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Toffie Food Festival: No toffees, über-design, über-promise, under-delivery!

When writing our blogpost about the Toffie Food Festival, we wrote about a number of aspects about the organisation of the Toffie Food Festival and Conference that left much to be desired, the organisers making a number of promises which they did not deliver on.  I expressed my scepticism in the blogpost, but it was the talk by ex-blogger Julie Powell, theme of the movie ‘Julie & Julia’, that made me book, despite the high price tag.  Despite enjoying the morning sessions on Saturday, it was the organisers reneging on the confirmed booked secret dinner venue for Saturday evening that was the final straw, and therefore I decided to leave, with my money refunded, when the organisers failed to fix their acknowledged booking error.

The Toffie (no explanation was given by the organisers for this odd name, and there was no toffee, except at the SA Breweries food and beer pairing) Food Festival was not explained, and probably referred to the City Hall room with a number of stalls, creating a mini market, including stands for Woolworth’s coffee, the Queen of Tarts, Oded’s Kitchen, and a few more.  Another room had a number of beer brands for sale.  A further room sold pies from Jason’s, and here mini-croissants were available, being the over-promised ‘breakfast’!   A further room had a colourful Mexican Piñatas design (the organisers seemed to get their countries mixed up, as a link to Argentina was intended, with a speaker from this country).  The problem with all the extra features was that nothing was explained on arrival, or at the start of the Conference.   The registration desk staff, acknowledging our booking, said nothing about the bookings for the workshops running alongside the Festival, nor about the Secret Dinners, which took place in the homes of a number of hosts on Saturday evening.  One had to find out everything oneself.

The Toffie Food Conference was a one and a half day presentation of a random collection of speakers, some having nothing to do with food at all (these were last minute replacements for initially advertised international speakers, the programme having been amended as late as two weeks before its start, Wolfgang Koedel of Paulaner  Brauhaus and perfumer Tammy Fraser being added). The only common element some speakers had was that they had published books, but there was no theme commonality for the Conference overall.  The venue was a tacky dark room in the City Hall, on a noisy corner with taxi-hooting disturbance from outside, and not in the downstairs main City Hall auditorium, as one had expected.  We sat on uncomfortable cheap plastic chairs which had been wrapped in brown paper (this was the ‘creative’ decoration used throughout), which meant that there was a lot of rustling in the venue when one moved on one’s chair. The organisers clearly struggled to fill the venue, it not being full, and ‘gave away’ tickets on Groupon(unfair to those who paid for the weekend in full), as well as offered seats as give-aways on M-Net.   Even on late Saturday afternoon, free Secret Dinner seats were offered via Twitter!

The organisers of the Toffie Food Festival and Conference were artist Peet Pienaar (a grumpy looking ex-rugby player with a Paul Kruger look, and who has a bizarre CV on Wikipedia, which I should have read before booking) and Hannerie Visser (ex-publisher of VISI and TASTE at New Media Publishing), both of never-heard-of-before The President design agency, with what must be the sparsest website ever seen, with design work done for Babylonstoren, BOS, TriBeCa, Navigator Films, and Bruce Lee magazines!  Neither have any food experience, nor have they organised a Conference before.  Copied from Argentina, they organise secret CHOP dinners in their offices, with Pienaar cooking bizarre meals (e.g. veal brain ravioli, the dinner and drinks costing R350) on a weekly basis.   This concept was built into the Toffie Food Festival, each delegate being allocated to a host, at whose home one would have dinner. Hosts were mainly from the decor design field.  While it was meant to be a random match of delegates with host venues, I liked the sound of GreyLamp, being a pop-up restaurant, and therefore I wrote to Visser, requesting this as my dinner venue.  She agreed by e-mail a few days before the event.  When I found the desk dealing with the dinners, I was given details of a completely different host, an editor of an art magazine, who had nothing to do with food at all!  There was no explanation for the error, and one of The President staff promised to sort it out, promising to find me to confirm the correction.  As I had experienced during the booking process, this promise was not met, and I had to return to the desk again. Lying on the table was a (brown paper wrapped) ‘present’ for me, with the news that I could not attend the GreyLamp dinner, as it was fully booked!  I went looking for Visser, but saw Pienaar first, and he rudely told me that it was tough that they had made an error in promising the venue.  This was echoed by Visser, when I finally found her.  It was the way in which she spoke to me, in that it was her right to take a promise away by making a mistake, that annoyed me.  When she offered to refund the money I had paid in full, I accepted it, as their error was a major let-down.  So while I missed out on Julie Powell’s talk after all of that, I was happy to leave this badly organised space, and was able to follow her speech on Twitter.  I couldn’t help but smile when I saw a number of disparaging Tweets about the poor Braai that closed off the Festival yesterday, the promised Argentinian Asado barbeque having fallen away, and the R150 Braai package (for those that brought partners) consisted of only a chop, a sausage and a roll, once again a false over-promise.

