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Restaurant Review: There is no master chef at The Red Table Restaurant at Nederburg!

The Red Table Restaurant at Nederburg opened last week, and is the first restaurant to operate on this historic wine estate.  As Nederburg is synonymous with MasterChef SA, it was a surprise that the restaurant interior, service, and food are so far removed from what the reality TV series epitomises, and the quality positioning of the award-winning Nederburg wine brand.

The decor was done by Espresso, “an interior design consultancy specialising in contemporary furniture for kitchens, bedrooms and living spaces from leading Italian furniture brands including Euromobil™, Zalf™, Silenia™, Desiree™ and Tonon™. The latest Italian functionality, practicality and style is brought to life by our award winning design team. We have showrooms in London and Cape Town” its website states.  No signs of this were to be seen in the restaurant, which consists of the main room and the side room (in which classic concerts were held) in the Manor House.

One notices the red signage for the restaurant as one arrives, odd looking small signs giving one a temporary feel, directing one to the restaurant at short intervals.  In the parking area, an overturned table holds the signage, and square exterior tiles have been painted red, as if to resemble a red carpet, to indicate the path one is to follow.  One is led to the front of the Manor House, shown the many tables outside, and enters the restaurant here, and no longer at its back entrance.  Pot plant holders have been painted red, and one took strain from the terrible southeaster blowing a gale at the wine estate on Friday. The tables look like they were original antiques from the Manor House, their tops having been given a red lacquer treatment, but I was assured that they were newly made. So too the chairs, with riempie seats, were painted white with one red backrest.  The 212 year old manor house has retained its beautiful wooden ceiling, and its brass lamps, but red splashes of colour are carried throughout both the rooms, with red ice buckets, red plant holders, red edging on weird shelves that look like tables ‘growing’ out of the wall, and red print on the menu.

I could not help but feel that the decor was amateurish, forced, someone having chosen a colour and creating a faux interior, clashing with the historic interior of the building.  Burrata’s use of its colour red is sophisticated and classy by comparison. Green touches are everywhere, with a ‘portrait’ of succulents over the fireplace in the second room, and hanging plants in the main room. The grand piano serves as a display surface, with bell jars containing stacked cups and saucers, books, and music scores. A children’s collection consists of a drum, a Children’s Britannica set, marbles, dinosaurs, Scrabble, sports cups, and more.  The fireplace is stacked with almost perfectly shaped logs. There are no curtains or drapes anymore, making the previous concert room echo.  The Persian carpets have been retained.  Books form part of the decor display.  No red serviettes have been used to carry through the colour theme.  The bathroom decor is untouched, with heavy drapes, a contradiction to the design of the restaurant rooms next door!  Sarah explained that the design is meant to be ‘colourful, vibey, aimed at modernising the brand, and attracting a broader group of people‘.

Cutlery was an ordinary looking Forum.  The table had tiny bowls with coarse salt and crushed black pepper. The orange pincushion protea in the vase on the table did not match the red colour scheme. The restaurant brochure (incorrectly) waxes lyrical about the restaurant: “Picture a novel (pardon the pun!) configuration of red tables meandering (sic) through the heritage building Manor House and into the gorgeous gardens (one enters FROM the garden into the building!) with lots of fun activities for both young and old, like croquet, giant Jenga games, skittles, reading spots and other fun options“!

I happened to walk in at the same time as did Sarah Proudfoot, the Restaurant Consultant working with Dish Food & Social, which operates the restaurant.  We talked about MasterChef SA, and she said that M-Net is working on a new set design for the second season of the TV show, everything used for season one having been removed.  The venue will be used for events after the second season has come to an end, meaning that a third season seems unlikely.  Sarah bent over backwards to find information, and to keep things running as smoothly as possible.  Dish Foods & Social has been contracted to operate the restaurant, a further shock, given the high standard and quality one associates with Nederburg and its wines. The contract caterer runs SideDish, the restaurant at The Theatre on the Bay, and does catering for functions and events. All staff have been brought in by Dish Foods & Social, and wear black pants and shirts, with a red branded The Red Table Restaurant apron.  Waitress Elmarie addressed me in German immediately, which would have been a sweet touch had I been a tourist.  She told me that she had grown up in Paarl, and recently returned from Germany after living there for 15 years! The more I replied in English, the more she spoke back in German, whereas the other tables with German tourists did not benefit from her language proficiency.  The Chef is called Mr X, as most of the staff cannot remember or say his name, being Nqobani Mlagisi, who was a member of one of The Ultimate Braaimaster teams.  It was here that Oscar Foulkes, husband of Dish Foods & Social owner Andrea and also a participant in the Braai competition, had met Nqobani.

