Midlands Restaurants

Category:
The Natal Midlands is such a cornucopia of gastronomic wonderment – whether restaurant-feasting or freshproduce- gathering – that left to my own devices I might never have emerged from the place again.

Thankfully I’d been given a very specific mission: a road trip taking in three of the area’s most feted and rated gastronomic destinations. The delights of Hartford House, Granny Mouse Country House & Spa and Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse awaited my mouth and stomach: not the world’s worst job, that’s for sure (though with hindsight I can offer some advice – a three-day detox before you follow a similar dining route is not a bad idea).

Only four-and-a-half hours from Johannesburg, Hartford House was our first stop-over. Originally the home of colonial Natal’s last governor, the place simply oozes olde worlde charm. Hartford is now part of the world-famous Summerhill Stud Farm, and many a visitor here comes on horsey business or with horsey interests. The place is just plain beautiful, with sweeping lawns, blue lakes and shining thoroughbred racehorses a-prancing in the morning mist.

Hartford’s restaurant is in the original main house (this decorated in a way that can only be described as delightfully Afro-Liberace). There’s a grand old silver service feel to the dinners, which are given an extra sense of occasion by having everyone seated at the same time, thus allowing for some fascinating raconteuring from owner Mick Goss, and a chat through the menu from prodigy chef Jackie Cameron. A high achiever at 25, she has run this kitchen since the age of 21 and has had rave reviews. I love the fact that she’s using so much local produce – from the almost organically reared Dargle Valley pork to cheeses, herbs and vegetables – so it’s a pity that this is mentioned neither on the menu nor in her pre-dinner speech. I’d heard so much about her cooking that I was quite prepared for the reality to be underwhelming in the face of all the foreplay, but happily, my first mouthful of her food was totally blissful...

The soup which opened the menu was an unbelievably intense mushroom purée finished with shiitake powder and truffle oil. The depth of flavour was remarkable, and somehow it was smooth as silk without that babyfood feeling which smooth purées so often leave. The other dish which stood out was a fusion-style beef salsa – almost a pickled tartare – finely balanced and quite perfect.

Of the other three courses, only the dessert was uneven: in keeping with current trends, a long rectangle of a plate displayed a medley of mini goods: an orange crème brûlée (beautifully undersweet but spoiled by being overcooked to stodgy graininess), an indifferent tiny orange sponge, a wee shot of Van der Hum and a perfect bittersweet black truffle atop a perfect tuile.The Van der Hum fought like crazy with the Klein Constantia Vin de Constance which had been paired with the dessert.

For me, one perfect brûlée, sans accessories, would have done the trick. I understand the pressure to push the boat out when one runs a destination restaurant on a prestigious estate but, for Cameron, swanky works best when she keeps it simple.

Apart from the dessert event, suggested wine pairings on our particular evening did the job most of the time, but weren’t gobsmacking. I guess I was hoping to get off erings less familiar to me, given the reputation of the wine collection.

A return to the quite extraordinary suite my husband and I had for the night was the perfect cure for our heavy bellies. Four massive lake suites are the newest addition here, built and decorated in contrast to the colonial vernacular of the main house and other rooms. Rough African clay exteriors don’t hint for a moment at the drop-dead impressive luxury of the interiors: in ours, the chic-est slickest African-inspired furnishings, endless floor space, underfl oor heating, and every hidden modcon you could want. A framed note at the entrance told us about the suite’s lucky status as the choice of His Royal Highness Sheikh Mohammed of the ruling family of Dubai when visiting Summerhill Stud farm to check on his stallions and mares. Who can blame him?

We managed to squeeze in a breakfast before leaving. Traditional English is there for those who don’t wish to stray, but the rest of the menu is refreshingly adventurous. Though I was sceptical, maltabella ice-cream with Amarula cream and prune compote seemed too crazy not to try, and with a recommendation from our waitress, we ordered it. Sadly, the maltabella added little flavour and imparted an unpleasant grainy aspect. The dish felt like a conceptual exercise. Other offerings were good, though, with the very best of our many choices a gossamer-light, herb-speckled, egg-white omelette rolled around moist scrambled egg, cream cheese and smoked salmon. Although I do wish that South African chefs would use more local trout and avoid imported salmon, I still found this one of the most appealing egg dishes I’ve had in a while. Stuffed full, we wended our way south-ish towards Mooi River.

It’s a wonderful meander from Hartford to Granny Mouse, with brilliant food foraging stops en route, from grass-fed beef at Greenlands to luscious handmade cheeses at Swissland. Thinking about it from the harder surrounds of Johannesburg, I’d always thought the name Granny Mouse a bit on the twee side, but as we approached it, cruising through the soft green curves of Mooi River, the name actually felt just right. The place is, of course, an institution: started some 30 years back by legendary cook and host Richard Poynton and his wife Mouse (now at Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse), this was one of the first places to draw people to the area and establish the Midlands as a food destination. Under the current ownership of Tony and Wendy Williamson, Granny Mouse has, for the greater number of those years, maintained its culinary reputation.

In a rambling, decidedly Beatrix Potter-ish house, we sat down to a lunch overlooking the Mooi River valley and hills beyond (this really dazzling view also features in many of the rooms, which are as cosy as the main house, with balconies opening onto the view. The quaint and countrified feel stops only with the bathrooms’ giant and hedonistic jacuzzi baths).

