prawns | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

I rarely go to the Tableview and Blouberg area. When I received an invitation from Nikki Dumas to join her at Blowfish Restaurant for an early dinner, prior to seeing a preview of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, it seemed an appropriate ‘starter’ to a must-see movie.

Nikki is a wine consultant to Blowfish, and has won a coveted Diamond Award from Diner’s Club International for the winelist she has created for Blowfish for the past two years, as well as a Wine Spectator Award. She is a passionate wine lover, and uses the word ‘swirl’ a lot. She came to Cape Town to open Vilamoura in Camps Bay, and then joined the Slick restaurant group when Vilamoura closed down. She worked at both Balducci and Belthazar, on the wine side, and became Deputy General Manager. She has been a wine consultant for over a year now, her Winestyle consultancy offering waiter training, winetastings, and she compiles winelists.

Blowfish belongs to the Singer Group, which has a number of hospitality interests. I recognised Oliver Wing, the Operations Manager, when I arrived. He used to be a manager at Haiku and Bukhara, and was sent to London to open Haiku there. The restaurant is located in the Dolphin Beach Hotel in Blouberg, and is a large space, seating about 180 guests. The restaurant has a view onto the Atlantic Ocean, over the roofs of hotel rooms below. It is a large open-plan room, with a sushi bar with conveyor belt, a bar, and upstairs there is a TV/smoking room, as well as the wine cellar, in which functions are hosted, including workshops on how to make sushi. The chairs are Greek-style, all in white, and white is the dominant colour in terms of furniture and fittings, except for beige plastic table cloths.

Blowfish uses a cute illustration of a blowfish on every page of its menu and on the winelist, creating good synergy between the two documents. The pay-off line is ‘Seafood Sushi Sunset’, it being rare for a restaurant to have one.

There is a fish counter (as per Codfather in Camps Bay), from which one can order a selection of fish and shellfish, in the size of one’s choice, which is then weighed and charged. The fish types on offer at Blowfish are angelfish, bluefish, butterfish, calamari, Cape salmon, Dorado, kingklip, monkfish, Norwegian Salmon, cob, sole, swordfish, tuna (yellowfin), yellowtail, sardines, Cape rock lobster, king prawns, langoustines, Tiger medium prawns, Tiger giant prawns and oysters. I was impressed that the cost per gram was shown per fish type. Soon a similar meat counter will be introduced.

What impressed me tremendously was the depiction on the menu of each of the ‘green’ fishes on the SASSI list, which are those that are in good supply. A whole page of the menu is dedicated to the restaurant’s “Green Values”, the first time I have seen this on a menu. It states that the restaurant is a “SASSI Aware” participant, to “promote and offer you sustainable seafood choices from legal sources in an effort to help improve the conservation status of over-exploited seafood species.” Contact details of the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative are provided. Near the fish counter a SASSI poster has been put up, showing the different green, orange and red fish and shellfish types. I would have loved to see them show the orange symbols on the other fish dishes (e.g. prawns and kingklip) on the menu, to be absolutely correct, allowing their customers to choose whether they want to order ‘orange’ fish. By implication, the non-marked fish dishes on the menu would be orange.

The Blowfish menu is very extensive in offering sushi, salads, soup, platters, combinations of meat and fish, and the fish ordered from the counter. Starters range in price from R40 – R55, and include a bacon and seafood skewer, bushveld sushi made with crocodile, trio of salmon, Thai-style fishcakes, king calamari, Wok beef, and mussels. The sushi choice is vast, covering two pages of the menu, including Fresh rolls, Cooked rolls, Traditional Maki rolls, Inside Out rolls, platters (ranging from a 12-piece Nigiri at R125 to a 60-piece Chef’s Speciality platter at R550), sushi salads and hot sushi. The cost for smaller portions of sushi depends on its ingredients, roughly ranging from R25 for three to R45 for four pieces. The Chef’s Recommendation section has a selection of dishes, ranging from R 95 for the kingklip to SQ for the crayfish curry. One can also order duck, Fillet Mignon, lamb rack, and the Chef’s signature dish, being Seafood Espetada. Platters cost as little as R99, for the Blouberg platter (kingklip, calamari, and prawn skewer), up to R 220 for the Kite-Boarders platter (mussels, calamari, linefish and rock lobster). A selection of stir-fry dishes is also available, from R65 upwards.

