Once Bitten

If we were not so alienated from the source of our food and completely ignorant of how its evolution is accelerated to our plate, we’d recoil in disgust. This is the view of Michael Pollan in his bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a riveting piece of investigative journalism into the murky world of industrial agriculture in the United States. In it, he follows the journey of corn from laboratory seed to cereal flake, and a steer from birth to slaughter.

Agribusiness is so out of sync with nature, it is poisoning not only Americans, but the planet. Industrial fertilizer washed down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico has created a hypoxic zone destroying all marine life for 20 000 square kilometres. Food in the USA is riddled with antibiotics, petrochemicals, and genetic manipulation (the results of which are indeterminable). All these horrors of production, are absorbed by people. His basic thesis is: we are what we eat and by implication we are what we eat ate!

Pollan is no polemicist, but once you’ve read him, you start to rethink your relationship with food; though I must admit, as a child I was less than pleased to discover milk came squirting out of a cow’s udder and not from a shapely glass bottle.

‘Slow Food’, the Italian-born, worldwide movement against globalised food culture, is celebrating their 20th year. A lobby for sustainable, small-scale, diverse, ecologically sound farming practices, it aims to preserve culinary traditions and promote local farmers’ markets. Farmers’ markets have sprung up all over cities in the USA. I visited one in LA with small pens of livestock to teach the city kids the difference between a sheep and a goat.

To be honest, the real appeal of slow food is not its ethical altruism, leftist revolutionary zeal, or even saving the planet, but the gluttonous promise of tastier, all-you-can-eat healthy, gorgeous food. Such connoisseur interests are catered for at the food market in the converted Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock.

Here at last, I found the kind of olives one dreams about, real Buffalo mozzarella from water buffalo that actually roam around a farm in Wellington, fresh pomegranate juice, papayas from Swaziland, and the last of the artichokes.

Run by the “neighbour goods market”, the producers are generally expected to attend their stalls in person. The organisers favour fresh, seasonal, organically grown, and artisanal food products, but it is a gourmet market at heart; I noticed some purveyors of flown-in fine foods.

Piped music from the 1920s plays; children eat shucked oysters; organic food is still a preoccupation of the urban elite. The health dimension is clearly an important marketing hook too, with antioxidant the buzzword. Many of the producers have sidelines of homeopathic remedies. A few inquiries and I had found miraculous cures for all those diseases that medical science is still struggling to treat.

Low sperm fertility count? Eat pollen. Mark Farah, a beekeeper, has created special screens that knock some of the pollen off his Cape honeybees when they return home. You can buy bottles of the male gametes of wild dandelion and pincushion proteas at his honey stall. Unlike commercial honey, which is mostly from eucalyptus or fruit orchards, Farah’s gourmet bees have hives in pristine sites around the Cape and up the West Coast, kept well away from agriculture. His delicious range is well worth sampling.

Cheryl Castelein’s Funki Fungi mushroom stall is another treat. The ubiquitous mass produced button mushrooms you find in supermarkets spawn cheerfully on manure. Trying to produce shiitake and oyster mushrooms, which grow on sterilized wood chips, is another matter. The capital intensive process requires strict control of humidity, light and temperature. Pickers in the pine forests of Mpumalanga and the Natal Midlands supply her stall with wild mushrooms, and in the rainy season from the Cape mountains cep (porcini) and pine ring mushrooms. Sometimes they bring her wood blewits, known as chicken of the woods, a large bracket type yellow mushroom, named for its taste. She also sells delicious wild mushroom paté and truffle oils.

On your way in or out, don’t miss Oded’s Kitchen, home to international chef, Oded Schwartz. He has a fascinating and unique range of preserves, sauces and pickles. He has just come up with a chocolate braai marinade (R85 for a 500ml bottle) that looks set to be a sensation this summer.

Beside the grocery stalls, there are numerous stands serving cooked food, This being Cape Town, you’ll find: a ‘French patisserie’, ‘Simply Italian’, ‘Touch of Greek’, the Belgian waffle stand, Flammkuchen (an Alsace version of a pizza), sushi, tuna burgers, bagels, a charcuterie with Spanish style sausages, and a smoothies bar. Never shop hungry, so before the crowds arrive, take breakfast here at one of the communal wooden tables. It’s a great start to the weekend.

Neighbour Goods Market, The Old Biscuit Mill, 373 – 375 Albert Road, Woodstock. Saturdays from 9am to 2pm. For more info: Tel:021 448 1438.

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Taj Opening Soon

Hemant Oberoi, the Group Executive Chef at Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces and arguably India’s most influential chef, was in Cape Town to oversee the preparations for three new restaurants in the new Taj Cape Town.