The speakers at the Toffie Conference tried their best to make up for the poor organisation and behind-the-scenes dramas happening outside the presentation venue:

*  Kobus van der Merwe, of the cutest Paternoster eatery Oep ve Eet, which I discovered a year ago, spoke about his love for foraging for West Coast foods in the preparation of his meals, including soutslaai, dune spinach, veldkool, seevygies, waterblommetjies, wild sage, and wild rosemary.    He grows some of his own vegetables and herbs, and has access to free-range farm eggs, Khoisan salt, bokkoms, cow’s milk, and flour close by.  Not only do Kobus’ dishes look beautiful from the colourful wild plants he adds, but he is also inspired by shapes from nature, having developed a breadstick in the shape of a branch, and uses streussel to create the look of soil.  Bobotie made with calamari, meat or vegetables are a staple at his restaurant, as are gemsbok sosaties, he said.  The books by Louis Leipoldt and Renata Coetzee are his food inspiration. Kobus calls his focus at Oep ve Eet ‘Earth-to-plate’, or ‘Terroir food’ His food ideas and creativity in its presentation are well worth a book, but can already be seen on his blog Sardine Toast.

*   Eloise Alemany is a small-print-run publisher of her own books, written in Spanish, and which she described as combination food journal, cultural diary, story book and cook book.  She has French parents, grew up in Japan, ran ID magazine in the USA for a while, before moving to Buenos Aires.  Her passion is photography and publishing, she said.  The choice as speaker was unusual, as many a local cook book writer and publisher could have probably been more useful to food writers wishing to have guidelines about how to get their work published.  Ms Alemany’s books were available for sale, but are not available in English.  The covers of the books ‘Libro de Cocino’ and ‘Cuaderno Dulce’ are beautiful, but have no food in them.  She launched secret dinners in unique venues, such as an art gallery and a shoe shop, each with a theme, first for friends, and then expanded these when the unusual dinners received coverage in the Buenos Aires media.  Ms Alemany described herself as an ‘accumalator’ of beautiful things, which come in useful for the styling for shoots.  Buenos Aires experienced a ‘restaurant food revolution’ after the country’s financial crisis five years ago, and it led to interesting small neighbourhood restaurants opening. She encouraged delegates to stick to their vision, and to take risks in doing so.  Food styling must tempt the reader, it must inspire the reader in giving ideas of how to serve a dish, and it must be a memorable composition, she advised.  She varies her styling, some being busy, and others neutral.  She publishes a print run of 1000 books, distributing her books via small design shops in the main.  She concluded with the advice that one should do what one enjoys, and not that which one is good at.

*   Anna Trapido was a lively and informative speaker about the foods that have shaped Nelson Mandela’s life, being the author of ‘Hunger for Freedom’, and was the theme for the unusual lunch we were served on Saturday.  We received so much information that I have written a separate blogpost about it, to be published later this week.

