Auberge Michel vs Sides
Published: 03 Mar 05
Fish sausage and mash compete against two-tone fishy faces, each dish inspired by the Rudera Robusto 2002, the WINE magazine Tops at Spar Chenin Blanc Challenge winner... Perfect ingredients for a cracking Chef Shootout, as Neil Pendock reports. It's the stuff conspiracy theories are made of: two ex-pat chefs called Fred
(Fréderic Leloup at Auberge Michel who hails from France and Irishman
Fred Monaghan at Sides), two dishes featuring Scottish salmon and mini vegetables
with a dash of Eastern spice (curry for Fréd, cloves for Fred) with a
jaunty sprig of thyme on top. If this had been a correspondence course shootout
or a Matric domestic science exam, the c-word would have been "copying"
instead of "Chenin".
But the only leaking taking place was the national vegetable of Wales (here bonsai-size and grown in Swaziland by a Frenchman). Leek comprised the green stuff for Fréd's creation, which he called a "tournedos of salmon and kingklip in a light curry and star anise sauce" ("infusion," interjected the eponymous Michel Morand, on hand to provide a witty and well-informed commentary on the state of play of the Jozi restaurant scene).
While white wine with fish and red wine with red meat has long been the culinary matching mantra, the solution of adding spice to accommodate the rich and voluptuous flavours of the winning Chenin was arrived at independently by the two Freds.
Auberge Michel, open barely seven months, is the "most talked about restaurant of the year" according to fellow food judge Janine Walker and editor of The Star Tonight! lifestyle and entertainment supplement. The foodie press agrees: a Top 100 Restaurants laureate and one of Eat Out's national Top 10 selections. Located in a rustic garden setting, in the shadow of Sandton City, with a giant peppermill cum water feature sculpture in the garden, Auberge Michel is an inn "but only in the same way that Nelson Mandela could be described as 90% water" to paraphrase Jancis Robinson on the subject of drinking 139-year-old Montrachet, as one does when one is the UK's premier wine pundit. And if you wait long enough, there's a good chance you'll see Madiba dining chez Michel.
On the subject of water, Michel's is Evian and the French connections don't let up for a minute. The oysters are from Brittany, the foie gras from Bordeaux, the waiters speak French, and Janine maintains that if you ask Michel nicely, a French kiss is also on the menu. The house wine is French: La Vieille Ferme from the Côtes du Ventoux in the red department and Louis Latour Grand Ardeche Chardonnay in the white, both at a reasonable R30 for a 125ml glass.
As Michel noted, "With the rand so strong, decent French wine is becoming affordable. If a table wants Chardonnay, we propose Chablis, which is cheaper than Meerlust. For Shiraz we go to the Rhône and to Bordeaux for Cabernet. About 35% of the wine we serve comes from France. And that includes Angelus and Château Mouton Rothschild that we sell plenty of - at R3 000 a bottle."
Fréd is a chef of few words, preferring to let his cooking do the talking, so his opinion of the winning Chenin was typically pithy: "South African." When pressed, he elaborated: "Very acidic, high alcohol, fruity - those dry fruits that are not difficult to match with food." Michel continued: "It's definitely a food wine and too rich to drink on its own. Definitely New World and crying out for spice. It's got nothing to do with Chenin from the Loire Valley. The type of wine the public will fall easily for. It's very feminine."
"Voluptuously so," added Janine.
Fréd's dish got full marks for appearance: a smiling fish face with salmon lower lip and a kingklip moustache, with Swazi mini potatoes so small you'd wonder why Dr Atkins was so worried about carbos. The carrots were anorexic and perfectly straight and the buttery sauce was outstanding with a slight curry lift sufficient to cut through the fat wine as elegantly as the fish knives sliced through the duo of fish.
The salmon was from Scotland ("It's the only one with flavour," added Fréd) and the contrasting textures of the two fish played off against each other. If Janine had any complaint, it was that the salmon could have been more rare for her taste, but then she is a self-confessed sashimi junkie. I thought that star anise was a nice touch, with the aniseed flavours teasing ripe apricots out of the wine, giving it a bit of a mulled character which was completely appropriate two weeks before Christmas.
Overall a triumph of classical French cuisine, showcasing its adaptability to the ripe flavours and mini vegetables of the New World.
With the opposition called Auberge Michel, it was to be expected that Fred, famous for his sense of humour, would choose a mini aubergine to add to the mash which formed the foundation of his dish. Poached whole in sugar and cloves as if making a jam, it was an ingredient Janine called "miraculous" and something a Louis Leipoldt or Hildagonda Duckitt would be proud of. St Fred also has a reputation as something of a sausage specialist: lamb with rosemary, chicken pancetta and brie, veal with mustard and mozzarella and chopped beef are all his, and the comfort food he dished up in a bowl was as rustic and different from Fréd's elegant fish face as Sandton is from Dunkeld.