I love a prawn and avo handroll, and that at Blowfish was the best I’ve had, being more moist than recent ones I have tasted, with mayonnaise added, very reasonably priced at R40. It was hard to choose what to order from the menu, and therefore I chose a piece of kingklip, some calamari and a tiger prawn from the fish counter, to be grilled and served with Basmati rice. The selected fish and shellfish is prepared with the “fishmonger’s” seasoned ‘signature Blowfish spices’, and one has a choice of four sauces: lemon butter, garlic butter, sweet and sour, and peri peri.

As the movie started at 8 pm, and I had to drive to the Waterfront to see it, I had to eat quickly when the main course arrived, to make it back to the city in time. I could not finish all of the food, as it was far too large a serving. It was excellent, the massive prawn being a highlight. I missed out on the desserts, but could have ordered a Lindt chocolate brownie, Croque en Bouche, baked cheesecake, chocolate banana spring rolls and more, at a most reasonable cost of R25 – R 35. A cheese platter is also available at R75.

Nikki has created two winelists for Blowfish, one just focused on imported wines, and the other on local wines. She is very proudly South African when it comes to her wine recommendations, and she has included about 140 local wines on the winelist. She describes each variety, indicating the colour one should expect, and the flavours they should have. The region of origin of each wine is indicated, and the wines are listed from lowest to highest price per variety, the perfect winelist! The Sauvignon Blanc section is the largest, with 24 options, and the prices of all the brands are very reasonable, ranging from R 90 for Hazendal to R240 for Neil Ellis. MCC’s start at R90 for Pieter Cruythoff Brut, which Nikki says comes from the Swartland, to R428 for Constantia Uitsig. White wines sell better than red wines at Blowfish, but Nikki has a good selection of red wines too. Ten Shiraz wines are offered, the Landskroon and Porcupine Ridge being most reasonably priced at R105, to R 260 for Grande Provence. Corkage is the lowest I have seen, at R20 for the first two bottles, and increases to R50 per bottle thereafter. The winelist also proudly records the awards it has won.

While Blowfish is too far for me to travel to from the Atlantic Seaboard, I know where to eat when I next go to that area. I could see how popular the restaurant is amongst locals – from being the first to arrive at 18h00, the restaurant was close to full with locals, bringing their children and babies in prams, when I left two hours later.

Blowfish Restaurant, Dolphin Beach Hotel, 1 Marine Drive, Blouberg. Tel (021) 556-5464 www.blowfishrestaurant.co.za Twitter: @BlowfishCTN Nikki Dumas’ website is www.winestyle.biz

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

Being a great fan of the Grand Cafe and Rooms in Plettenberg Bay, and The Grand in Camps Bay, we felt lucky to be able to book a table for lunch at the new The Grand on the Beach, literally on its own private beach between the Water Club in Granger Bay and the V&A Waterfront, during the busy festive season. The restaurant has a waiting list of up to 2 weeks for bookings for dinner, but it is a little easier to make a lunch booking.

The first impression is not very grand, when one drives down a dirt track, with huge mounds of soil just left there from some earthworks. Being close to the Oceana Club launch area, the smell of fish greets you, adding to the unsavoury first impression. If you are lucky enough to park inside the gates, everything changes, with multi-million Rand cars parked inside, and the familiar Grand branding being visible. One can see the beach, with tables and chairs, and even couches, on it.