*   I was very surprised when I saw a Taiwanese Barista featured on the programme, and even more so when I heard him speak his language, having an interpreter with him on the stage.  Once again, I wondered why an international speaker had to be brought in for this talk, when Cape Town has some excellent coffee specialists.  From Twitter, highlights of this talk by World Barista champion Tung-Yuan Lin were his development of Latte Art, going beyond the usual heart and leaf designs. He opened his first coffee shop GaBee six years ago, serving 100 different types of drinks.  After winning the barista competition, he pushed himself to develop new ideas, by using local Taiwanese ingredients such as sweet potato and melon; coffee, soda water and ginger; coffee and grapes to create a ‘red wine’; sweet corn soup coffee; creating ‘drinkable desserts’.  He advised delegates to push themselves to try unique combinations of ingredients to create as drinks.

*   Tammy Frazer’s talk on ‘Gourmand fragrances’ seemed completely out of place at a Food Conference.  Her talk generated few Tweets.

*  Wolfgang Koedel of Paulaner Brauhaus talked about beer, describing it as ‘liquid bread’.  Draught beer is ‘cool and trendy’ again, he said. During the World Cup 72000 pints of Paulaner were drunk.

*   Renata Coetzee wrote ‘Koekemakranka: Khoi-Khoin Kultuurgoed en Kom-kuier-Kos’, a Gourmand World Cookbook Award winner.  Her interest in food culture goes back 60 years, incorporating etiquette and folklore too.  She was particularly interested in African food culture, which had not been written about previously. Early civilisations would have eaten a lot of shellfish, bulbs and wild animals, she said.  The Khoi prepared food in claypots, and through mixing foods, stews were born.  Fat from sheeps’ tails was the most common ingredient of Khoi dishes.  Ms Coetzee has reworked the traditional Khoi recipes to make them palatable for Westerners.

*  Julie Powell’s success as a blogger, and subsequent author, in documenting her cooking of Julia Child’s recipe book in one year, and leading to the making of the movie ‘Julie & Julia’, cost her her marriage, which became the theme of her second book, called ‘Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession’. With her marriage on the rocks, Ms Powell decided to do a butcher’s course, a good escape for her, and she enjoyed ‘hacking up meat’.  It is very ‘hip’ to be a butcher these days, she said. She is concerned about the origin of her meat, and it must be organic, sustainable, and hormone-free.   For her, food has good, joyous, generous and loving memories, as well as nasty and divise memories.  She turns to food in times of crisis. She said that she was judged for being a blogger, and stopped blogging when her first book was published.  She does not follow blogs now, she told Elle Decor.  She watches a lot of TV, but does not watch food programmes, finding them boring. In New York pop-up restaurants and food trucks are a new trend.  ‘Technology and blogging have woven us together and made the food conversation more cacophonous than ever before’, she said.  An increasing number of people want to know where their food comes from ethically and environmentally.  Ms Powell is working on her third book, not specifically about food.

It was interesting that Cape Town Tourism did not sponsor the Toffie Food Festival and Conference, as it did the ‘100 Women 100 Wines’ event a week ago, and they only wrote two Tweets about this event.  One would have thought that the tourism body would offer equal attention to all events taking place in Cape Town, and that it would have wanted to demonstrate its tourism leadership by having a visible presence at the event, given its stated focus on Food tourism.  One wonders what the policy is of Cape Town Tourism in its sponsorship of events, and how it decides which events will receive monetary support.

The Toffie Food Festival and Conference was poorly organised, and their over-promised benefits and poor communication are unprofessional.  They have a lot to learn before they attempt to host another such event next year.

POSTSCRIPT 5/9: Sonia Cabano has written in support of our observation about the lack of value for money of the event, as follows:  “Yes, so ToffieFood was expensive and underdelivered. We all know that, and we are all discussing it”.

