{"id":20542,"date":"2011-05-16T09:39:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T07:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=20542"},"modified":"2011-05-17T19:52:06","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T17:52:06","slug":"the-restaurant-of-the-future-will-be-your-second-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/the-restaurant-of-the-future-will-be-your-second-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Restaurant of the Future will be your second home!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I met the dynamic ‘warrelwind’ interior curator (not designer!) Neil Stemmet from KONCEPT for the first time at Decorex about two weeks ago.\u00a0 There he stole the show with his amazing BOS Tea House that he designed for the ice tea brand,\u00a0and the stand\u00a0won an award for the best Green stand.\u00a0 It was here that Stemmet started talking to me about his vision of the Restaurant of the Future, which he had embodied in his BOS stand design, but it was too much for me to comprehend\u00a0in the busy and noisy exhibition hall, so we agreed to meet at\u00a0Hemelhuijs with Sonia Cabano, highly respected\u00a0chef, cookbook writer, and\u00a0now Twitter fan.<\/p>\n

Neil told me that he grew up in Upington, and Hemelhuijs owner Jacques Erasmus did too, and it was at Neil’s Le Must restaurant in Upington that Jacques cut his first chef’s teeth.\u00a0 Neil’s restaurant made the Style <\/strong>Top 10 restaurant list in 2004, unheard of that a restaurant so far from the Cape Town and Winelands could achieve this.\u00a0 He says that his was the first restaurant to introduce “Afrikaanse kos” in Upington.\u00a0Neil started a blog called ‘Sout & Peper’, a blog solely in Afrikaans, and he\u00a0is proud in documenting the recipes and stories about food preparation of up to 200 years ago, which he is transforming into a book.\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Sout & Peper’ food preparation is based on the ‘keep it simple’ principle, a good design principle too he says, and he gives the example of Karoo lamb, which\u00a0should be prepared in the local way\u00a0by just popping it into the oven with salt and pepper, and one should not make\u00a0a Greek lamb out of it.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Neil’s book will be called “Sout en Peper”, and\u00a0will be\u00a0a collection of stories about the origin of South African food, and it will only be published in the ‘volkstong’ Afrikaans, being a ‘kos storieboek’.\u00a0 It will explain how to cook local dishes, and\u00a0more than one recipe may be provided for a particular item.\u00a0\u00a0 Neil said his book will be ‘sout en peper’ too in containing both\u00a0sadness and humour.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He will also include recipes from South African cookery\u00a0icons from many years ago, such as Hildagonda Duckitt and Louis Leipoldt.<\/p>\n

