Playing the big card
It might have been thin on celebs, but the American Express Experience dinner on Monday night was a feast of good company in a gorgeous venue.
The American financial company, which partners with Nedbank locally, held the event at gallery Art It Is in the Joburg suburb of Parkwood to tell us more about its lifestyle and banking offering.
Sipping G&Ts outside the gallery, I meet the newly installed local head, Chris Wood, who says that his first task after being promoted three days before was to attend to a customer’s complaint.
“I think we dealt with it beautifully,” he says.
We get chatting about what makes Amex so sought after the world over, and Chris opens up his wallet to show off that mythical black card, telling me that while his is a dummy version there are about 100 floating around in South Africa out of a pool of roughly 17 000 globally.
While the company won’t disclose who is part of that ultimate club, this is an invitation-only piece of metal, not plastic, which means the holders are more your Ruperts and Motsepes than AKAs and Nyovests.
Someone who makes no bones about wishing to join is our MC for the evening, Andile Khumalo, who is the last to arrive for the event, turning up in his gleaming BMW 7-Series having just finished his Power 98.7 radio show.
Inside the gallery, the art on the walls are complemented by the dinner decor, which sees us seated in stylish Perspex Ghost chairs at tables tastefully set with candles and bowls of white hyacinths and hydrangeas.
Sitting down, I say hello to diminutive Nedbank PR Tobeka Lwana (who I also know as the co-founder of niche fragrance bar Neo Luxury Bar).
Andile welcomes us all and introduces us to the person responsible for feeding us, Nthabiseng Ramaboa, better known as Chef Nti.
In between Chef Nti’s gastronomic delights, Andile and a panel of American Express and Nedbank heads explain the lifestyle benefits of having the card, with Dave Bekker from Nedbank’s consumer card division summing it all up by pointing out that “while other cards give you a ticket to watch Lionel Richie, American Express brings Lionel Richie to your house”.
You’ll want to know more about the food, though, and Chef Nti took us on a culinary journey starting in Italy with baked aubergine and mozzarella drizzled with Neapolitan sauce nicely paired with one of my fav wines, Springfield’s Life from Stone.
We head east for our mains thanks to the XO sauce on lamb cutlets with the most deliciously smoked bone marrow that comes with a refreshing carrot and radish salad.
European flavours return with a dessert featuring shot glasses of peanut butter-flavoured semifreddo with chunks of crushed meringue and caramelised peanut brittle nicely offset by a Paul Cluver riesling.