Neil Pendock: October 2006
Author:
Neil Pendock
Published: 09 Nov 06
Two decades separated them. themes were similar, yet the tastes reflected change.Gwen Jennings is author of the entertaining Franschhoek Memories: life in the
French valley - history of a sleepy dorp tha
t became the nexus of SA wine tourism
development in the last decades of the 20th century and a place perhaps more fitting
Somerset Maugham's description "a sunny place for shady people" than
the Monaco that Maugham had in mind. We struck up a correspondence after I reviewed
her memoir, so it came as only a small surprise to receive from her the menu for
the Diner Inaugural de la Chaîne de Rôtisseurs Bailliage d'Afrique
du Sud held at Restaurant Le Français, Johannesburg, on 25 October 1981.
What was more interesting was the timing: it arrived the day after a Nabyge-legen wine dinner at the Westcliff. A case of Jungian synchronicity perhaps, but a comparison of the two menus speaks volumes about culinary progress over a quarter century.
In the early '80s the "pontificating stuffed-shirts" of the Bailliage primed their taste buds with la terrine d'huitre et de langouste Cap Bonne Esperance. 25 years later and crustaceans remain in fashion in the shape of Stefano Strafella's lobster ceviche - essentially lobster sashimi, neatly removed from its carapace and placed on a cold black slate plate with the recently evacuated red shell filled with ikura spiked with vodka - big orange globes of salmon caviar glistening in an alcoholic sheen.
With cows still sane back in '81, the anonymous Chaîne chefs could get away with la croustade de ris de veau à la crème de morille - veal sweetbreads (essentially calf pancreas and thyroid gland) - a course Strafella sadly skipped.
Truffles appear in the same place on both menus: in a boudin de fruits de mer à l'essence de truffe back then and in a fresh pea soup enhanced with them, now.
Both mains were lamb: braised shoulder with great globs of marrow bone and le mignon d'agneau. No cheese at either affair but strawberries for the Rôtisseurs and flourless chocolate torte at the Westcliff.
While the menus had essentially the same structure (and often the same ingredients: lobster/langoustine, truffle, lamb) they differed markedly in wine. The Bailliage blow-out featured the usual suspects: Clos de Lambrays '47, Château Batailley '79 and Château Baret '79 from the Graves with an Alsatian Muscat "Les Amandiers" '78 as sticky. Although the inclusion of a TJ Schanderl '81 as aperitif was a delicious piece of nostalgie pour la bouie.
At the Westcliff, Nabygelegen owner James Mckenzie and Strafella were clearly singing from the same hymn sheet. The finest wine was a single vineyard Chenin Blanc planted the year the grapes for Clos de Lambrays were harvested (yet more synchronicity).
A couple of red blends led by a Merlot-dominated Right Bank doppelgänger called 1712 - a cheeky challenge to the New World categorisation of SA when this property was fermenting grapes a century before Napoleon started packing for Moscow. Plus a funky Mediterranean-inspired blend called Scaramanga - so named as the Cabernet grower has a supernumenary nipple, just like the Man with the Golden Gun.
For dessert, a late harvest Hárslevelü named At the Limiet after the Limietberg, the literal limit of Cape civilization until the 19th century. Comparing the two dinners, the words of Bill Buford, former fiction editor of New Yorker magazine turned chef, come to mind:
"Food does have a kind of charisma. It is seen as an expression of national culture. It is a way of talking to the dead. It is an expression of family and family inheritance. In Italy they are obsessed with how food is an expression of exactly where you are. It is so many different things at once and at the same time it is none of these things. It is finally also just dinner. You eat it, and it is gone. It is not art, and it is not culture, and it is not identity, and it is not your mother."
What was more interesting was the timing: it arrived the day after a Nabyge-legen wine dinner at the Westcliff. A case of Jungian synchronicity perhaps, but a comparison of the two menus speaks volumes about culinary progress over a quarter century.
In the early '80s the "pontificating stuffed-shirts" of the Bailliage primed their taste buds with la terrine d'huitre et de langouste Cap Bonne Esperance. 25 years later and crustaceans remain in fashion in the shape of Stefano Strafella's lobster ceviche - essentially lobster sashimi, neatly removed from its carapace and placed on a cold black slate plate with the recently evacuated red shell filled with ikura spiked with vodka - big orange globes of salmon caviar glistening in an alcoholic sheen.
With cows still sane back in '81, the anonymous Chaîne chefs could get away with la croustade de ris de veau à la crème de morille - veal sweetbreads (essentially calf pancreas and thyroid gland) - a course Strafella sadly skipped.
Truffles appear in the same place on both menus: in a boudin de fruits de mer à l'essence de truffe back then and in a fresh pea soup enhanced with them, now.
Both mains were lamb: braised shoulder with great globs of marrow bone and le mignon d'agneau. No cheese at either affair but strawberries for the Rôtisseurs and flourless chocolate torte at the Westcliff.
While the menus had essentially the same structure (and often the same ingredients: lobster/langoustine, truffle, lamb) they differed markedly in wine. The Bailliage blow-out featured the usual suspects: Clos de Lambrays '47, Château Batailley '79 and Château Baret '79 from the Graves with an Alsatian Muscat "Les Amandiers" '78 as sticky. Although the inclusion of a TJ Schanderl '81 as aperitif was a delicious piece of nostalgie pour la bouie.
At the Westcliff, Nabygelegen owner James Mckenzie and Strafella were clearly singing from the same hymn sheet. The finest wine was a single vineyard Chenin Blanc planted the year the grapes for Clos de Lambrays were harvested (yet more synchronicity).
A couple of red blends led by a Merlot-dominated Right Bank doppelgänger called 1712 - a cheeky challenge to the New World categorisation of SA when this property was fermenting grapes a century before Napoleon started packing for Moscow. Plus a funky Mediterranean-inspired blend called Scaramanga - so named as the Cabernet grower has a supernumenary nipple, just like the Man with the Golden Gun.
For dessert, a late harvest Hárslevelü named At the Limiet after the Limietberg, the literal limit of Cape civilization until the 19th century. Comparing the two dinners, the words of Bill Buford, former fiction editor of New Yorker magazine turned chef, come to mind:
"Food does have a kind of charisma. It is seen as an expression of national culture. It is a way of talking to the dead. It is an expression of family and family inheritance. In Italy they are obsessed with how food is an expression of exactly where you are. It is so many different things at once and at the same time it is none of these things. It is finally also just dinner. You eat it, and it is gone. It is not art, and it is not culture, and it is not identity, and it is not your mother."
by Neil Pendock