It is only in the past year that we have started to have celebrity chef restaurants arrive in South Africa – with first Gordon Ramsay (Maze), Nobu Matsuhisa (Nobu) and now Hemant Oberoi.

Oberoi as corporate chef for this luxury chain opens over six restaurants worldwide every year.

The Cape Town Taj will have the upmarket Bombay Brasserie (after their establishment in London), the smart casual Mint which opens on to St George’s Mall, and Twankey (a wine bar and Indian tapas style restaurant) on Adderley Street.

Oberoi is a charming, soft-spoken man who shoulders an enormous amount of responsibility with ease. He was caught in the Mumbai Taj Hotel during the terrorist attack and subsequent siege. The experiences he related at lunch were truly horrific. Yet, it has not changed his positive attitude to life.

The chef’s table was very fine indeed. We will watch with interest for their official opening.

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Last week, Anatoli restaurant celebrated its 25th year in fine style.

The service, the food, the ambience are all good quality. It is quite an achievement to have maintained the style and standard over all these years. Anatoli remains one of my favourites.

Congratulations to Tayfun Aras and his dedicated staff!

 

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Once Bitten is now in an iPhone and smartphone friendly format when accessed by your mobile device.

On your iPhone or other smart phone, CLICK ON THE DROP DOWN MENU ICON, TOP RIGHT for a list of the over 45 Cape Town restaurants reviewed here.

You can also opt for standard view by clicking Mobile Theme on your iPhone.

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Years ago, I came across a book in a second hand store called How To Live Like A Millionaire On An Ordinary Income; something I’d already been doing for most of my adult life. Written by Steve West (who also wrote The Power and Pleasure of Sex, How To Live To Be 100 Years, and What Happens After Death? You Don’t Have To Die To Find Out), replete with 1970s-style pictures of the playboy author, it bestowed on its readers such self-help tips as how to obtain college degrees without attending classes, get a full night’s rest in a few catnaps, and to amass vast amounts of credit without any surety for that yacht or skyscraper soon to be named after you. You needed little more than a cunningly cultivated, fashionably tasteless image of a profligate tycoon with money to burn.

 

The idea, which is partly true, is that the very rich often don’t pay for things, especially in the United States. Moving in the right circles, the thrifty millionaire is wined, dined and flown around the world by money so old it is senile or by the aspirant desperate for their hallucinant patronage.

 

West’s plan was to manage your moderate income wisely and to manufacture free opportunities at every turn. Why pay massive amounts of interest and be left with high residuals on that sports car, when you could get to drive it without buying it?

 

In Cape Town evidently, where freeloaders abound, you can live like a millionaire on less than half the moderate income which would be required elsewhere in the world. I’m not referring to the free platters and rotgut wine at book launches, gallery and theatre openings, or the complimentary sushi at fashion shows, award ceremonies and charity balls, on which a particular Cape Town set live. No, as winter and the recession panic grips restaurants, many upmarket eateries have come within reach of the ordinary income.

 

You can indulge in six courses at Ginja and Myoga for just R150 or at the Round House for R180. For bachelors this is cheaper than grocery shopping at Woolies. Currently at most establishments along Camps Bay’s beach strip when you order two mains you get the cheaper one free. Down at the Five Flies they are flipping coins – if your head or tail comes up, you get 50% off. Not that real millionaires need to be early risers, but Arnold’s on Kloof Street is offering breakfasts before 7am for only R9.50.

 

There is another crafty way to dine cheaply, but it involves enlisting a Member of Parliament. If you’re invited by your friendly MP to dine with them at one of parliament’s three restaurants, you can have three courses and salad and coffee for R65. That’s the guest’s rate; the MP pays just R55. When it was increased in July this year from R40 there was an uproar.

 

I wangled an invite from my old activist in arms, the environmentalist MP Lance Greyling. Before he was The Honourable, we used to lunch together in the old canteen (now closed and outsourced) in the opposition dominated Marks building. An echoey, underground chamber where paintings from the former regime still hung on the walls and above one’s head, a foot below the ceiling, the ankles and shoes of pedestrians outside could be glimpsed through the iron bars of its arched windows. For R12.50 plates could be piled high with lamb knuckles and potatoes swimming in watery gravy. One day a week was devoted to offal and tripe.

Greyling of course now dines in the MPs’ restaurant. The modernised one in the National Assembly building has a spectacular postcard view of Table Mountain and overlooks the ornate and beautifully maintained gardens of Tuynhuys.

 

Many of the chefs and catering staff were originally moved to parliament from the railways, where in the old days they worked during recess. The table service is informal and extremely friendly.

