout the evening, serving 5 small starter portions, 6 small main portions and 2 desserts.  Beautifully painted plates and bowls in strong colours are brought to the table regularly, in which one can spoon one’s choice of food (examples are peri-peri prawns with oranges, smoorvis, roti, couscous, West African peanut chicken, and boeber dessert).    The staff are beautifully dressed, in a layered look, with lots of orange, and also gold.    The bread is served in a flower pot.  Entertainment is offered, and the many German tourists take photograph after photograph, loving the dancing of the staff, the Mali puppets, the Congolese drumming, and the singing.

The Sour Service Award was nominated by George Bogdan, and goes to Cape Talk. 

“The more I listen to Cape Talk 567 the more it frustrates me for being such an amateurish radio station!  It continually tells its listeners it is Cape Town’s Number 1 News and Talk station. It is Cape Towns ONLY News and Talk station!  The problem goes further than that. Every Saturday and Sunday and public holiday it plays hours and hours of Golden Oldies. Hardly News and Talk. It seems to have the smallest record library in the world. My collection of old records is bigger than theirs. If I hear Cliff Richard sing Summer Holiday or Congratulations one more time I will take my radio and throw it through their studio windows in Greenpoint!!!.    Easter weekend Eugene T Blanche is murdered so what does Cape Towns Number One “News and Talk Station” do?…..It carries on playing Golden Oldies all day.!!!!!!!!   Have the owners (Primedia) the Station Controllers or the Producers not listened to so called News station around the world. In any country I have worked in (including being a BBC News Producer) the music would have been dropped and we would have gone into “rolling news” mode.  Here?…. NO…Carry on playing Cliff Richard etc.  What happened on Sunday evening “could” be the start of something terrible but what does our Number 1 station do it carries on playing Golden Oldies.   Yes I know there were hourly bulletins but you can hardly can call them coverage.  They also have a problem with the word ‘Allegedly”. They talk about alleged murders, car accidents etc. The murders, accidents are not alleged they are FACT. The people who are charged with anything to do with them are  deemed to be allegedly connected with the event. When they are found guilty the alleged can be dropped.”
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.