Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [112]
Our final courses are salad and cheese combinations, an ideal way to wrap up this kind of meal. Cheryl’s choice features a crumble of Gorgonzola, toasted pine nuts, sunflower shoots, finely cut bacon bits, and a streak of peach puree on the side. Bill opts for a walnut-crumbed, truffled goat Brie with three perfect endive spears. More restaurants should offer such savory treats as alternatives to sweets, which can overwhelm the sense of taste after a series of exquisite dishes.
Our last day in the Winelands brings more good food, visits to a couple of Franschhoek wineries, an amble through the local Huguenot Museum, and another spectacular sunset, this one a lingering display in which we can pick out nuances of light and shadow in the staggered tiers of mountains across the valley, where the front range remains a deep green, the most distant peaks bleed red and purple, and the intermediate crests shift through shades of white.
After sunset, it’s a short hop for us across the road to dinner at Haute Cabrière, carved into a hillside in a handsome underground barrel-vaulted shape. Proprietors Matthew and Nicky Gordon run the restaurant—he in the kitchen and she in the front of the house—in collaboration with their winemaker, Achim von Arnim, who helps Matthew hone dishes well suited to his wines. The menu proudly announces, “There are no starters or main courses—just a series of taste sensations.” It continues to state that everything comes in both small and large portions to allow diners to try as many different items as they wish. “Bravo for them,” Cheryl says.
Each of us gets the same three small plates to maintain consistency in the food-and-wine matches. The waiter first serves us guinea-fowl boudin flecked with corn and accompanied by wilted savoy cabbage with smoky lardons and roasted carrots, turnips, and beets. The wine steward suggests a glass of a Chardonnay–Pinot Noir sparkler to go with the dish, and despite our doubts, its yeasty effervescence adds radiance to everything else.
For the next two courses of duck and lamb the sommelier recommends the Haute Cabrière Pinot Noir, so we get a bottle. The duck comes in three forms: as confit stuffed in a beignet; as rillettes with ginger; and as smoked breast with frisée and tomato-and-chile jam. The roasted rack of karoo lamb, crusted with green garlic, flaunts more fat than we’re used to at home, both on the surface and in internal marbling, to delicious effect. “Bravo again,” Bill says. It sits beside spinach so fresh it squeaks in our teeth and al dente black mushroom cannelloni filled with an inky duxelle, a mince of earthy mushrooms cooked down in butter. The Pinot Noir complements the food superbly, as does a light estate brandy with our shared dessert of little doughnuts brimming with tiny wild blueberries, served with a scoop of a properly tangy Granny Smith apple sorbet.
On our way out, Cheryl raises her head to the heavens to ask, “How on earth can there be so much great food in this tiny village, a place I never heard of before we started planning this trip?”
No one above responds and Bill doesn’t hazard a guess until we board our flight in Cape Town to leave the country. “There’s a jolting level of energy in South Africa, a passionate sense of renewal and wide-open possibilities. It seems to lift all aspects of life, even the creative aspirations in the cooking.”
THE NITTY-GRITTY
LALIBELA GAME RESERVE
www.lalibela.co.za
Eastern Cape between
Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown
27-41-581-8170 fax 27-41-581-2332
PROTEA VICTORIA JUNCTION
www.proteahotels.com
Somerset and Ebenezer Roads,
Cape Town
27-21-418-1234 fax 27-21-418-5678
ROBBEN ISLAND MUSEUM
www.robben-island.org.za