Located on Bompas road, Sides is a contemporary Afro restaurant, a Moyo with taste as well as money and an Eat Out Top 10 laureate to boot. With female body casts from Mozambique on the walls, comfort food is a natural beneath a forest of wooden breasts - a case of not seeing the wood for the teats. A high-tech walk-in wine cellar confirms Janine's point:
"It's interesting that Sides and Auberge Michel have two of Johannesburg's best wine lists, along with the most reasonable wine prices in town." On the matter of the winning wine, Fred was graciousness personified: "We were incredibly lucky to get wine like this to put in the sauce."
Fred's match was a daring one: fish sausage on mash topped with a sweet aubergine, poached in cloves. The heart of Fred's Chenin sausage was salted cod, the national dish of Portugal called baccalau, an acquired taste which goes a long way to explaining why Portuguese cuisine has not enjoyed the international success of the French or Italians. The staple food of the 16th century explorers who "discovered" Africa while busy searching for slaves and a shortcut to the Indies for spices, it was a nice historic touch for Fred to add a pinch of chilli to the cod to cut through the ripe Chenin flavours, even if chilli did come from South America. But then the Spanish and Portuguese "discovered" that continent, too.
Fred soaked the salt cod for a couple of days in water with some thyme to make it less salty, along with lemon juice and loads of parsley. Salmon was added for moisture and the whole mixture was then pan fried in olive oil and put through a mincer to make sausages. A sauce was whipped up from cream, stock made from cod bones and the remains of the tasting bottle of Chenin (not much) and then served on a bed of mash, together with the miraculous aubergine.
Presentation was as rustic as a school meal and Janine found the texture of the cod "a bit odd" (Fred called it "stringy"). The flavours, however, were great: well defined and totally unexpected. When pressed as to the shortcomings of the dish, Fred admitted that he'd add more salmon next time and put more cream in the sauce, as it needed to be "more moist". Yet in spite of the defects and the odd fishbone, we both thought Fred pulled it off, and he snatched victory by the narrowest of margins for one simple reason - the X-factor.
The sheer cheek of pairing a salt cod sausage on a sweet aubergine mash with Chenin had us both squirming with nerves before it appeared and then totally surprised and relieved when it worked. While we both admitted we'd never order a salt cod sausage off a menu, at the end of the day it was comfort food that was best matched to Chenin, comfort wine from the Cape.
But the only leaking taking place was the national vegetable of Wales (here bonsai-size and grown in Swaziland by a Frenchman). Leek comprised the green stuff for Fréd's creation, which he called a "tournedos of salmon and kingklip in a light curry and star anise sauce" ("infusion," interjected the eponymous Michel Morand, on hand to provide a witty and well-informed commentary on the state of play of the Jozi restaurant scene).
While white wine with fish and red wine with red meat has long been the culinary matching mantra, the solution of adding spice to accommodate the rich and voluptuous flavours of the winning Chenin was arrived at independently by the two Freds.
Auberge Michel, open barely seven months, is the "most talked about restaurant of the year" according to fellow food judge Janine Walker and editor of The Star Tonight! lifestyle and entertainment supplement. The foodie press agrees: a Top 100 Restaurants laureate and one of Eat Out's national Top 10 selections. Located in a rustic garden setting, in the shadow of Sandton City, with a giant peppermill cum water feature sculpture in the garden, Auberge Michel is an inn "but only in the same way that Nelson Mandela could be described as 90% water" to paraphrase Jancis Robinson on the subject of drinking 139-year-old Montrachet, as one does when one is the UK's premier wine pundit. And if you wait long enough, there's a good chance you'll see Madiba dining chez Michel.
On the subject of water, Michel's is Evian and the French connections don't let up for a minute. The oysters are from Brittany, the foie gras from Bordeaux, the waiters speak French, and Janine maintains that if you ask Michel nicely, a French kiss is also on the menu. The house wine is French: La Vieille Ferme from the Côtes du Ventoux in the red department and Louis Latour Grand Ardeche Chardonnay in the white, both at a reasonable R30 for a 125ml glass.
As Michel noted, "With the rand so strong, decent French wine is becoming affordable. If a table wants Chardonnay, we propose Chablis, which is cheaper than Meerlust. For Shiraz we go to the Rhône and to Bordeaux for Cabernet. About 35% of the wine we serve comes from France. And that includes Angelus and Château Mouton Rothschild that we sell plenty of - at R3 000 a bottle."
