Tag Archives: Sarie

Palms Market celebrates second anniversary with top chef Cook-Off!

Palms Market Bella Niehaus Whale Cottage PortfolioOne of my favourite Saturday markets in Cape Town is the Palms Market, which has a special collection of more than 40 stall holders offering quality products, under the guidance of Isabella Niehaus, who conceptualised the market to attract more feet into the decor outlets in the Palms Lifestyle and Decor Centre.  Yesterday the market celebrated its second anniversary with a ‘Reis met Rys‘ Cook-Off between five well-known chefs, creating dishes with Spekko rice.

In a two hour preparation period, Sarie food editor Herman Lensing, Kokkedoor finalist Marinda Engelbrecht, Slippery Spoon pop-up restaurateur Johnny Hamman, blogger and Radio Sonder Grense Kuberkok Nina Timm, Expresso Show cook and presenter Zola Nene, and My Basaar restaurant owner and Dagbreek TV show presenter Bernice van der Merwe created a diverse variety of rice dishes.   They had been given the rice and a bottle of Hermanuspietersfontein wine, and groceries to the value of R75 to prepare their dishes.  For us as judges there were few rules, other than to find the winner, which we did by scoring each dish out of ten.  My fellow judges were Pieter Arno du Toit from Cederberg Wines, Ingrid Jones from Mango’s Juice magazine, presenter Eloise Pretorius from Smile FM, and Landbouweekblad Food editor Arina du Plessis.

The live cooking attracted a lot of interest and attention from the Palms Market shoppers, peering Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 4 February

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Chef Heston Blumenthal has temporarily closed his Michelin 2 star Dinner restaurant in London due to an outbreak of the norovirus, which affected 24 patrons and 21 staff.  It follows the closure of his The Fat Duck restaurant five years ago for the same reason!

*   Despite making a close to R1 billion loss in the latest financial year, SAA has bid to take a share in Senegal Airlines, which is facing bankruptcy!

*   Facebook is celebrating its 10th anniversary today, and is a lucrative communication platform for tourism.  The official Australia page has attracted 5,5 million ‘Likers’, while Love Great Britain has 2 million ‘Likers’.

*   Wines of South Africa (WOSA) is celebrating the 2oth anniversary of our country’s democracy by means of a series of videos showcasing how the political transformation has touched people in the wine industry. A new video will be released on the WOSA website weekly, for a six week period.  ‘From fifth-generation labourer to co-owner of a major farming venture, from refugee to nurseryman, from scholarship student to renowned winemaker and role model, from drug-addled  gangster to farrier, each of the intimate stories in WOSA’s The Democracy Series movingly charts a journey of progress‘, states the media release.  Each video ends with a quotation by the late Nelson Mandela. (received via media release from De Kock Communications)

*   Bubbly Isabella Niehaus is celebrating the two year anniversary of the Palms Market at the PalmsDecor & Lifestyle Centre with a ‘Spectacular Cook-Out with Spekko Rice‘ on Saturday 15 February.   Six top foodies will have their cooking challenge (the dishes have to include Hermanuspietersfontein wine and 1 Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 16/17 November

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  Nando’s, Prince Harry’s and Beyonce’s favourite chicken take-out in London, will be opening its first store at Gatwick airport.

*   Heathrow needs a third runway to deal with the estimated doubling of traffic by 2030.  One plan is to build a floating runway on an estuary of the Thames, instead of demolishing houses in a village close to Heathrow.

*   Wide-spread flooding hit Somerset West, Franschhoek, Hermanus/Stanford, Strand, and Cape Town on Friday evening.  The Franschhoek Pass, Chapman’s Peak, Betty’s Bay/Gordon’s Bay road, and Victoria Road* between Camps Bay and Hout Bay are still closed.

*   Eben Sadie of The Sadie Family Wines is the winemaker featured in the weekly Terroirist blog interview!

*   Not only is Stellenbosch famous for its many wine estates producing excellent Continue reading →

Restaurant Review: Emily’s lost without Chef Peter Veldsman, has sold its soul to Coca Cola!

Emily's Interior 2 Whale Cottage Portfolio (2)Emily’s restaurant is 21 years old, and has recently opened at its third home on Kloof Street, having spent ten years each in Woodstock and in the V&A Waterfront.  The restaurant has lost all of its previous charm, and its main attraction (Chef Peter Veldsman) is nowhere to be seen.  It has sold its soul to Coca Cola, its branding seen throughout the restaurant, not befitting an establishment of the stature of Chef Peter and his partner Chef Johan Odendaal.

Chef Peter once was the most high profile food editor of Sarie magazine, and was known and loved by all, the doyen of food writers in his heyday. He has written eleven cookery books, and has contributed to many others too. He has won numerous food awards. He started the Culinary Arts Institute of Africa Restaurant School at the same time as opening Emily’s restaurant in Woodstock in 1994, long before the suburb became trendy, and it was extremely popular for a decade.  I remember its quirky decor, inside an attractive building, and being particularly popular amongst Afrikaans Capetonians, it being their first real Afrikaans restaurant.  Chef Johan ran the cookery school, and his students were the servers.

Surprisingly Emily’s moved to the V&A Waterfront, badly Continue reading →