Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* Johnny Clegg has been added to the Birthday List of Queen Elizabeth II, for an OBE (Order of the British Empire), reports Business Day. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: Nutella
WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 13 June
Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* Food and ‘foodball‘ have a close relationship, and just like VIPs, the international soccer teams have specific food requirements for their players: the Australian team requires a coffee machine in each player’s room; the Ecuadorean players require a freshly filled basket of bananas imported from Ecuador every day; and the USA team will have fruit and honeycake in each player’s room every day, and they will have their meals prepared by a two star Michelin chef. Germany has a ‘Nutella-Fluch‘, a curse that seemed to effect each soccer player’s career used in the chocolate spread’s advertising, the players’ careers plummeting after featuring in the advertisement. Needless to say the advertising campaign has been canned!
* Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde has ordered his Red Tape unit to evaluate whether the new Department of Home Affairs’ Immigration regulations are constitutional, and to meet with the national Department of Tourism as well as with Home Affairs to ‘find a way forward that will mitigate their negative impact’! The Minister said: ‘In the past week, my office has received numerous complaints from industry stakeholders whose businesses are already suffering losses’. The new legislation was not published for public feedback before proclamation. South Africa is the only country in the world requiring an unabridged birth certificate to accompany all travelling children!
* Cederberg Five Generations Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 is the only South African Cabernet Sauvignon out of 200 from nine countries evaluated by The Drinks Business Global Cabernet Sauvignon Masters Continue reading →
Global Pizza Challenge 2014: top SA passionate pizza makers sought!
On Thursday evening I attended the launch of the South African leg of the Global Pizza Challenge, a project which belongs to Chef Arnold Tanzer from Johannesburg and Martin Kobald from Australia. South African pizza makers have done well in the past seven years of the competition.
I almost did not make the function, which was held at the offices of Dish Food & Social, giving us a street address of 423 Main Road in Observatory. A building marked 423a on one side of a Shell garage was visible, but not the street number on Main Road that we were searching for in the near dark, which turned out to be on the other side of the petrol station. To complicate matters the entrance gate is in a side road off Main Road! Having survived the panic of finding the venue, it was great to catch up with Chef Arnold, whom I had met last year on a Media Day for MasterChef SA Season 2 at Nederburg.
Before we got into pizzas, we caught up about Season 3 of MasterChef SA, which is being filmed at the moment and will continue until June. The series will be broadcast from August onwards. Chef Arnold did not answer all my questions, such as
if there would be two broadcasts per week again as in Season 2. He would not discuss how strict new MasterChef SA judge Reuben Robertsons Riffel is with the contestants, given that he may not want to rock the boat! We talked about the very honest and harsh review by Chef Arnold of Aarya, the Montecasino restaurant, the use of which Deena Naidoo won for a two year period in winning MasterChef SA Season 1. We chatted about how low key Season 2 winner Kamini Pather is, not being visible,and not (yet) having created her planned food communication channel, as she announced when she won. As before, there will be guest chefs. Continue reading →
MasterChef SA Season 2 episode 9: ‘Food Bloggers’ blown away by pizzas in windy Camps Bay!
Last night’s episode 9 was interesting, in that it was shot away from the MasterChef SA kitchen, and that ten ‘Food Bloggers’ were invited to judge the pizzas made by two teams of Finalists, the first team challenge of Season 2. The South Easter created havoc for the Finalists as well as for the bloggers. The ‘Blogger’ participation was a huge let down, and serving the guests pizza to judge was an insult.
The episode began with the Finalists descending on the kitchen of their house, to be confronted with a box of aprons and the instruction to divide themselves into two groups of seven. The names were written on pieces of paper, and a Le Creuset pot served as the vessel from which the names for the two teams were drawn. They were then driven to Maiden’s Cove, between Camps Bay and Clifton, a parking space with a beautiful view of Camps Bay and the Twelve Apostles, Chef Pete Goffe-Wood saying that Camps Bay ‘is one of the iconic locations in Cape Town‘. The challenge sounded simple – Limoncello and The Good Life Food Trucks arrived, and the two teams were randomly allocated a truck each as their home base to prepare 12 savoury and 12 dessert pizzas each within 90 minutes. Pizza ovens had been erected, one per team, and a small pantry was set up, the two team representatives having 3 minutes in which to grab their ingredients. Chef Andrew Atkinson reminded the Finalists that team work is the hallmark of a quality kitchen. They were also told (misleadingly) that the guests were ’10 of South Africa’s top food bloggers‘, and ‘are discerning customers‘! Chef Pete won the dessert pizza section of an international pizza competition in Australia last year, the Finalists were told. Continue reading →