 

We ordered the pumpkin soup and were served a sort of barley porridge. “Anyone wants to know why so many of our MPs balloon in size…,” muttered Greyling. For mains there was a choice of hake, chicken or chops with rice, new potatoes or chips. Greyling, the good green he is, lamented the absence of a vegetarian option. The vegetables themselves are bain-marie’d to hell. For dessert there was diced fruit and vanilla ice cream.

It’s good old S.A.R. fare and I’m not referring to the Blue Train. You won’t begrudge our politicians – make that our newly minted millionaires – their subsidy once you’ve eaten here.

 

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When serving the President and his guests, “food should not be stacked on top of each other in the shape of a pyramid or tower. This might look good, but once the guest starts eating the prepared dish, it tends to fall apart and might cause embarrassment,” explains Chef Hilton Little. At a State banquet, the chef should avoid “food that is messy or difficult to eat, such as mutton, snails, lamb cutlets on the bone, frogs and oysters”. Indeed, the sight of a table of world leaders slurping oysters is one of the more off-putting things one could visualize.

 

Hilton Little has been the chef at the president’s official, and therefore rather modest, Cape Town residence, Genadendal, for the past 11 years, first under Nelson Mandela, then Thabo Mbeki. There are perks to being President, but having a private chef of Little’s quality cook for you, must count as one of the best.

 

The second eldest in a family of eight, he started assisting his mother peeling potatoes and chopping carrots at age nine. Once, his mom in a huff decided to teach the family a lesson and walked out on them for a day. When she returned, to her surprise she found the family at supper polishing off a delicious breyani. Little Hilton had cooked his first big meal.

 

From Wetton on the border of the Cape Flats where he grew up, he moved into a hostel at the Lansdowne Landrost Hotel School. It was “military like and we had to scrub floors”, he recalls.

 

He was apprenticed for three years at the Holiday Inn on Eastern Boulevard, starting in the production kitchen. Little worked his way through the departments to the main a la carte restaurant where he stayed for five years.

 

Curious and enterprising with a strong work ethic, soon he was at the newly built five-star Cape Sun where people in the 1980s would stare in wonder at the glass lifts riding on the exterior of the shiny building. He worked his way through the departments – pastry, butchery, the different venues – and ended up running the establishment’s fine dining French cuisine restaurant.

 

Winning competitions brought him to prominence. In his first national competition, he pre-empted his competitors. Where they presented the prawn cocktail in a glass, he decided to plate it; he deboned his leg of lamb before roasting it; and he made individual apple pies rather than dishing up a slice. Little would draw the food on disposable cardboard plates to work out how it would look.

 

In 1996, he applied for the position of household manager for the President of the Republic. He was summoned to Genadendal at 6pm one evening, where President Mandela, already in bed, interviewed him. Mandela asked if he could “start tomorrow!” It was the beginning of “a great relationship”. After he cooked lamb one day, Mandela expressed the wish that Little always cook for him. During his presidency, Little would follow Mandela to Houghton and even Qunu.

 

His style suited Mandela. “Remember that guests, no matter how eminent, shrink from ostentation. You should avoid the impression of great effort and you should always aim to put your guests at their ease,” says Little.

 

But he puts himself under major pressure to vary the meals. Once he asked Mbeki what he would like for lunch. The reply was, “I am going to leave that up to you.” Little keeps a hawk’s eye on what returns under the silver cloche. If the plate is clean, he writes down the dish’s name and next to it “success”.  A compilation of these is now in a lavishly illustrated book Bon Appétit, Mr President!.

 

Actually, Little started working on the cookbook some years ago. To his relief, Mbeki one day made the suggestion to him, so he didn’t have to seek permission. Mbeki kept encouraging him and by chance even introduced his cooking to the publisher. On publication, the President, who writes the forward, read the copy from cover to cover and congratulated him. “They did a very good job he said”, says Little.

 

“Always remember, recipes are only the foot prints; it’s only when you cook the dish, that’s when you travel the journey,” advises Little about the book.

 

All dishes were cooked exactly to the recipe for the pictures and photographed hot off the stove, during which time the editors checked the measurements for the ingredients. The publishers claim that it is the first book of its kind in the world by a chef to a head of state.

 

Little belongs to the exclusive Club des Chef des Chefs. Its thirty members are chefs to presidents and sovereigns, almost all from the Western world, and includes four women. Information they share helps him formulate menus for visiting leaders.

 

Has Little ever had any disasters? Apparently not. Protocol procedures are tight and hygiene standards high. “I also put a few drops of vinegar on the plate just before I serve. It kills bacteria and gives the plate a nice spotless polished look,” he says.

 

As it is the President’s last term, the year is particularly busy. Little is called upon to cook at Tuynhuys, the guest house and at Mahlamba-Ndopfu in Pretoria. The first lady approves the menus. If a catering company tenders for a state banquet, a tasting panel decides.

