Dreading doing that Christmas shopping?  You can do no better than bribe yourself with a quick meal at this consistently good sushi joint in the V&A mall.  Shopping centres are God’s revenge against the rise of the middle classes but this harbour-side mall has one up on its rivals: when you get irritable you can always step outside to soothe your frayed nerves with a view of bobbing boats.

Unlike most of the over-priced but average restaurants at the V&A, Willoughby doesn’t even pretend it isn’t in a mall: the lighting is bright and the tables are in the middle of the foot traffic.  But these disadvantages are also its greatest strengths.  This brimming fish bowl attracts yet more customers from the throng walking by.  High table turnover (this is not a place you want to linger) gives it the negotiating strength to buy only the freshest fish, no doubt sold on to you at fat margins.

More importantly you get the impression the high chow rate means a dead fish doesn’t have to linger either – the kiss of death at many a sushi restaurant.  It might not have been so.  Had the food been poor it would have ended up as that over-exposed empty space that no-one wanted to be seen dead in.

You can also comfortably dine alone at the counter inside.  Willoughby has saved the evening of many a traveling business exec.  From loneliness and worse.  Any wife stuck at home in Joburg is reassured to hear her husband is eating in the public glare of this joint.  Ditto for husbands who remain behind.

First up it’s an oyster shooter with sake, ponzu* sauce and a quail egg.  It’s a bit too tart and the oyster and egg get lost.  After it’s down the gullet there is a little red caviar left which is almost saves it with a welcome taste of the sea.  Shooter versions with a Bloody Mary are better, allowing the oyster to come into play.

I have never, ever, enjoyed tofu before (but then I haven’t been to the 15^th generation tofu artisan’s restaurant Okutan at a Kyoto Buddhist temple).  Let’s see if the chefs here can change that.  They do.  These soya curds are deep fried and piping-hot with a bit of crispiness on the outside (flakes of the crust wave like a kelp forest in the swell as the rising heat creates a thermal).  It’s melt-in-your-mouth soft inside.  Great textures but just as bland as any eaten previously until the bottom pieces sitting in the aged dashi are reached.  This broth (the base in miso soup) earns a deep saltiness from its fermented fish and kelp ingredients.   Surprisingly it is not fishy like that other devil Zimbabwe gave us, the Kapenta, which is only good for cats.

The raw fish salad is fresh and there are even greens in it, in the form of cucumber and what tastes like an intriguing pickled seaweed, probably on account of the ‘special’ vinegar it floats in.  But Sashimi with soya is still hard to beat.

Then the bribe part of the excursion is over and it’s off to get those gifts.  All I manage is to buy the new book by Rian Malan, a man who exudes a crazed arrogance as alluring as Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The chapter in My Traitor’s Heart on the Hammer Man of Empangeni is one of the best pieces ever written.  Let’s hope Resident Alien is half as good.  The idiot that coined the phrase retail therapy has obviously never eaten a good meal.

* ponzu, citrus based Japanese sauce

Tom Robbins
December 11, 2009

Willoughby & Co
+27 (0)21 418 6115
www.willoughbyandco.co.za
Victoria Wharf
V&A Waterfront
Cape Town

Tags: aged dashi, Bloody Mary, Buddhist temple, Cape Town, Cape Town restaurant reviews, Cape Town restaurants, caviar, Christmas shopping, dashi, dine alone, foot traffic, fresh fish, Hammer Man of Empangeni, independent restaurant reviews, Jack Nicholson, Japanese, Kapenta, kelp, Kyoto, mall, miso, miso soup, My Traitor's Heart, Okutan, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, oyster, oyster shooter, pickled, ponzu, quail egg, raw fish, raw fish salad, Resident Alien, restaurant reviews, retail therapy, Rian Malan, sake, Sashimi, seaweed, shopping centres, soya, soya curds, sushi, sushi restaurant, tofu, V&A, V&A Waterfront, vinegar, Willoughby, Willoughby & Co, Zimbabwe

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