THE RESTAURANT
Andrew Unsworth finds the French Riviera on a table in Noordhoek
Occasionally, just occasionally, when a waiter puts a plate of food down in front of you, you experience a surge of excited anticipation. You have been seduced by fragrance, colour, the plating of the dish, and you want to be pleased. But as with any seduction, it can end in disappointment.
At The Foodbarn in Noordhoek, I was not disappointed by the dish, I was in awe of the chef. But then Franck Dangereux comes with a formidable reputation. He worked previously at La Colombe around the mountain at Constantia Uitsig. He also has an unfair advantage if you compare him to any other chef: he is from Provence and learned to cook from his mother. He couldn’t go wrong.
In Noordhoek, Dangereux says he aims to bring fine dining to a wider range of people at lower prices, which sounds too altruistic to be true until you see the autumn à la carte menu with everything at half price, Monday to Friday. The paired wines (including two Spanish ones) were obviously excluded; not cheap but generous glasses of superb wines.
The dish that got me going was flashfried calamari with za’atar, baba ganoush and crunchy cucumber (R68). The extremely tender calamari was in a phyllo basket atop the baba ganoush, which was almost a sauce surrounded by other sauces and fried slices of aubergine. With the tomato, parsley and chive garnish that finished off most of the dishes, it was a visual and taste sensation.
One of my guests had tempura prawns on a confit tomato, aubergine and avocado tian, served with a chilli and red pepper syrup and basil salsa (R76). The other had mussel fritters with fried Thai rice noodles and a lemon grass and galangal cream (R62). There was an awful lot of oohing and aahing and swapping of morsels — what people do when they know it’s bad manners but cannot resist sharing. The wines were also doing the rounds of the table.
For mains, I had grilled hake in puff pastry, with gently wilted baby spinach, confit tomatoes, shellfish and saffron velouté (R118). One guest had a roast lamb rack (three chops) with a little tomato and pecorino quiche, served with rocket, a basil jus and a creamy tapenade sauce. The other bagged the fish dish I had my eye on: grilled angelfish with a burnt onion and aubergine pulp and smoked mussels served with persillade and olive oil (R128).
It was hard to find fault with any of the dishes. All were perfectly seasoned and had generous amounts of Dangereux’s fantastic sauces: you mop up the last bit with bread or, to hell with manners, a finger. There was no skipping desserts with food this good. I had roasted guava and poached quince in almond sabayon with “guavadilla” ice cream (R58). It was a little disappointing because guava is a difficult fruit to cook with. The trio of strawberry cheesecake, vanilla ice cream and rhubarb panna cotta (R58) was better, served in an arty swirl of custard
THERE WAS AN AWFUL LOT OF OOHING AND AAHING
edged with a berry jus. Someone had fun in the kitchen. Then again, someone seems to be having a lot of fun with all the dishes.
The Foodbarn really is just that: a l ong room with a deck at one end. The decor is simple without being coy country. If I lived in Noordhoek, I’d be there at least once a week and it would take a long time to get bored. The drive around Chapman’s Peak only adds to the pleasure of the outing.
Although I had been told it was the best food book published last year, I did not buy Dangereux’s Feast at Home (Quivertree Publications). His dishes are deceptively simple but I’m not French and would only ruin the memory by trying. I did pick up this line in a borrowed copy: “As a cook, if you ace taste, you can actually make someone fall in love with you. It is as simple as that.”
I promise you I read that after writing the first paragraphs of this review. Noordhoek Farm Village, corner Village Lane and Noordhoek Main Road, Noordhoek, 021 789 1390