Shrewd Food – Page 10 – Smart takes on food, coffee & service

NEIGHBOURHOOD RISTORANTE TICKS MOST OF THE BOXES

Artichokes baked in a wood-fired oven with parmesan, garlic and parsley

Seafood linguine with clams, mussels, pants and calamari

Seafood linguine with clams, mussels, prawns and calamari

Al Firenze – Ristorante and Pizzeria
21 Ray Paul Drive, La Lucia.
031 572 5559
Open for lunch Tuesday to Sunday

Al Firenze is a popular Italian ristorante in La Lucia. So popular it’s hard to find a bad word said about it. “Family friendly”, “family favourite”, “friendly staff”, “pleasant buzz” are comments that come up regularly on sites like TripAdvisor.
The only problem is we didn’t feel the love when we lunched there on Valentine’s Day. Okay, so it was busy with, unsurprisingly, large family groups, rather than dumb-struck couples – and staff were clearly stretched. But the hostess, who was standing at the entrance in front of a lectern, didn’t look up when we announced our presence, busying herself with finding our name and telling the waiter where to seat us. Okay, so she did follow us and instruct the waiter to ensure our table was taken out the sun, but it was as if we were ghosts. Not really there.
I did also think the hostess’s top was a bit, um, out there for a family restaurant. It was a camisole-style top in red satin, yes red satin, with a plunging neckline. Perhaps it was her Valentine’s Day outfit.
The fact that Al Firenze has been around since 1988 and is set in the heart of La Lucia’s up-market residential area probably means their customers are mainly regulars from the ‘hood. And we weren’t.
But we weren’t too bothered. We are not going to need therapy. But we did all feel that if we drank ourselves into a stupor and slid under the red-checked tablecloths they would only find us when cleaning up.
Happily, we loved the food. That pretty much made up for everything.

reviews

OTTOLENGHI DOES VEGETABLES

Aubergine with buttermilk sauce and topped with pomegranate seeds

Yotam Ottolenghi

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi (Ebury Press), explores the world of cooking with vegetables, grains and all things non meat ( R560 from Adams Booksellers in Musgrave). Recipe below.

I was a vegetarian once. For about ten years in fact. Then the daughter came along and cooking became more complicated. But the point of this minor confession is that I once owned loads of vegetarian cookbooks and Plenty is unlike any I’ve come across before – thanks to Ottolenghi’s genius with combining flavours and a childhood growing up in Israel and Palestine which exposed him to, as he explains, “a multitude of vegetables, pulses and grains that are celebrated in the region’s different cuisines”.
The result is a collection of totally original and innovative ways with vegetables, grains and pulses that are recreated into meals which range from salads, soups, souffles, flatbread and pizza toppings to risottos, pastas, paellas and flans.

Restaurants

RAY’S KITCHEN, COOL, COLLECTED AND CASUAL

Fabulous fishcake

Rub shoulders with the young and beautiful set at Ray’s Kitchen where you can dress casual but eat fine food.

‪Ray’s Kitchen
1 Salt Rock Road, Dunkirk Estate, Salt Rock
Call 032 525 4505

Ray’s Kitchen is a popular eatery located inside Dunkirk, an exclusive gated estate set in 42 acres of indigenous coastal forest in Salt Rock. But, despite being ringed by homes worth millions, each of which has been designed to fit unobtrusively into the indigenous landscape, it’s a surprisingly casual venue serving cafe-style food. It’s so casual that on the Sunday we were there, the clientele were mainly the young and beautiful (and probably rich) wearing beachwear and slipslops. One was actually topless. One of the guys that is. Nice sight, though. Perhaps it is the proximity to the beach that encourages casualness. Or the swimming pool, as Ray’s Kitchen is part of Dunkirk’s clubhouse facilities.
Another group well represented were young couples with babies. Everywhere you looked there were babies and besotted parents. Must be something in the water, joked owner Paul Sheppard, who runs Ray’s Kitchen with chef Ray Friedman, a childhood friend. Paul is also part owner in Marco Paulo an awesomely good eatery in Mount Edgecombe.
Happily the evenings are given over to grown-ups and, as enchanting as babies are, better they are at home at nights watched over by grannies as their parents take a break.
The restaurant’s premises have had several incarnations since it first opened as Umami, which have fared less successfully than Ray’s Kitchen which seems to have the winning touch.

Restaurants

ENDLESS SUMMER AT INDIAN SUMMER

Curry spices – picture from wikipedia.

Once in a while you come across Indian food that knocks the socks off you, presses all the right buttons, thrills the tastebuds… You get the picture? By Ingrid Shevlin

INDIAN SUMMER
35 Newport Ave, Durban
Call 031 562 1234

Last week I dined with three formidable foodies, the kind who take no prisoners when it comes to restaurants. To protect their privacy I won’t name them but simply call them A, B and C.
Each has impressive culinary credentials. “A” runs a cooking school, entertains extensively and knows everyone who is anyone in the food industry. “B”, a high-flying professional, is a member of an international gastronomic society. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly, certainly not in restaurants.
“C” is in the hospitality marketing business, the five-star kind, and regularly rubs shoulders with international celebs. She’s eaten at many of the world’s finest restaurants. Now she has set her sights on the Test Kitchen in Cape Town, which came 28th in Pellegrino’s World’s Best 50 Restaurants list for 2015.
So why am I telling you this? Dropping names – or should that be alphabet letters? Because all three women were blown away by the food served at Indian Summer in Glenashely. And if they are impressed, who am I to argue?

Restaurants

031 BAR & RESTAURANT NOW OPEN AND SERVING

Jordan Semple, the alchemist behind the food at Distillery 03. Picture, by Jono Nienabar is supplied1

Jordan Semple making magic at 031 Bar & Restaurant

031 BAR & RESTAURANT
Distillery 031
43 Station Drive, Station Precinct
Call 087 232 4453
Open for lunch and dinner Thursday to Saturday

The humble burger is transformed into a magical mix of flavours at 031 Bar & Restaurant and the alchemist behind this magic is Jordan Semple. This homeboy returned to the city of his birth about a year ago after a long stint working in London restaurants. Soon after he arrived home he started serving bunnies and burgers at markets under the brand Funny Bunny.
Now he’s opened a restaurant at Distillery 031, Durban’s first artisansal spirits distillery. There he serves mainly burgers. Think lamb jalfrezi burger with minced lamb on raita with onion bhaji, topped with a feisty jalfrezi sauce. His one non-burger item is an Asian wors roll. This is ouma’s wors served with kimchi ketchup, wasabi kewpie, deep fried ginger, crispy seaweed and sesame seeds.
The only downside to these fabulous flavours – well, to the four ladies who sampled his food, that is – is that it’s wasted on burgers. Posh or not. That quibble aside, the discerning ladies (who don’t do lunch actually, but who make food their business) raved over what they ate.

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