 

Little won’t be drawn on what is President Mbeki’s favourite dish, nor will he give away any dietary restrictions.

 

“Do you know any Zulu dishes?” I ask. “No, I don’t,” he shrugs. “There’s a reason I ask,” I press him. “Oh!” he laughs, “No, I used to cook for Jacob Zuma when he was deputy president and used to come here often.”

 

Bon Appétit, Mr President

by Hilton Little

ISBN: 9780798148986

Price (incl. VAT): R 295.00

Format: Hardcover, 192 pp

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The contrast between upper and lower Long Street illustrates an important point. Expedient demolition may bring rapid urban renewal, but at the cost of unique historical character. Unless you’re a salaried drone in one of its office towers, who wants to hang around soulless lower Long Street?  The success of upper Long Street (amongst those of us on the dole, studying or visiting) rests in its almost accidental preservation, though concerned citizens, the National Monuments Council and architects such as Revel Fox in the 1970s did contribute. Much of this conservation is of course only skin deep as façadism has become widely practiced. Yet, the street does retain a vitality and vibe that runs much deeper.

 

The sharp contrasts at almost every corner between grand and grotty, smart and tatty, restored and crumbling, can co-exist thanks to low rentals. Even second-hand bookshops – such as Tommy’s, Clarke’s, Select Books among others – have survived here. A mix of residential and business premises keeps the street real. Long Street is not a theme park. It’s a relatively civilised, Cape version of Yeoville’s old Rocky Street.

 

Weird and not always so wonderful characters abound: white Rastafarians in hessian, gold robed Nigerians, the great unwashed European backpackers, a Masaai warrior, devotees of Tom of Finland. At night the street belongs to the younger set, spilling over the pavements in carnival mood, out of nightclubs and pubs such as Jo’burg, the Dubliner Irish Pub and the Zula Sound Bar.

 

It’s also about as cosmopolitan as Cape Town gets, reflected in its many ethnic eateries, among them Ethiopian, Cuban, Indian, Kurdish, African, Israeli. There’s the African Music Store, Pan-African Market and Mama Afrika restaurant. On upper Long Street, speaking isiXhosa isn’t going to get you as far as a command of French.

 

Innumerable film crews are always closing down the road and radio taxis double parked in both lanes paralyse traffic at night.

 

Desmond Martin in the introduction to his charming book Walking Long Street (Struik, 2007),

which meticulously documents over 50 buildings, describes how he fell in love with the street when living in the 1950s in 44 Long, then the YMCA. The building narrowly missed demolition in the mid-1970s. It is now under the ownership of Indigo Properties, the creation of Nick Ferguson and his associate Jody Aufrightig, who are breathing new life into Long Street.

 

They developed the highly successful Biscuit Mill, and already have on Long Street the Daddy Long Legs Hotel (N^o 134), the Grand Daddy Hotel (N^o 34, formerly the Metropole) and The New Space Theatre (N^o 44), which opened earlier this month with Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins.

 

Run by the NewSpace Trust, a public benefit organisation, the theatre hopes to preserve more than a building. The original Space, opened in 1972 by theatre photographer Brian Astbury and his actress wife Yvonne Bryceland, was in Bloem Street. It relocated in 1976 to the YMCA building. In 1979 Astbury emigrated, and it was renamed The Peoples Space. Sadly, it went dark in 1984.

 

Defiantly non-racial and anti-apartheid, the Space was in the vanguard of South African theatre life. It saw the premier of Athol Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest under the Immorality Act, the original productions of the John Kani, Winston Ntshona and Fugard’s The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead, and it is where the likes of Pieter-Dirk Uys, Marthinus Basson (then a stage manager), Mavis Taylor, Fatima Dike and Thoko Ntshinga, among many others, cut their teeth.

 

The project is therefore close to the hearts of many of us who love our city. As a school boy, I went almost every month. When 14 years old, I saw Fred Abrahamse (now Artistic Director of the NewSpace) playing a guinea fowl and became star-struck by a 20-year-old David Dennis in 1789.

The concept is to create a mini precinct offering a wide variety of cultural activities and facilities.

On the ground floor is Anytime, an Italian trattoria and ice cream emporium, and the Oolong Cafe, a tea emporium. Above the theatre, which is on the first floor, are the offices of the Africa Centre, and on the top floor is the Gymnasium, a dance studio by day and at night an 80-seater performance space for stand up comedy, film, experimental and developmental work and one-man shows. The rest of the building they hope to let to ‘theatre friendly tenants’.

Located almost exactly in the middle of Long Street, few projects could be better suited to the spirit of this street.

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