Neil is so avantgarde that he put up a sign on his BOS stand to say “Decor is dead”.\u00a0 He explained this as not being the slavish following of design trends, but rather ‘anything goes’, he said, with a focus on sustainability and heirlooms, utilising timeless classics.\u00a0 His mantra is “curate, not decorate”.\u00a0 He is somewhat of a trend setter, and therefore he recently read the work of Dutch trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, who spoke at the Design Indaba earlier this year.\u00a0 He was so excited that she forecast the colours purple and green as the new trend colours, and these two colours are the ones he chose for a project to be launched this evening at the new Freeworld Design Center on Waterkant Street, next door to Hemelhuijs.\u00a0 Green symbolises the heart chakra, he said, and stands for universal love, while purple\u00a0represents the 7th chakra of spirituality.\u00a0 He calls these ‘heirloom colours’.\u00a0 Green is going back to a shade with a black tone\u00a0added, as it was used 200 years ago, he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Neil proudly says that ‘curation’ comes from the heart and the soul, and it is not pre-planned or pre-designed to scale.\u00a0 It just happens.\u00a0The curator trusts his\/her mind, and one should not ‘theorise’ the process.\u00a0 There must be an ‘altar’ as the focus point the restaurant, on which the food is displayed – in the BOS Tea House this was a lit high table, and the food was presented on large platters, Neil getting the Cape Town International Convention Centre to serve food in these that he felt suitable.\u00a0\u00a0 He\u00a0became very serious when he talked about the use of purple in making an “anti-Roman Catholic\/papal statement”, in retaliation to how this religious group “has raped the world for money”, his view contentious to many, no doubt.\u00a0\u00a0 But Neil speaks his mind, and has done so for many years.\u00a0 Food is blessed by those eating at the ‘altar’, but it does not mean prayer necessarily, but rather is a sharing and connecting with those that one is having\u00a0the meal\u00a0with.\u00a0\u00a0 Vitally important is what is served – it must be fresh, real and imperfect (in other words, it is no longer the perfectly round tomato from Woolworths, but an odd-shaped one\u00a0fresh from\u00a0the farm).\u00a0 ‘New food’ is roasts, and pies for the left-overs.\u00a0 Woolworths is a no-no to shop at, he says, as its products are too perfect!\u00a0 He told Sonia and I that he could feel a shift in energy amongst the people who ate at the BOS stand, due to his curation, which was focused on “designing a space to accommodate and enhance human life”.\u00a0\u00a0 “Altar Music” is vital too, and he often\u00a0uses film scores (e.g. from ‘The English Patient’), ‘chakra music’, or Lebanese music, as he did\u00a0on the BOS Tea House stand.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I ordered the pork and chicken liver terrine with the most unusual accompaniment of orange preserve at Hemelhuijs, and Neil was very envious of my choice, saying it embodied ‘food of the future’.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Neil said that the restaurants can no longer be run as currently, and he sees neighbourhood restaurants springing up, which are supplied by the residents in that neighbourhood, and supported by them too as customers.\u00a0 This creates a relationship with one’s social community, and waiters must know their patrons, and serve them accordingly.\u00a0\u00a0 Neil also talks about ‘lardering”, using fruit and vegetables of this season for next season, by preserving them, and making relishes, keeping all of this in the ‘spens’.\u00a0 “Real’ bread will be baked at home again instead of supermarket bread being served, simple cuts of meat will be served, and gas will be used as a means of cooking to conserve electricity, and all one’s baking will be done on one day for the week ahead, to save time and energy.\u00a0\u00a0 Consumers will become more independent in their supply, growing their own vegetables and herbs, and turning them into long-term sustenance.\u00a0 Restaurants will not have menus any more – the chef will decide on the day what he can prepare, given what fresh supplies he has.\u00a0 Clients will learn to be brave in trusting the chef in his food preparation choice, and clients will be in the kitchen inside the restaurant, with the chef, while he prepares their food.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Restaurants will have chairs, couches, or even beds in them, with music, books and children – they will no longer be elitist.\u00a0 Good examples of such restaurants are Pierneef \u00e0 La Motte<\/a><\/span><\/strong>, Towerbosch<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/a> (for which Neil did the interior), Babel (seven years ahead of its time, Neil says), and\u00a0Hemelhuijs<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.\u00a0 The food served in such restaurants is elementary, honest and sustainable as far as possible (e.g. in New York restaurants grow vegetables on top of city skyscrapers, Dash restaurant<\/a> is growing vegetables and herbs on top of\u00a0the V&A Hotel roof, and Dear Me<\/a> is growing its herbs in special containers\u00a0hanging from\u00a0its ceiling).\u00a0 Restaurants are no longer places at which to just eat, but also serve as a replacement of one’s office and home, a ‘connecting space for like-minded people’, our ‘home away from home’!\u00a0 This trend will spread to accommodation establishments too, with guest houses and hotels becoming ‘non-guest houses’ and ‘non-hotels’, making\u00a0the guest\u00a0feel at home but in which one’s privacy is not compromised. As customers we will become ‘excessively open’, Neil says, becoming so ‘naked’ that all can ‘see’ one, and one can say “here, this is me”!<\/p>\n

It was the accolades and attention that his BOS stand created that led Ravi Naidoo, the organiser of the Design Indaba, to invite Neil to create a pop-up store in the very fashionable Fashion Mall of the V&A Waterfront, for an as yet unannounced project.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT 16\/5:<\/strong>\u00a0 Neil Stemmet was one of four curators\/designers invited to present their interpretation of “Openness to Explore” at the Freeworld Design Centre on Waterkant Street.\u00a0 Each designer designed a pod.<\/p>\n

Neil Stemmet, KONCEPT<\/strong>, Cell 082 373 3837. www.konceptdesign.co.za<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a>\u00a0 Twitter: @WhaleCottage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met the dynamic ‘warrelwind’ interior curator (not designer!) Neil Stemmet from KONCEPT for the first time at Decorex about two weeks ago.\u00a0 There he stole the show with his amazing BOS Tea House that he designed for the ice tea brand,\u00a0and the stand\u00a0won an award for the best Green stand.\u00a0 It was here that […]<\/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],"tags":[11474,1700,11480,11481,8238,11471,32366,256,11483,2881,32378,11472,11478,11479,10812,11470,32400,977,2459,11530,129,8369,11487,27,11468,8349,11469,11475,11485,11439,3567,11477,7525,11484,7421,6611,11486,3694,1859,11467,13,4860,9975,3416,4614,11482,11286,1587,32393,32373,32382,171],"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