POSTSCRIPT 6/9: We copied the above sentence by Sonia Cabano from a comment she wrote to this blogpost.  As the rest of the comment was untruthful, disparaging and defamatory, we deleted it, and posted one sentence from it in the blogpost.  She Tweeted a number of times that she felt that the cost of the Toffie Food Festival was too high, but appears to have subsequently deleted these Tweets.

POSTSCRIPT 7/9: Sonia Cobana has Tweeted her Comment that she sent to this blogpost, which we have not allowed.  She is blatantly dishonest in claiming that she was with me when I talked to the organisers Hannerie Visser and Peet Pienaar.   She walked past us while I spoke to Peet Pienaar, gave him her new recipe book ‘Relish’ launched earlier that day, and walked off.  She was not party to any of the discussions I had with the organisers.  I left the event with a staff member of The President (organisers of the Toffie Food Festival), and not a security person, so that he could collect the delegate badge from me, walking me to my car in an area that is not particularly safe.   It appears that she is Tweeting this disparagement in retaliation to our blogposts about Cape Town Tourism, having hounded me on Friday evening, calling seven times to beg me to not write about Ms Grove anymore, being her friend.  I explained that nothing is written about Ms Grove or Mrs Helmbold in their personal capacity, but in that of their work for Cape Town Tourism.

POSTSCRIPT 10/9:  One of the Surprise Dinner hosts told me today that they had been very disappointed with the organisation, only having 13 of the 30 booked Toffie Food Festival delegates arrive, and many of these were ‘freebies’, who had received the dinner place for free, in a last minute desperate attempt by the organisers on Twitter. Hosts were given a budget of R150 per head for a three course meal, and were paid in Woolworths vouchers by the organisers.  Spier sponsored the wine. One wonders why Woolworths backed an unknown ad agency in putting on a first-time food festival and conference that clearly is not their field of expertise, was not well-organised, and was controversial, sullying their own brand.

POSTSCRIPT 11/9:  In her (libelous) report on the Toffie Food Festival, which she did not attend in full, given that the launch of her new book ‘Relish’ co-incided with Saturday morning of the Festival, for the BY supplement to Beeld, Die Burger, and other News24 titles, Sonia Cabano confirmed the complaints about the expense of attendance.  She gets the Festival cost wrong at R1800 (it was R1710), and writes about the near give-away of tickets on Groupon to fill the Festival.  She also mentions that no speakers of colour were included in the Festival programme, and the disappointing food market, which offered nothing new, most of the stallholders selling their wares at weekly markets too.  She also writes about the complaints about the poor Sunday lunch braai, and that Julie Powell, the keynote speaker, was a disappointment, being ‘babelaas’ from the Secret Dinner the night before (‘…dat haar aanbieding die dag daarna belemmer is deur haar selferkende hewige babelaas’) !  Her report confirms that I made the right decision to leave the Toffie Food Festival on Saturday afternoon, after the Secret Dinner booking mismanagement, which was admitted to by the organisers, and therefore they refunded my fee.

POSTSCRIPT 14/9:  Today we received an e-mail from the Toffie Food Festival organisers, advertising their Toffie Food Festival food tour to Buenos Aires from 23 – 30 October, in conjunction with TASTE magazine, at a cost of R 28426 for a single and R23327 for a double, inclusive of the flight, accommodation and meals.

POSTSCRIPT 20/9:  Dax Villanueva, of Relax with Dax Blog, is also rather critical of his experience of the Toffie Food Festival.

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

Chefs comment: Why the Cape is the Culinary Capital

Nic Dawes, writing in the Mail & Guardian Online last week about the poor presence of good restaurants in Johannesburg relative to Cape Town, with the alliterated headline ‘Dining in the Dumps’, has stirred a North-South culinary debate.  It was restaurant reviewer JP Rossouw’s  response to this article that motivated me to write, to add to the debate about Cape Town’s culinary prominence.