The restaurant is set inside a massive old warehouse, with no attempt made to touch it up outside. Inside it has had a coat of paint, and has shelves near the bar area. A long steel table, maybe seating 30 persons, dominates the main restaurant area, over which hangs a huge chandelier, shabby chic with its new-like-old dust. Pinkish cane-style chairs dominate inside, and the interior comes together with little effort. A side section of the building houses a shop selling towels, hats, dresses, bathroom products, etc.

First prize in eating at the Grand on the Beach is to book a table outside, either on the terrace, or even better, on the beach itself. Justin, the Manager, organised us such a table with umbrella – he was previously at the Camps Bay branch, and is a lovely helpful Manager who makes magic happen. The owner Suzie Main was also there, and attracted a lot of attention from Justin. He did make time to check on our table regularly.

Dax Villanueva (RelaxWithDax) was our guest and told us more about himself. He grew up in Port Elizabeth, where his mother runs a guest house. He studied in Durban and a lucky job offer brought him to Cape Town 10 years ago. Dax started a newsletter nine years ago, about restaurants to eat at and things to do in Cape Town. He is also a Blogger and a Twitterer (www.relax-with-dax.co.za). He does not like the question about his favourite restaurants, and sidesteps it neatly, saying that he has different favourites for different occasions.

The private beach of The Grand is about 200 meters wide, and has some tables and chairs, a collection of white couches (for the owner and her friends), a pink “kiss” couch, 2 porta pools, and some showers. While it looks inviting to swim, one cannot get into the water, as ‘dolosse’ and barbed wire cover the length of the beach, without one seeing it from the tables.

It took an unreasonably long time to get the table set up outside and to serve the drinks, with a waiter change taking place too. One of the problems is that the waiters did not seem to know which brands of beer they stock – we got the full list of Castle, Amstel, Black Lable, Jack Black, and Corona, but every beer we chose was out of stock. In the end, it appeared that they only stock Corona and Jack Black, but that they were fresh out of Jack Black, so that we could have any beer we liked, as long as it was a Corona! Once our waitress took over, things moved a little faster, and given the beach setting, the slow service seemed less of an irritation than at a restaurant where one expected to leave more quickly. In fact we lost track of time, sittting on the beach for 3,5 hours.

The menu of the restaurant is the same as at The Grand in Camps Bay. The first choice starter of Avocado Ritz (R 75) could not be ordered, as the restaurant had run out of avocado. The Caprese Buffalo salad was lovely, exactly how it should be served, slices of mozarella on slices of tomato, and some basil, drizzled with olive oil. Dax’s Waldorf salad with bacon was served in a slice of lettuce, an attractive presentation. Both salads cost R65. Alex loved his grilled chicken breast with yoghurt dressing (R 85), Dax his Steak Bearnaise (R 130), and I the grilled calamari (R 80). Other mains are entrecote (R 140), mussels and chips (R 80), line fish (R 120), sugar salmon (R145), grilled crayfish (R240), LM prawns (R 200), “Grand crayfish pasta” (R 200) and a seafood platter for 2 at R 695. Shrimp tempura (R 75), prego roll (R 75) and caviar (SQ) can also be ordered. Unlike its other Grand sisters, The Grand on the Beach has a pizza oven, and serves a large margarita at R 90 and a margarita + anchovies and artichokes at R 120. We were not offered the pizza options. The Affogato (R28), an espresso poured over ice cream, went down well.

We are charged for a green salad that was meant to come with the calamari, but which we did not receive. We missed the trademark excellent music compilation which is played at strong volume at The Grand in Plettenberg Bay.

Despite all the hiccups, the service was attentive, and the food good, so it was an overall enjoyable experience. The beer stocking and supply needs to be addressed however.

The cost of 3 Coronas, a glass of house wine, two salads, the steak, the chicken and calamari, as well as one dessert was R 602.

The Grand on the Beach, off Beach Road between Water Club and V&A Waterfront, tel 021 425 0551. www.thegrand.co.za

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