The Cape of good good nosh nosh
Inventive chef Luke Dale-Roberts gives a Brit’s perspective on the ingredients, dishes and restaurants that make SA special
LIKE the Sydney Opera House and the Taj Mahal, Table Mountain is the instantly recognisable symbol of a nation. Its natural grandeur is only enhanced by the proximity of the city, with its hip bars, art galleries, designer shops and restaurants. On its slopes, zebra and wildebeest graze, fynbos vegetation thrives and hikers spot whales breaching in False Bay.
Elemental wildness and urbane sophistication meet, and so it is with the food. Antelope, ostrich and muscular coldwater fish, from hake and yellowtail to kingklip, grace the tables of elegant restaurants; in the winelands, the lawns of boutique hotels roll down to manicured vineyards, and the menu at Jonkershuis (see “Lunch” below) carries a warning: “no feeding baboons”.
It was Cape Town’s combination of wilderness, ocean, culture and prime ingredients that lured Luke Dale-Roberts from Asia in 2006, to become executive chef at La Colombe in Constantia. Three years later it was named “Best Restaurant in Africa and the Middle East” in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards.
Born in Britain, trained in Switzerland and with restaurant experience in London, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and the Philippines, Dale-Roberts was well primed to launch the Test Kitchen in Woodstock in 2010, followed by the Pot Luck Club in 2012. His cooking style is as experimental and unshackled as the names of his projects suggest, and he keeps a sharp eye on the competition.
Here is his pick of the best produce, dishes and restaurants in the city that inspires him.
What makes the cuisine special?
Food in South Africa isn’t too defined by tradition and history. In Britain and France there’s often the idea that an ingredient works with this but not with that. It’s an oppressive Michelin-based training that gives chefs a good grounding in the basics but doesn’t encourage innovative flourishes. Here, anything goes. It’s a bit more like Australia, and the cuisine is very diverse: everything from classic French and Afrikaans to a good, solid Malay curry.
First and foremost, I love the game here. My favourite kind of antelope, or venison, is springbok. It’s an incredibly tender piece of meat, but there are others such as kudu and eland. Lamb from the Karoo is exceptional too. They call it dorper lamb, a breed especially suited to grazing arid terrain. It’s a rugged animal with a strong lamby flavour.
The crayfish, too, are abundant and stunning. Having that combination of ocean and landscape is key to the whole South African experience. For day-to-day living, there’s nothing like it. You can literally be sunbathing in the morning then sipping a glass of chardonnay in the vineyards half an hour later. That’s pretty unique.
There’s also a great tradition of barbecuing in South Africa. We have at least two barbecues in the kitchen at any one time, where we’re doing everything from a salted, barbecued meringue to go with foie gras to barbecued broccoli served with Périgord truffles. It’s a typical South African cooking method. I love the flavour of a barbecue; it’s just very real.
Which dish sums it all up?
Bobotie, a classic dish of curried mince and raisins that my (South African) wife and my mother-in-law make. You soak bread in a bit of milk and egg, and put that on top and bake it. The first recipe appeared in a Dutch cookbook in 1609, adapted from an Indonesian dish, bobotok, which was probably brought to South Africa by the Dutch East India Company. It’s part of what they call boerekos , which is Afrikaans food, proper farm food, and often very sweet.
What else should we look out for?
On a township level, there’s something called a smiley. We did a pig smiley at the Test Kitchen, and I’ve just put a lamb smiley on the menu. It’s a lamb’s head, traditionally just boiled and eaten like that. We cook it very slowly and serve the cheek done in an Italian way with capers and anchovies.
We’re also using something called a num num, a wild berry similar to a cranberry with a high tannin and vitamin C content. Prickly pear is another fruit typical of South Africa. The kingklip is a fantastic fish that’s indigenous to here. It has the texture of monkfish, but it’s whiter, and super-juicy. There’s also snoek, a long, oily fish that’s traditionally barbecued. So you’ll do a fish braai, where you spread apricot jam on the snoek and grill it over the coals.
CAPE TOWN IN FIVE COURSES
Where Dale-Roberts would enjoy…
1. A typical brunch
Brunch isn’t a big thing in Cape Town, but we’ve just started doing one at the Pot Luck Club, with oysters and a mini Arnold Bennett omelette — invented at the Savoy — with a half-cheese, half-hollandaise sauce gratinéed under the grill, served with smoked haddock. For breakfast with a view, Jonkershuis at Groot Constantia is incredible. You look right across the vineyards to the seaside. The kids can run around on the grass while you eat your breakfast. I’d have grilled mushrooms, tomato and a fried egg.