Found near Durban: a sauce for which a word must be invented
The Livingroom has everything, including a divine mussel and lime leaf reduction that led to much swearing
This was rarer than a blue moon, and it had a meteoric impact on my palate. I felt side-swiped by flavour, knocked back in my chair. I had put in my mouth a spoonful of a mussel and lime leaf reduction sauce served by chef Johannes Richter at The Livingroom at Summerhill Guest Estate in Cowies Hill, near Durban. It was the most delectable spoonful of anything I have eaten in years.
But wait, there was more. Several courses later, there came barbecue lamb neck with all manner of things, but finishing it off, a lamb jus and a Cheddar cheese sauce. You couldn’t begin to have the slightest idea how delicious this was, because delicious just does not begin to cut it. A new word needs to be invented for this.
And the marigold granita. Marigold! What? Green. Luminescent. Shining, beguiling. And it tasted like no morsel of anything that has ever found my palate.
What are all the Cape Town chefs doing while this man is cooking this extraordinary food, this cuisine that digs deep into what grows and shuffles and breathes all around this restaurant within a 100km radius (or, to be more precise, 90% of it comes from that radius, allowing a little room for things that come from, say, Tanzania)?
And whoever thought of mussels and lime leaf in a sauce to go with a small course of yes, mussels, and turned out a sauce so exquisite that I couldn’t help myself, I got up and walked to Johanna Richter at the other end of the room and said I’m sorry to swear, but this is the most fucking delicious thing I have eaten in my entire fucking life. And, far from being offended, she clasped her hands with delight and ran to the kitchen to tell Johannes.
So, yes, their names are almost identical, Johannes the Pinetown boy who had the privilege of growing up in this beautiful thatch-roofed house in a lush garden, and Johanna, the Austrian girl he met while they were both working at the three-michelinstar Restaurant Rutz in Berlin, Germany. They clicked and they married a year later.
The rest of the story moves to Cowies Hill, where they run their restaurant at Johannes’s family home, Summerhill. He cooks his delectably subtle food in the kitchen while
Johanna operates front-of-house. She is the sommelier too, and one of few who truly gets the matching of wine to particular foods.
Down to business
They have found the pinnacle. On your plate and on your fork are the richness of the soil and greenery of the estate, the msobo berries and the lime leaves, not far away from the front door. Seeded crispbread and homemade sourdough “aromatised” with lime and coriander seeds.
Fresh and preserved mango salad with cottage cheese and spiced cashew crunch. Marula soup with “last year’s marula vinegar”. That’s just the bread course.
Then come balls of watermelon with homemade heirloom chipotle sauce, a salad of fermented watermelon skin and feta pearls. Surrounded by chipotle mayonnaise and a coriander mole. Finished off with a watermelon gazpacho.
That’s followed by Bushman’s River trout ceviche from the Drakensberg with amasi tiger’s milk, preserved lemon oil, a pumpkin flower filled with smoked trout rillette, amasi and onion crunch.
Aqua-cultured mussels are next. Mussels, Johannes says, are “the most sustainable seafood”, and everything the Richters do has everything to do with sustainability.
Presented to you next are sweetcorn amagwinya, peri-peri mussels, a sweetcorn chip, smoked mussel tartar, and that mussel and lime leaf velouté – the velouté evidence of his French training only a few kilometres from the French Alps. I could have drunk a jug of that sauce.
The next course celebrates the chickens of Vanessa Collocott’s Blue Orange Farm nearby. Golden nugget squash. Sugo of chicken hearts, “like a saucy savoury mince”. Parfait of chicken liver with prune gel and a pumpkin salad. Crisp, dry-aged chicken skin with a prune glaze. The chickens are “90 days free-ranged, five days dry-aged, slaughtered at the farm”.
The plate that follows features Wagyu tartar with heirloom tomatoes, bitterballen of braised and pulled brisket, imbuya (wild amaranth), fermented tomato sauce, an amaranth cracker and preserved tomatoes. Tomato and beef, perfect.
Then came Midlands lamb neck, so golden brown and succulent, as perfect as it gets. With pigeon pea purée, sundried tomato paste, a ball of matured Cheddar cheese, and a pair of sauces: lamb jus and Cheddar cheese sauce, in a little side jug. They intermingled on the plate like lovers slinking past each other in a slow dance after everyone else in the nightclub has gone home. They belonged together. That is what makes a great chef.
A palate cleanser arrived to clear the way for two desserts: plum sorbet with kombucha gel and preserved galangal.
The main dessert celebrated msobo berries (African nightshade). Banana bread with caramelised pecan nut butter and fresh msobo berries. Sorghum beer espuma with pecan nut ice cream and msobo berry jam. Amabele panna cotta with msobo berry sauce and “crispy textures” (msobo meringue, sorghum chips, green banana chips, pecans).
And finally, “mango and pumpkin seeds”. A Tanzanian chocolate tartlet, praline, dried mango and pumpkin seeds. Sort of sweet yet savoury. Balance. A subtle and gentle end to a fine repast, a meal like no other.
A pinnacle has indeed been reached. The Livingroom is indeed the best restaurant in the country if that is measured by the following: creating top-level cuisine with originality and flair; celebrating the ingredients in their close vicinity and using them with care and ingenuity; and serving their local community in such a way that they take note and become satisfied customers.
That is the Holy Grail of a fine restaurant. Beat that, Cape Town.