Dawes slates the Johannesburg restaurant scene, blaming restaurants and their chefs for not following international trends, for being expensive, for offering poor service, for offering food which is ‘rote’, for there being too many steakhouses, and for chefs being ‘restaurant entrepreneurs competing to extract money from your wallet”.  He writes about Johannesburg: “…for all its creativity and cosmopolitanism, for all its monuments to material consumption, this town is a culinary desert or, perhaps more accurately, parking lot — which is what you will find yourself looking on to from most of the very few places I do feel able to recommend. The fine-dining scene is most impoverished. Not a single serious restaurant in Johannesburg sets the national food agenda in any way. They don’t even try very hard to follow the big global trends a few months in arrears, as so many Cape restaurants do, or to give them local relevance as the best South African chefs are able to”.

Rossouw responded to the controversy created by Dawes by stating that good restaurants open where there are tourists, stating that :“…the Cape gets the lion’s share of tourism.  Eating out as a tourist means you are ready to spend.  You’re likely to be relaxed.  Restaurant industries naturally do well in these environments”.    It would appear that Rossouw knows more about restaurants than tourism, and almost every part of his quote can be challenged and refuted:

*   Cape Town does not get the most tourists – KwaZulu-Natal receives more tourists than the Western Cape

*   South Africa’s major tourist source countries are Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mocambique, ahead of the UK, USA and Europe, and these tourists mainly visit Johannesburg

*   Tourists have become cash-strapped too, due to the recession, and are therefore far more demanding in respect of value for money and good service.  Bertus Basson, Chef at Overture, says they have seen far more demanding foreign diners this past season than ever before.

To respond to Rossouw fairly, we called three 2010 Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant chefs, one each from Johannesburg (Marthinus Ferreira from DW Eleven-13), the Cape (Bertus Basson from Overture), and KwaZulu-Natal (Jackie Cameron of Hartford House), to hear their views on the North/South culinary debate.  The following emerged:

1.  The Cape is ‘sexy’ as a culinary destination, and therefore young chefs are seeking work in the Cape, where they can work alongside the country’s top chefs. Linked to this is that the cost of living is lower in the Cape, compared to Johannesburg, motivating young chefs to start off in the Cape, to retain more of their income.  It is this young blood that helps feed the top restaurants.  Cameron said it was a shame to see talented young chefs leave KwaZulu-Natal, and head for Cape Town.

2.  The Cape chefs are less motivated by money, and more by lifestyle.  They love being able to go for a walk on the beach before or after service, or forage on the mountain.   They love the beauty of Cape Town and the Winelands.  Basson said he blew all his money on a walk-in fridge this month, and he is excited about the new chairs that are due to arrive in August.  One can imagine chefs being inspired by beautiful Cape days on a wine farm (an increasing number of wine estates are opening restaurants, Leopard’s Leap being the next to do so in Franschhoek), or in the bustling city close to the sea. 

3.   The Cape chefs have excellent quality suppliers, which helps them make excellent food.  This is not unique to the Cape, as Cameron says she too is blessed with superb supply sources close to Hartford House.  This supplier quality is not seen to be available to Johannesburg restaurants.

4.  A very real consideration for the location of chefs is where their families and partners are.  Chef Marthinus studied at the Stellenbosch Institute of Culinary Arts, and worked at La Colombe, Le Quartier Français, and Schulphoek in the Cape before working overseas.  When he returned to South Africa, there was only one city for him – Johannesburg – as his family lives here.  So too Cameron grew up in KwaZulu-Natal, and loves living in this province, where she needs five minutes to get to work, and the only reason why she would be late would be because the cows have blocked the road! 

5.   The client profile seems to have a huge influence.  Overture has seen an upswing in local guests, on average of about 65 %, he said.  For Hartford House, it is exactly the opposite, about two-thirds of its clients being international patrons.  In winter, however, their clients are predominantly Johannesburgers, easily reaching the Hotel restaurant in a 3 – 4 hour drive, as well as receiving guests from Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Umhlanga, thinking nothing of driving up to 90 minutes to get to Hartford House.  Similarly, Capetonians will drive up to an hour to travel to Franschhoek or Stellenbosch for lunch.  Cameron was complimentary about her Johannesburg clients, saying that they understand about good food, and are appreciative about what she and her team prepares for them.

