{"id":13120,"date":"2010-10-13T10:57:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T08:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=13120"},"modified":"2010-10-14T10:24:48","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T08:24:48","slug":"restaurant-review-blowfish-restaurant-will-blow-fishlovers-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/restaurant-review-blowfish-restaurant-will-blow-fishlovers-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurant Review: Blowfish Restaurant will blow fishlovers away!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nikki is a wine consultant to Blowfish, and has won a\u00a0coveted 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.\u00a0\u00a0 She is a passionate wine lover, and uses the word ‘swirl’ a lot.\u00a0 She came to Cape Town to open Vilamoura in Camps Bay, and then joined the Slick restaurant group when Vilamoura closed down.\u00a0 She worked at both Balducci and Belthazar, on the wine side, and became Deputy General Manager.\u00a0\u00a0 She has been a wine consultant for over a year now, her Winestyle consultancy offering waiter training, winetastings, and she compiles winelists.<\/p>\n

Blowfish belongs to the Singer Group, which has a number of hospitality interests.\u00a0 I recognised Oliver\u00a0Wing, the Operations Manager, when I arrived.\u00a0 He used to be a\u00a0manager at Haiku and Bukhara, and was sent to London to open Haiku there.\u00a0 The restaurant is located in the Dolphin Beach Hotel in Blouberg, and is a large space, seating\u00a0about\u00a0180 guests.\u00a0 The restaurant has a view onto the Atlantic Ocean, over the roofs of hotel rooms below.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>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.\u00a0 The pay-off line is ‘Seafood Sushi Sunset’, it being rare for a restaurant to have one.<\/p>\n

There is a fish counter (as per Codfather in Camps Bay), from which\u00a0one can order a selection of fish and shellfish, in the size of one’s choice, which is then weighed and charged.\u00a0\u00a0The 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was impressed that the cost per gram was shown per fish type.\u00a0 Soon a similar meat counter will be introduced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What impressed me tremendously was the depiction on the menu of each of the ‘green’ fishes on the SASSI list<\/a>, <\/strong><\/span>which are those that are in good supply.\u00a0 A whole page of the menu is dedicated to the restaurant’s “Green Values”, the first time I have seen this on a menu.\u00a0 It states that the restaurant is a “SASSI Aware” participant,\u00a0to “promote and offer you sustainable seafood choices from legal sources in an effort to help improve the conservation status of over-exploited seafood species.”\u00a0\u00a0 Contact details of the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative are provided.\u00a0\u00a0 Near the fish counter a SASSI poster has been put up, showing the different green, orange and red fish and shellfish types.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 By implication, the non-marked fish dishes on the menu would be orange.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Blowfish menu is very extensive in offering sushi, salads, soup, platters, combinations of meat and fish, and the fish\u00a0ordered from the counter.\u00a0\u00a0Starters 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.\u00a0\u00a0 The sushi choice is vast, covering two pages of the menu,\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The cost for smaller portions of sushi depends on its ingredients, roughly ranging from R25 for three to R45 for\u00a0four pieces.\u00a0 The Chef’s Recommendation section has a selection of dishes, ranging from R 95 for the kingklip to SQ for the crayfish curry.\u00a0 One can also order duck, Fillet Mignon, lamb rack, and the Chef’s signature dish, being Seafood Espetada.\u00a0 Platters cost as little as R99, for the Blouberg platter (kingklip, calamari, and prawn skewer), up to R 220 for the\u00a0Kite-Boarders platter (mussels, calamari, linefish and rock lobster).\u00a0\u00a0 A selection of stir-fry dishes is also available, from R65\u00a0upwards.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0R40.\u00a0\u00a0 It was hard to choose what to\u00a0order 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0 I could not finish all of the food, as it was\u00a0far too large a serving.\u00a0 It was excellent, the massive prawn being a highlight.\u00a0 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\u00a0R25 – R 35.\u00a0 A cheese platter is also available at R75.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nikki has created two winelists for Blowfish, one just focused on imported wines, and the other on local wines.\u00a0\u00a0She is very proudly South African when it comes to her wine recommendations, and she has included about 140 local\u00a0wines on the winelist.\u00a0 She describes each variety, indicating the colour one should expect, and the flavours they should have.\u00a0\u00a0 The region of origin of each wine is indicated, and the wines are listed from\u00a0lowest to highest price\u00a0per variety, the perfect winelist!\u00a0 The Sauvignon Blanc\u00a0section is the largest, with 24 options, and the prices of all the brands\u00a0are very reasonable, ranging from R 90 for Hazendal to R240 for Neil Ellis.\u00a0 MCC’s start at R90 for Pieter Cruythoff Brut, which Nikki says comes from the Swartland, to R428 for Constantia Uitsig.\u00a0 White wines sell better than red wines at Blowfish, but Nikki has a good selection of red wines too.\u00a0 Ten Shiraz wines are offered, the Landskroon and Porcupine Ridge being most reasonably priced\u00a0at R105, to R 260 for Grande Provence.\u00a0 Corkage is the lowest I have seen, at R20 for the first two bottles, and increases to R50 per bottle thereafter.\u00a0\u00a0 The winelist also proudly records the awards it has won.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Blowfish Restaurant, <\/strong>Dolphin Beach Hotel, 1 Marine Drive, Blouberg.\u00a0\u00a0 Tel (021)\u00a0556-5464 www.blowfishrestaurant.co.za<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Twitter: @BlowfishCTN\u00a0 Nikki Dumas’ website is www.winestyle.biz<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a>\u00a0Twitter: @WhaleCottage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0\u00a0 Nikki is a wine consultant to Blowfish, and has won […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,20,21,19],"tags":[7961,7973,847,338,1349,2221,3753,2230,7959,2209,32370,32366,32378,1024,225,4731,7962,418,7971,7976,140,7960,142,7982,32375,27,7506,7975,7984,7977,7978,7408,814,7710,7970,2684,7983,4721,3154,7981,5670,7980,3625,13,7531,422,145,7969,7965,7530,4446,7972,2757,7974,7963,7778,7979,7964,7968,482,32373,7966,6263,2127,7967,1119],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t