Cupid’s arrows hit the mark at this party
● While I spent Valentine’s Day in a room full of art lovers, Cupid’s arrows flew at the other event I went to this week.
The locale for Wednesday’s preview of the mysteriously titled “Spilt T” was the very spot where we held this year’s A-Listers luncheon, the bowels of the industrial kitchen of the swish Sandton Sun hotel.
This time, though, all I knew was that we would be treated to a “pinkinspired Chef’s Table”.
Lifting the cloches set before us, a lipstick-kissed cup said it was the launch of a new podcast by that gal about town Taryn Louch.
Taryn assembled her mates, including pretty-in-pink songbird LeAnne Dlamini and Lee-Anne Liebenberg, who, with husband Nicky van der Walt and their brood, has moved back to Joburg.
Lee-Anne explained that Nicky, who still lends a hand at The Bay Hotel in Camps Bay, had flown down to oversee the loading of their belongings into a removal truck. “But when I called him, he said he was in Delaire [Graff Estate], having lunch with his mates,” she said. Also present was loved-up couple funnyman Jason Goliath and his new wife, Sian Bailey, with Jason telling us he has uncovered the secret to a woman’s heart: making sure there are pockets in all her dresses.
Also at the lunch was Taryn’s preferred makeup artist, celebrity face beat-queen Gina Myers, who mentions that she’d undergone a cellphone detox last year as she was “filming a TV show”.
M-Net viewers found out exactly what Gina was up to while I traipsed around the art fair: she’s one of the singletons vying for a rose from hunk Lee Thompson in the very first series of the dating reality-TV show The Bachelor SA.
So what food of love was served to us at this pre-Valentine’s Day lunch? This was a red- and pink-tinged affair, with a caprese starter featuring “tricolour’ tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and pickled red onion, a pan-seared sea bass main with warm potato salad and pomegranate tzatziki, while dessert was a deconstructed beetroot and mandarin tart.