The menu is an odd collection of loose slim pages, only two for the food, and seven pages dedicated to beverages, all wines being from Nederburg, clipped to a wooden board.  Strangely one page is dedicated to Dish Food & Social, but none to the history of Nederburg or a description of its wines and its awards overall. The menu is introduced as follows: “One of life’s delights is eating with friends, second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy (who writes copy like this!?), there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends”!

Rolls were brought to the table on a wooden board, with soft butter.  The waitron staff take the order via iPad, but on my visit this hi-tech tool was not foolproof!  I ordered the Chilled gazpacho with roasted tomato and cucumber salad served with crispy parmesan chards (R45), a thick chunky refreshing portion brought to the table within minutes of placing the order, the only fast service I experienced. Other starter options are Salad Lyonnaise (with lettuce, bacon, croutons and poached egg), available as a starter or a main (R40/R60); a Brie, roasted wild mushroom and caramelised onion tart (R50); Confit duck, roast beetroot, orange and baby spinach salad, served both as a starter and main course (R60/R90); and a twice-baked cheese soufflé (R50). For the main course I ordered Kingklip with a pesto soufflé, crispy new potatoes, and peperonata (R115) from the blackboard. A staff member came back to tell me that the kingklip was sold out.  Sarah returned and apologised, saying that mine was the last portion of kingklip.  It was the most disappointing kingklip I have ever eaten, being over-complicated with the pesto ‘soufflé’, and the pesto clashing with the ice cold peperonata and the lemon aioli. The potatoes were not an ideal combination with the fish either.  The menu main course options are very restricted, and not particularly attractive: a venison, avocado, and caramelised onion burger (R95), Mozzarella roulade filled with aubergines, peppers, grana padano cheese, and basil pesto (R65); chicken and mushroom pot pies (R65); and free-range sirloin steak with fries and salad (R95).  Children can order a sirloin steak roll, a thin-based pizza, or sticky chicken skewers, at R40 – R50.

For dessert there are only four options ranging in price from R35 – R45, of which two are brûléed, being a lemon tart with mini strawberry milkshake, and an espresso brûlée.  I ordered the yoghurt panacotta with a refreshing strawberry and mint salad, and a cappuccino with it (requested as dry, with coffee and foam, but what came to the table was undrinkable). What followed was a case of broken telephone, the iPad no longer being used.  I was asked what I wanted for dessert, and I said that I had already ordered.  Sarah returned, saying that the staff said that I had said that I had already paid.  I explained to her that I had said that I had already ordered the dessert.  She returned to the kitchen, but they clearly could not find the order, and so she had to return to ask what I had ordered.  Sarah comped the dessert, as an apology for the dessert disaster, which cost almost an hour of waiting time.  One can also order a chocolate fondant with ice cream, or a cheese and preserves platter (R65).

The Nederburg wines are very reasonably priced, and many are available by the glass. The Première Cuvèe Brut costs R22/R69; 56Hundred Chenin Blanc 2012 R16/R55 and Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 R18/R60; Winemaster’s Reserve ranges from R18/R57 – R27/R87; Baronne 2011 R62; Manor House Shiraz 2009 R43/R125, Sauvignon Blanc 2011 R115, and Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 R125; the Heritage Heroes R39/R105 – R43/R120; Ingenuity at R175; and II Centuries Cabernet Sauvignon costs R245.

The only classy red touch in all the redness of The Red Table Restaurant at Nederburg was the bill brought to the table in a red envelope!  Odd was the choice of a Friday lunchtime for a major construction project at the entrance to the wine estate, meaning that one had to drive on a grass verge without any warning or guidance.

Originally the restaurant was meant to be a pop-up one until the end of April, but it has since been decided to continue running it through the winter.  I must commend Sarah for her calmness in trying to deal with the staff problems, given that the restaurant had only been open for three days, although they had ‘practised’ on Nederburg staff before opening.  I found it a shame that the lovely Nederburg Manor House, a national monument, has been cheapened with such a faux interior, such a poor menu, such poor food quality, and such poor service!  I would find it hard to give it a second try unless there is a radical improvement and change.  Poor Johann Graue, one of the earlier owners of the building, must be turning in his grave!

