Charming the Midlands

There’s nothing like a bistro by a lake to add fresh dimension to drinking wine at Sunday lunch. The lake was really more dam surrounded by fields of sugarcane, fever trees and a horny weaver colony. It was a stinking hot day so, after our third glass of Hartenberg Sauvignon Blanc 2009, we stripped down to our knickers and dived into Tuckers Dam. After a paddle we stumbled out looking nothing like Jane Fonda from On Golden Pond. A charming redhead waitress who looked like Beatrix Potter welcomed us back with potent caipirinhas. “Did you know that the giant black mamba in the Natal Museum display comes from this farm,” she informed us with smug calm. “There is another one somewhere here, apparently two metres long,” she smiled and wandered off to pick some fresh rocket and mint from the organic vegetable garden.

Sepia Bistro is only 40 minutes from Durban, the land of lightning, monkeys and spicy pines. It is run by Hayley Weston, a 24-year-old chef with a mohican and a Christina Martin culinary pedigree. It’s here the summer drink at dusk requests the refreshing company of Hartenberg.

My last delightful French bistro escapade was at Café Le Fort which existed once upon a time in the misty hills of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands where I enjoyed a memorable, most merrily drunken lunch in the rose garden with poet Sudeep Sen and his wife Prithi. When we finally drove back to a friend’s pottery farm listening to Mozart in an attempt to calm ourselves down, the brake took on the persona of the accelerator and we managed to gracefully ice-skate off the dirt road and dramatically cartwheel into a ditch. My classic golden Merc was a write-off. Sensibly, I used the car pay-out to travel up East Africa for three months and finally learnt how to sail a dhow.

This time I did not offer to drive. Five of us sped along the N2 down the South Coast to arrive at this charming thatch-roofed bistro wedged between Mtwalume and Sezela. It’s just off the Ifafa Beach turn-off – that’s GPS 30º 37’ 30” longitude, 3º 27’ 37” latitude. They’re open for Sunday breakfast and lunch until dusk. It’s here where you can gnaw away your Sunday on a tasty lamb shank slow roasted in red wine and fresh rosemary served with a red wine jus or munch on a gourmet sarmie if you can’t be bothered with a knife and fork. “I’ve been cooking since I was two years old,” laughed Hayley, handing me a starter plate of chilli-dusted squid heads. “I had to make my own breakfast as my parents ran a nightclub.”

They have wine evenings where Hayley pairs prawn and coriander rosti topped with smoked salmon roses served with a lemon, black pepper and coriander cream with a cheery Anura Chardonnay. For pudding she whisks up a puff pastry basket filled with vanilla cream cheese, topped with glazed fruits and accompanied by berry coulis and a classy glass of Anura Viognier Barrel Selection. The wine list is small but suitably stylish and is changed regularly, including offerings from L’Avenir, De Grendel and Ken Forrester, a Graham Beck Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, as well as Hayley’s Unbelievable Red house wine she recommends with her gourmet burgers. I confessed to never having eaten a burger in my life, nor ever having downed a glass of Coca- Cola because when we were children my mum thankfully insisted we act French, and slowly sip her wine.