Tag Archives: VISI

Eat Out announces its 2019 Top 30 Restaurant shortlist! Shock exclusions! Liam Tomlin’s Chefs Warehouse & Canteen falls off the list!

Eat Out released its Top 30 shortlist for the 2019 Top 10 Restaurant Awards minutes ago. The biggest shock is that Chef Liam Tomlin’s Chefs Warehouse & Canteen has not been nominated! Just two years ago Eat Out awarded Tomlin the Chef of the Year Award! 

When I first wrote that Chef Liam’s restaurant on Bree Street did not belong on the Eat Out Top 20 shortlist, when it was nominated for the first time four of five years ago, not conforming to the criteria for fine dining, Chef Liam denigrated me in Facebook and banned me from his restaurants! It seems that the new judging team at Eat Out has seen the light, and feels the same about it! Continue reading →

Restaurant critics: what do we look for when evaluating a restaurant?

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I am honoured that talented brother and sister team Mari-Louis Guy (judge of Koekedoor and the forthcoming Kokkedoortjie) and Callie Maritz of Cakebread included me in their shoot for visi magazine to demonstrate the new trend of decorating cakes with flowers. I had no idea that the photographs of the six food writers Errieda du Toit, Mari-Louis Guy, Zola Nene, Samantha Woulidge, Ishay Govender-Ypma, and I would be featured in the latest issue of visi lifestyle and decor magazine.  To crown it all, an interview I did with Callie and Mari-Louis about restaurant reviewing and my favorite restaurants has just been featured on the Cakebread website.

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Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards 2012: No new top restaurants, foreign judge slated!

No restaurants which opened in South Africa from 2010 onwards (with the exception of The Test Kitchen) were judged to be good enough to make the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards 2012, held at the The Westin hotel last night.  As predicted, Chef Luke Dale-Roberts’ The Test Kitchen was named the number one restaurant on the Top 10 list, while Margot Janse of The Tasting Room was named Chef of the Year.  The Best Service Award went to Rust en Vrede.  Stellenbosch now is the Gourmet Capital of South Africa, with four Top 10 restaurants, followed by Cape Town with three, and one each in Franschhoek, Johannesburg, and the Natal Midlands. The biggest surprise of the evening was the ‘slap’ Chef George Jardine of Jordan Restaurant, making third place on the Top 10 list, gave Eat Out editor Abigail Donnelly (wearing Gavin Rajah) from the stage, criticising the use of an imported judge for the Awards, clearly referring to the controversial role Bruce Palling played in the Awards. A number of other controversial aspects once again clouded the Awards evening.

Lets start with Mr Palling.  The relationship between New Media Publishing and its ex-judge went sour after the judging, when New Media Publishing was said by Palling on Twitter to not want to offer him a ticket to Cape Town to attend the Awards last night. Continue reading →