After a few weeks of closure for a complete renovation and expansion of its facilities, the Grand Café & Beach has re-opened, ready for the summer season lying ahead. Yesterday a number of writers was invited by Manley Communications to experience the Grand, on a perfect sunny summer beach day. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: Pongracz
Restaurant Review: Vicky Cristina’s adds passion to Camps Bay!
Vicky Cristina’s is the name of a movie made by Woody Allen. Now a Spanish style restaurant with the name of the movie has opened in Camps Bay. Vicky Cristina’s tapas bar y restaurante españo is inexpensive, has an upmarket interior, and good service.
Vicky Cristina’s took over the space from Sofia’s on the upper level of the Camps Bay Promenade, above Pick ‘n Pay, a few months ago. It has sister restaurants in Johannesburg and Durban. The owner of the Continue reading →
Divas Unite celebrates Women’s Day 2015, benefits women’s cancer charity!
Women’s Day is a unique public holiday, celebrated only in South Africa. Yesterday our country’s women were celebrated with an almost all-women cast of musical performers at Divas Unite, held at the City Hall in Cape Town.
The event was organized expertly by Opulent Living’s Barbara Lenhard, overcoming severe obstacles in making the event happen so smoothly. When we arrived, Frey chocolates greeted us with bowls of their chocolate balls, while main sponsor Infiniti offered 
guests packets of jelly beans. My friend Jenny Stephens and I were extremely grateful to have been allocated such fabulous Continue reading →
Diners Club salutes top Western Cape winelists, Bushman’s Kloof judged best!
The Diners Club Winelist Awards for the Western Cape were held at Shimmy Beach Club yesterday, saluting the restaurants in the province, and the standard of their winelist content and presentation. Bushman’s Kloof won best Winelist in the Western Cape. During the course of this week the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal awards will also be presented.
A judging panel, led by wine judge Dave Hughes, and consisting of Winnie Bowman, Nikki Dumas, Fiona McDonald, and Christine Rudman, evaluated 208 winelists nationally, and 100 from the ‘Cape‘, a province which has not existed for years! Diners Club threw the Western Cape and Eastern Cape into one ‘Cape’ pot in reporting on the results and in handing out the awards yesterday! A substantial number of Western Cape restaurants did not enter the competition this year, down from 96 entries last year to 80 this year.
Odd was the choice of venue, being the Bar section of Shimmy Beach Club, which did not have 
enough parking for the attendees, some walking for more than 1 km to get to the venue. We were welcomed with a glass of Pongracz, and the food was very meagre, being macaroni cheese croquettes and sushi! There was not enough seating for everyone, in a room which had some round tables, a few chairs and couches, but had no presence in making this function special for the award winners, compared to the venue used at the Vineyard Hotel last year. It also was not a finalist for the Winelist Awards! Very odd was using Anna Trapido as the MC, not generally known to the local restaurant wine stewards and sommeliers, in being the editor of the 2015 ‘Diners Club Rossouws Continue reading →