A feast fit for kings
STENDEN South Africa students and chef Sharmila Simon treated about 80 dinner guests to canapés or samples from the new menu at MyPond’s Lily restaurant last Wednesday evening.
Every dish on the menu was served together with desserts, and the entire event took more than three hours to complete.
Guests who attended the evening paid R100 to sample the 26 dishes.
The event was part of the restaurant’s pre-launch, with the official to take place as a formal event on August 31.
New menus are presented at MyPond approximately every two to three years, and this year’s event was an opportunity for students to present and launch a menu change in canapé style. Stenden students, who are doing their practical studies at MyPond, served as waitrons and chef students. Talk of the Town attended the event and the service and the food was excellent. The ambience was welcoming, with white chairs and tables, clean and simple lighting, and peaceful paintings of ponds, along with relaxing background African music. The evening started off with salads such as the beetroot and pecan nut, served with fresh garden greens, goat’s cheese and drizzled with hot English mustard dressing, which was excellent: crunchy, sweet and tart.
After tasting the salads, the guests sampled two types of soup served in plastic “shot glasses”.
The butternut soup was honest-togoodness plain fare, and the potato and leek soup was outstanding, rich and hearty.
The other canapés, starters and main course dishes were served on small individual paper “boats”.
Children and the young-at-heart probably liked the exquisite baked camembert cheese starter stuffed with garlic, mixed herbs and fig preserve, and served with homemade cranberry foam and melba toast.
It had good texture and a garlicy yet sweet flavour.
Other starters were hot or not peri-peri chicken livers, which suited the African theme, and creamed mussels, probably for the discerning palette, both of which were well-presented.
The prego marinated chicken breast, layered with melted spinach and mozzarella cheese, with sweet potato gratin, got the main course canapés off to a great start. It was cheesy and full of interesting textures.
But the slow-braised pork belly, in this writer’s opinion, was superb. It was served with crispy bacon, bay onion and potato lentils, topped with thyme jus, and was perfectly tender and crisp, boiling hot and exciting.
When in Rome do as the Romans do. Eat like a king!