POSTSCRIPT 9/12: in reconciling my credit card slips this evening, I saw on the slip for my lunch at Nederburg that the credit card machine has been set up as ‘Dish Nederberg (sic)’.

The Red Table Restaurant at Nederburg, Nederburg Wines, Sonstraal Road, Daljosafat, Paarl.  Tel (021) 862-3104.   www.nederburg.com Twitter: @Nederburg  Wednesday – Saturday à la carte lunch, Sunday lunch buffet (R195).

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

Pick ‘n Pay Camps Bay Sweet Service and Bosman’s Restaurant Sour Service Awards!

The Sweet Service Award goes to Pick ‘n Pay Camps Bay, and its manager Chris, for the kind gesture of offering some paper clips from the office of the store, when it did not have any paperclips in stock.   The Camps Bay store is one of my least favourite because of the poor service experienced week after week, so the gesture was a very welcome surprise.  The service at the tills is usually poor and the staff disrespectful.  Numerous complaints to the Pick ‘n Pay Head Office have made no difference at all.  On Twitter numerous Camps Bay residents have voiced their frustration at the poor service of this store.

The Sour Service Award goes to Bosman’s at Grande Roche in Paarl. A recent visit started with the predictable battle to get through the boom, the operator wanting to know why I was there!  On arriving at the terrace, two staff were packing away umbrellas, no restaurant staff coming outside to greet the new arrival, although they had been alerted by security.  I was then asked if I had come for dinner (at 5 pm)!  I was given a terrace menu, and I asked about their sparkling wines.  The cheapest (and only one) served is a Silverthorn, at R85 per glass, which I declined on price on principle!  The German waiter Tom seemed very irritated and aggressive in his service, yet inappropriately familiar in addressing me as if we had met before.  He stretched across me to lay the cutlery on the table, even though he had more than enough space to come around.  The Apfelstrudel came with a teaspoonful of ice cream, and when I commented about it, Tom brought another tiny ball.  German hotel guests sat on the terrace with bare feet, and Skyped on their iPad full blast, without consideration of other guests.  I was forced to sit close to the guests, as all other tables had been set up for the dinner service already. The service was disappointing for a hotel with 5-stars and the restaurant being on the Eat Out Top 20 Restaurant shortlist. The reaction on Twitter of the hotel to our Tweet was inappropriate: “Thanks for the feedback. Bosman’s is only open from 7pm for fine dining. We like our guests to feel at home. Enjoy the evening”!

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.

GumTree Sweet and SafariNow.com Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to GumTree, for quickly removing four fraudulently placed ads, on Saturday evening, for an iPhone, an iPad and a cottage to rent, which had been posted with my name and cell number, causing a flood of calls and sms-messages throughout the night.   Gumtree has an easy Fraud Report system, and its response time was impressive.

 

The Sour Service Award goes to SafariNow.com and its MD Dylan Rothschild, for its unprofessional and rude communication.  The company’s booking website has some odd rules, and one of these is that payment is made to accommodation suppliers on certain weekdays only.  A guest who wished to stay at Whale Cottage Hermanus, and who could only pay on the day of her arrival, being a weekend day, could not be accommodated with immediate payment to Whale Cottage Hermanus, and the client cancelled the booking as a result. Mr Rothschild continued communicating about the matter via e-mail, even after the booking cancellation, and telephonically on a Saturday morning at 8h00!

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.

Tourism Grading Council apologises to accommodation industry

The recent attempt by the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa to completely overhaul its grading assessment criteria, and then to withdraw most of the proposed changes due to the outcry from the accommodation industry, is the biggest PR gaffe of the body that has been tasked by South African Tourism to set accommodation quality standards.  The Tourism Grading Council’s charming Chief Quality Assurance Officer Thembi Kunene admitted that an error had been made in presenting the first draft to the industry.

We wrote recently about the final decisions the Tourism Grading Council made, relative to the draft proposal, in its new accommodation grading assessment criteria.   At a presentation to the Cape Town accommodation industry at the Cape Town International Convention Centre earlier this week, Ms Kunene was commendably honest in her feedback about the effect the draft proposals had, and that the potential loss of many accommodation establishments from the grading system led to a rethink, and a delay by about four months, in introducing the new assessment criteria.  