It was depressing to hear Ferreira talk about his experience.  First, his Johannesburg clients appear to have a short time window for a three course meal, few staying longer to relax and really enjoy the meal.  At lunch, they arrive at about 12h00, and are out by 13h30, the average lunch period being only 45 minutes.  At night patrons arrive at 18h30, and his restaurant is almost empty by 21h00, the dinner being a ‘starter’ to an evening of entertainment, which could include clubbing, the movies, and/or the theatre.  The businesspersons eating at his restaurant by day are under time pressure and less demanding in terms of their food, almost becoming ‘functional eaters’, rather than ‘dining appreciators’, but they eat at the restaurants as often as five times a week, making the restaurant an extension of their office, he said.   The short time that the guest spends at his restaurant has restricted Ferreira from offering a Tasting Menu.  It was something Ferreira tried when he first opened, but he dropped it, due to his patrons’ time constraint.  He is introducing it again on Monday evenings. 

Ferreira also spoke about the Johannesburg restaurant clients being hyper-critical, posting disparaging comments on websites such as Trip Advisor, but not passing on feedback directly to him and his staff while they are at the restaurant, probably to not offend him.  Yet these clients come back to his restaurants regularly.

Cameron said that Cape Town’s regular international visitors raise the bar for the restaurants in the city, as these patrons want to experience better meals on their subsequent visits, helping to improve the quality that the Cape restaurants offer.  She said that her Johannesburg clients are of a high standard, know their food and wine, and do not order a ‘well-done’ fillet! 

It emerged that the Cape restaurant client tends to be more appreciative of the food and wine that is served, and makes an occasion of a meal at a restaurant, making it the evening’s entertainment, rather than using it as a quick stepping stone to the rest of the evening’s entertainment programme. 

6.  Competition attracts more competition, Ferreira said.  This means that good restaurants in an area attract more restaurants.  He is starting to see this in Johannesburg, and talked about Cube, Roots, Mosaic, The Saxon, and Linger Longer being good Gauteng restaurants.  By contrast too, he said, the lack of good restaurants in Johannesburg had been a good opportunity for him to do something good and different, and it clearly has paid off for him.  He is confident that Johannesburg will improve its culinary performance as new restaurants open.  The move to Johannesburg in July, by Rust en Vrede Eat Out Top 10 chef David Higgs,  to join an hotel group it is speculated, is a huge vote of confidence for the Johannesburg restaurant industry, Ferreira said.

7.  There is no doubt that the money is in Johannesburg, and Cameron noted that more recipe books are sold in this city than in any other in South Africa, there is a larger potential market due to its larger population size, and it has better weather throughout the year, allowing more outdoor eating.   She does not understand why the top-end Johannesburg restaurants are not better supported, and that chefs are not attracted to these restaurants, given the better Johannesburg salaries.

8.  The type of restaurants that patrons support differ vastly in the two cities.  Rossouw wrote that Johannesburg has better steakhouses, and Asian and African restaurants.   Ferreira said that Johannesburg has wonderful restaurants, but these are not necessarily fine dining ones, being ‘curry houses and tratorrias’, more relaxed than fine dining restaurants.  In his two years of running his own restaurant in Johannesburg, Ferreira says he has seen an increase in the number of better restaurants.

 Dawes’ article about Johannesburg’s poor culinary performance is a challenge to the Johannesburg restaurant industry, to prove Dawes and the Cape wrong, Ferreira said.   I loved Basson’s analogy of the difference in the restaurants in Cape Town and Johannesburg, likening them to wines from different terroirs, “both tasting delicious for what they are”!

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