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On Monday evening a friend and I ate dinner at Pot Luck Club in the Biscuit Mill, it being one of very few quality restaurants which are open on Monday evenings. He challenged me to leave my note book at home, to just enjoy the evening, and to have fun. This was my first review written from memory, and the photographs were sourced from the restaurant’s website, and the internet. Very few photographs of the dishes we ate could be found.<\/p>\n
When one books a Luke Dale-Roberts restaurant (he has four: The Test Kitchen, Shortmarket Club, and Luke Dale-Roberts at The Saxon, in addition to The Pot Luck Club) one has to pay a deposit, efficiently done via the Dineplan reservation system. When I booked I only had the option of a table at 18h00 and only in the restaurant section, and not at the open kitchen counter. <\/p>\n
Annoying was when the system announced a reservation time change from 18h00 to 20h30, without a request from us, and less convenient to us. We had already paid a R250 deposit per head by credit card. We were offered the opportunity to cancel the reservation, but decided to keep it anyway, as the other Monday evening dinner options were unexciting. The system required dietary information a few days ahead of our booking, and these were easy to communicate via email. When we had to telephonically cancel the attendance by one of our party, due to illness, on the same day as our reservation, the information was received sympathetically, and the deposit we paid for her was deducted from our bill total, not being charged a cancellation fee. <\/p>\n
On arrival, we were shown to a kitchen counter table. We preferred something more private, and were lucky to get a table alongside the kitchen counter, facing Head Chef Freddy Dias. He told us that he had studied at the Prue Leith Academy in Johannesburg, and had moved from Pretoria to Cape Town to start working at The Pot Luck Club two and a half years ago. He was Sous Chef to Chef Wesley Randles, who was moved to The Shortmarket Club last year, and Chef Freddy stepped into Chef Wesley’s shoes. <\/p>\n
It was by chance that I asked the charming waitress Laura Kropman her surname, and could not believe how small the world is, her aunt Margolite being the best friend of my sister Bettina, having been in the same class at Huguenot High School in Wellington. Laura had an excellent sense of humour, being joked with by my friend throughout the evening. She was sharp in giving him some attitude back, always with charm and never with disrespect. She had been to school with some of the children of my friend, so the world became even smaller! <\/p>\n
I hadn’t been to the restaurant since January 2012, and those dishes still on the menu have doubled in price roughly.<\/p>\n