The Tourism Grading Council was criticised for only setting up the meeting in Cape Town in November, the city with the largest number of graded establishments in the country, when it had done presentations in Hermanus and Franschhoek, for example, in September already.   The Tourism Grading Council is clearly sensing a concern, and is doing a road show throughout the country during November, to reassure its clients.   The only problem was that the meeting was set for 8h00 – 12h00, the busiest time of day for accommodation establishments – the smaller they are, the more likely it is that the owners are hands-on in their establishments in making breakfast and checking out their guests, and therefore were unable to attend the meeting.  Ironically, an establishment owner said that the only reason why he was able to attend was because he had no guests in his guest house!

What is not understandable, despite the fact that Ogilvy PR handles the public relations for the Tourism Grading Council, is that no PR campaign has been launched to repair the damage caused to its image amongst its clients through the draft assessment criteria document, which was sent to all star-graded properties.  No current star-graded establishment has received any communication to explain that the bulk of the proposed controversial assessment criteria have been scrapped.  Assessors also seem to have been overwhelmed by the controversial process and the number of calls they had to field about the proposed changes, that they themselves have not been proactive in informing their clients about the dramatic turnaround in the new grading assessment criteria.

A sensitive issue is that the Tourism Grading Council has chosen a new formula for the calculation of its annual fees, by weighting the average room rate and number of rooms to come up with the new fee.  In an example provided for a 2-star guest house in Soweto, the fee increase was shown to be 10 %, whereas it was a far larger increase for a larger higher-starred guest house.  The fee increase in excess of the inflation rate attracted strong criticism amongst the attendees, when accommodation establishments have frozen their rates, some as far back as 2007 already.  The fact that a breakfast was provided was raised by Ms Kunene, as if the establishment owners should have been grateful for the mediocre Convention Centre breakfast, consisting of fruit, cereals, yoghurt, rolls and cold meats, and that it should justify the fee increase!   Ironically, Ms Kunene talked about her new iPad, and one wonders why such a R9000 purchase was necessary!   Each attendee also received a gift on departure, unusable to most and thus a wasted expenditure.   One also wonders why KPMG was contracted to handle the revision of the grading criteria assessment, and how much they were paid, for a proposal that has dented the image of the Tourism Grading Council, and with it that of SA Tourism!

We have written previously that technically very little has changed in the assessment criteria.  It was interesting to hear which of the proposed assessment criteria changes attracted the largest industry criticism:

*  airconditioning – an “air temperature control system” is now acceptable as an alternative to airconditioning, but must have adjustable controls, to be set for the level of comfort of the guest.  

*   dinner service – whilst the criteria say that such a service must be made “available”, it is meant that one must make bookings at restaurants for guests, or allow Mr Delivery access to the establishment for food delivery

*   room service and hours – this only applies to hotels now

*   statutory requirements – each province has different requirements for rezoning, trading etc, and therefore a full list had been supplied.   Now the directive is that the applicable provincial requirements must be adhered to.

*   armchairs – this had led to a debate of the exact definition of such chairs, and therefore the criterion was redefined to be a ‘seating space’ per person

*   shower over bath – a glass partition must be made available for 4 and 5-star establishments

Lesser issues in terms of feedback received related to security requirements (scrapped), room dimensions (scrapped), size of TV screen and initial directive that the TV be a flatscreen one (now dropped), down pillows (scrapped), master switch next to bed (scrapped), wardrobe size (scrapped), number of basins in 5-star bathrooms (scrapped), size and placement of mirrors (scrapped), number of clothes hangers (scrapped), breakfast duration (scrapped), and private toilet in open-plan bathrooms (criterion retained).

Another issue was the application form – yes, no matter how long one has been graded, one has to register from scratch.  Here a number of onerous and off-putting information requirements led to further controversy.  They were justified by the Tourism Grading Council as being necessary if one wants to offer accommodation to Government officials.  These information requirements have now been dropped, yet establishments have not been informed of this recent change. 

Whilst the Tourism Grading Council demonstrated its willingness to listen to its customers, the graded establishments of South Africa, its image is severly dented, and it needs to regain the trust and respect of thousands of graded establishments who are considering not renewing their grading or who were inconvenienced by the drama surrounding the attempted changes to the assessment criteria. 

Ms Kunene called me the morning after the presentation, to personally thank me for my contribution to the meeting during question time.  She impressed with her openness and willingness to hear her customers, and requested that I assist the Tourism Grading Council in spreading the word about the fact that barely any changes have in fact been made in the new grading assessment criteria, which we have already done through our previous blog post.

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