Tag Archives: Gordon Ramsay

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 →

Restaurant Review: Chalk & Cork dirty, average food, with abusive Chalk & Cheek!

Chalk & Cork logo Whale CottageI was bombarded with a barrage of Tweets when the new owners of Mozzarella Bar on Kloof Street first opened in July, having bought the business from ‘Mr Charm’ Giorgio Nava.  Nava must have sold the owners Amy and Marc Botes a good dose of rudeness and cheek too, which is what I experienced when I popped in at the now renamed Chalk & Cork, waiting for my car to be washed at the Engen garage nearby, earlier this week. I enjoyed going to the Mozzarella Bar, with its charming Italian manager Simone, previoulsy.

I photographed the counter as one enters (there is no signage at the entrance, but only on the low wall of Chalk & Cork Interior Whale Cottagethe outside seating, visible to all passing on Kloof Street (the patrons that is, and not the branding)!  The waitress could not tell me why the restaurant is named Chalk & Cork, other than to say that they have a lot of wine on the winelist!  She could not explain the ‘Chalk‘ part.   There is a cork collection building up on both sides of the front door.  The downstairs entrance doesn’t appear to have changed much, although there is more equipment against the back wall behind the counter compared to the Mozzarella Bar.  The Pizza oven is still there, as is the drinks fridge. They are no longer selling Mozzarella, which will be available at Piazza Italia, up the road on Park Road.  Upstairs they can seat 30 patrons.  On a rainy day they have next to no business, the upstairs seating not being visible nor known.  Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 25 June

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Locals as well as tourists may find it interesting to explore Cape Town underground as opposed to looking at its beautiful oceans and mountains!  Tours of Cape Town’s underground water canals are offered for small groups of up to fifteen persons, commencing at the Castle of Good Hope, with a one hour tour of the Castle, and another one hour section of the tour showing one the fresh running water coming from Table Mountain and running into the sea.  The canals were built by the Dutch in the 17th century, and were called ‘Little Amsterdam‘ at one stage.

*   After ten years of participating in his Kitchen Nightmare TV series, Chef Gordon Ramsay has closed the door to this popular program which advised struggling restaurant owners in the UK and USA in how to save their businesses.  More than 120 episodes were filmed over 12 seasons, and were sold to 150 countries, to have been seen by tens of millions of viewers.

*   Actor Sean Penn was seen having lunch at Truth on Buitenkant Street yesterday, being in pre-production for his new movie ‘The Last Face’, which will star Charlize Theron.

*   2011 MasterChef Australia contestant Hayden Quinn, and cook, writer, and presenter,  is coming to South Africa to film ‘Hayden Quinn South Africa‘, a 13-episode series which will be broadcast on Continue reading →

Celebrity Chefs bring the world of food to Cape Town this week!

Food Hospitality World logo Whale Cottage PortfolioIt was by chance that I saw a programme for the ‘Food Hospitality World Conference’ when I registered for the Good Food & Wine Show.  With the e-mail from Wired PR came the Conference programme, with a fascinating list of talks by local and international food and wine speakers, bringing the world to Cape Town, and giving our industry a taste of what lies ahead for the Good Food & Wine Show running at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 29 May – 1 June. What was unbelievable was the poor attendance in the exhibition hall in general and in the ‘Conference’ venue too, tiny in taking about 50 attendees, many of them hospitality students.

Yesterday’s list of talks was food and wine focused, and due to guest house commitments I arrived right at the end of Miguel Chan’s talk on Chenin Blanc, which ‘has gained a surge in popularity recently’, the programme notesFood Hospitality World Miguel Chan Whale Cottage Portfolio revealed. Chan is a wine buyer and sommelier at the Tsogo Sun group of hotels. He has promised notes about his talk, which I will add to this blogpost when received.

Very surprising was the talk by Michelin 2 star Chef Carlo Cracco from Italy, where he owns Ristorante Cracco in Milan.  He is unable to speak a word of English, so fired away in Italian, without it being explained to us that his colleague (we think) would translate batches of sentences for us.  On the TV screens photographs of his book, his Continue reading →