Silwood School-trained Leanne Roberts, at Granny Mouse a few months shy of a year, is the new force behind the food here. Under her, the feel of the menu is slightly more... well, posh, I think is the word, and slightly less rustic. General manager and maitre d’ Nico Scheepers guided us through dish choices with a firm hand and, with our encouragement at his suggestion, took over all wine pairings. The man has a rare gift, and his passion and knowledge are an absolute delight.

He paired each of our starters and mains with a wine which made the food fairly sing. Bacon-wrapped game loin with a chocolaty jus absolutely loved the heady Diemersfontein Pinotage 2007 he chose, and the vegetarian ravioli (with somewhat flat flavours and slightly too-thick pasta) was given new life with a quirky Cederberg Chenin Blanc 2006. My favourite dish of the meal, a bowl of perfect Saldanha mussels in a green Thai curry, cooked just through but still silky and quivering, was even more incredible paired with Bellingham’s The Maverick Viognier 2005.

Desserts sounded more beguiling than they proved to be: pineapple tarte tatin was under-caramelised and oddly dry, which none of its accompaniments could remedy, and a nicely fl avoured basil pannacotta spoiled by a heavy hand with the gelatine. Both desserts were strangely antiseptic and showed nothing of the chef’s personality. Here, too, was the one place the wine felt all wrong. Surely a dessert wine is not the answer to every dessert? A bitter black chocolate pudding or a barely-sweet grilled fruit and cheese course can take the syrupy-ness of most dessert wines, but when both items are very sweet, as they were here, the result is cloying. The fieriness of a grappa or even a straight bitter espresso might have done the job better.

An impassioned tour by Scheepers through his wine cellar was a great finish to our meal. Time constraints meant that we couldn’t sample breakfast at Granny Mouse, but even with full tummies, the brie and bacon French toast, classic eggs Benedict and sideboard of local cheeses seemed most tempting...

A long, potholed dirt road leads to one of the most beautiful and most remote Midlands stops: Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse, at the foot of the Drakensberg. Richard Poynton, formerly of Granny Mouse, transformed his family farm into a guesthouse about eight years ago and his cooking has been garnering rave reviews ever since.

He is a big personality, to put it mildly. His colourful and impassioned discussion of the blackboard menu before dinner sucked us into his universe completely, with information on the grass-fed Angus beef purloined from an old friend down the road and the giant pumpkin harvested from his garden for tonight’s soup interspersed with anecdotes of Natal battlegrounds (the legacy of friend and historian David Rattray) and wife Mouse’s obsession with chickens (there is never chicken on the menu, but from September Cleopatra’s own organic eggs will be used). He also included a warning about his love of very rich food, and indeed, this does seem to be the hallmark of his cooking. Though influences range from classic ’60s and ’70s stuff (a smoked trout timbale with horseradish cream, for example) to modern Asian and fusion, he always manages to work the cream, the duck fat, the butters etc in there somewhere. While there are times when the richness rides roughshod over ingredients which need little enrichment, I love the fact that his food is so much about what he likes to eat, with only the merest nod to current food fads.

The grass-fed Angus beef fillet he’d talked about earlier had all the flavour of a rump or rib-eye. Served with perfect Yorkshire pudding and Béarnaise, this was almost my favourite dish. But my number one choice, and I think the best dish of our whole Midlands stomach-stretching marathon, was Poynton’s dessert. His dense chocolate tart – described quite correctly on the menu as wicked and silken – is an ode to chocolate, and I simply can’t imagine how a better one could exist. It was paired with a staggeringly good orange ice-cream which, though very creamy (of course), had all the intense orange-ness of a sorbet, achieved by first massively reducing the juice, almost to a syrup.

Wines throughout were alright-ish; our fault for going along with our server’s suggestion that we drink the house wines she already had out. Lying semi-comatose before a roaring fire in our delightfully untrendy “cowboy”-themed bedroom was about as much as I could manage after that. How we fitted in any breakfast the following morning is a mystery to me, but in the name of research we somehow managed…

At first I was baffled by the small pot of almondand- vanilla-flavoured whipped cream run through with strawberries which was set before us. A little rich for breakfast, surely? Actually no; magically it managed to be light and soothing and exactly what my body wanted. Hair of the dog, I suppose. Avoiding good-looking muesli, scones and breads on the table, we saved stomach space for Poynton’s version of Eggs Benedict. Though I would have liked a less runny hollandaise, the use of a delicious bubble and squeak base in place of muffin was brilliant, and the overall effect wonderful.

Despite the quite considerable cholesterol risks, I already long to return for another bout of Poynton’s out-and-out decadent fare. But the main thing this visit did was fill me with a huge desire to return to the Midlands, not just to eat in the many eateries our stomachs couldn’t find space for, but also to sample more of the incredible fresh produce. I’m also intrigued by how very insular the area is in its loves, hates and influences. There is, for example, an interesting cut-off from the Indian influence which defines much of the Natal coast’s cuisine, despite the once-present indentured Indian labour in the sugar cane fields not too far away. Zulu food influence, too, gets a very tiny look in.

But what’s really wonderful and perhaps most important, given today’s environmentally scary food world, is that so many Midlands chefs are buying and growing and cooking natural and local. Very local. I guess they’d be crazy not too, with the bounty they have about them.

Kamberg Valley
Tel033 267-7243
Email cleopatramountain@telkom.net
Web www.cleomountain.com

Rates (per person, per night, includes dinner,
bed and breakfast, plus lunchtime cheese board
and all teas, coffees and cakes):

R1295 – R1595 until September 2008,
R1395 – R1695 from October 2008 until September 2009.

Lunch: no formal lunch served.
Dinner: about R250 for five-course set menu, excluding drinks.