Fréd is a chef of few words, preferring to let his cooking do the talking, so his opinion of the winning Chenin was typically pithy: "South African." When pressed, he elaborated: "Very acidic, high alcohol, fruity - those dry fruits that are not difficult to match with food." Michel continued: "It's definitely a food wine and too rich to drink on its own. Definitely New World and crying out for spice. It's got nothing to do with Chenin from the Loire Valley. The type of wine the public will fall easily for. It's very feminine."
"Voluptuously so," added Janine.
Fréd's dish got full marks for appearance: a smiling fish face with salmon lower lip and a kingklip moustache, with Swazi mini potatoes so small you'd wonder why Dr Atkins was so worried about carbos. The carrots were anorexic and perfectly straight and the buttery sauce was outstanding with a slight curry lift sufficient to cut through the fat wine as elegantly as the fish knives sliced through the duo of fish.
The salmon was from Scotland ("It's the only one with flavour," added Fréd) and the contrasting textures of the two fish played off against each other. If Janine had any complaint, it was that the salmon could have been more rare for her taste, but then she is a self-confessed sashimi junkie. I thought that star anise was a nice touch, with the aniseed flavours teasing ripe apricots out of the wine, giving it a bit of a mulled character which was completely appropriate two weeks before Christmas.
Overall a triumph of classical French cuisine, showcasing its adaptability to the ripe flavours and mini vegetables of the New World.
With the opposition called Auberge Michel, it was to be expected that Fred, famous for his sense of humour, would choose a mini aubergine to add to the mash which formed the foundation of his dish. Poached whole in sugar and cloves as if making a jam, it was an ingredient Janine called "miraculous" and something a Louis Leipoldt or Hildagonda Duckitt would be proud of. St Fred also has a reputation as something of a sausage specialist: lamb with rosemary, chicken pancetta and brie, veal with mustard and mozzarella and chopped beef are all his, and the comfort food he dished up in a bowl was as rustic and different from Fréd's elegant fish face as Sandton is from Dunkeld.
Located on Bompas road, Sides is a contemporary Afro restaurant, a Moyo with taste as well as money and an Eat Out Top 10 laureate to boot. With female body casts from Mozambique on the walls, comfort food is a natural beneath a forest of wooden breasts - a case of not seeing the wood for the teats. A high-tech walk-in wine cellar confirms Janine's point:
"It's interesting that Sides and Auberge Michel have two of Johannesburg's best wine lists, along with the most reasonable wine prices in town." On the matter of the winning wine, Fred was graciousness personified: "We were incredibly lucky to get wine like this to put in the sauce."
Fred's match was a daring one: fish sausage on mash topped with a sweet aubergine, poached in cloves. The heart of Fred's Chenin sausage was salted cod, the national dish of Portugal called baccalau, an acquired taste which goes a long way to explaining why Portuguese cuisine has not enjoyed the international success of the French or Italians. The staple food of the 16th century explorers who "discovered" Africa while busy searching for slaves and a shortcut to the Indies for spices, it was a nice historic touch for Fred to add a pinch of chilli to the cod to cut through the ripe Chenin flavours, even if chilli did come from South America. But then the Spanish and Portuguese "discovered" that continent, too.
Fred soaked the salt cod for a couple of days in water with some thyme to make it less salty, along with lemon juice and loads of parsley. Salmon was added for moisture and the whole mixture was then pan fried in olive oil and put through a mincer to make sausages. A sauce was whipped up from cream, stock made from cod bones and the remains of the tasting bottle of Chenin (not much) and then served on a bed of mash, together with the miraculous aubergine.
Presentation was as rustic as a school meal and Janine found the texture of the cod "a bit odd" (Fred called it "stringy"). The flavours, however, were great: well defined and totally unexpected. When pressed as to the shortcomings of the dish, Fred admitted that he'd add more salmon next time and put more cream in the sauce, as it needed to be "more moist". Yet in spite of the defects and the odd fishbone, we both thought Fred pulled it off, and he snatched victory by the narrowest of margins for one simple reason - the X-factor.
The sheer cheek of pairing a salt cod sausage on a sweet aubergine mash with Chenin had us both squirming with nerves before it appeared and then totally surprised and relieved when it worked. While we both admitted we'd never order a salt cod sausage off a menu, at the end of the day it was comfort food that was best matched to Chenin, comfort wine from the Cape.
THE CONTESTANTS
Fréderic Leloup, chef at Auberge Michel, 122 Pretoria Avenue, Sandton
Fred Monaghan, chef at Sides, 10 Bompas Avenue, Dunkeld
THE JUDGES
Neil Pendock, wine writer
Janine Walker, Editor of The Star Tonight! and food and wine writer
