Where to take an Italian living in a French speaking Swiss canton? The quest for authentic South African cooking in our restaurants, while hardly new, is thrown into sharp relief by the sudden appearance of a European guest. Cape Malayan food at the Noon Gun Restaurant is a non-starter. Firstly, it’s leaving too much to chance as I haven’t been. Secondly, in accordance with Islamic rules they don’t sell wine. This wouldn’t normally be a problem but the guest is eager to sample the Boland’s best. She works on new world wine development projects in Argentina and her boyfriend is an old world winemaker so is naturally curious on her first visit to the Cape.
The plethora of African-themed restaurants in the city is too touristy and equally untested.
This is not to say that we don’t have good restaurants. But for overseas visitors the southern tip of Africa is a long haul for food that is frequently similar to that available in Paris, London and New York. (I’ll be glad to be proved wrong; please comment.)
Giorgio Nava’s Carne offers kudu and gnu, beasts that you won’t find grazing alongside Swiss mountain goats. Moreover, beef steak, while hardly endangered in Europe, is the one meal many visitors to these shores rave about (even from middle-of-the-road steakhouses). Apparently our meat is better than most. Unfortunately Carne is full.
Many of our best local dishes (whether original or evolved from foreign cultures) still hide in our homes. A braaied spiral of sizzling coriander-filled boerewors from Wild Organic Foods or even the Checkers Championship version of the sausage, does the trick. But we want to dine out in a bit of style and experience a chef who can toy with our robust flavours and sturdy starches to tingle our taste buds. A variety of wines must also be on hand.
Alas, our quest unsatisfied, we settle for a French-inspired promise of reliability. Bizerca Bistro, an old favourite, takes our last-minute booking. It’s tough to objectively review a favourite, though I am not enough of a regular to know the owners, French chef Laurent Deslandes and his wife Cyrillia, who does the front of house.
I’ve eaten Laurent’s speciality, the braised pig’s trotters with a seared scallop (from the permanent menu). They were infinitely better than those eaten in Luanda, Angola, just after the early 90’s war. Those were plated on top of a film of stinky-cheap olive oil (as all the meals were). Yuk.
In Luanda (a city that looks more to Portugal than to Mozambique’s chicken peri-peri for its dinners) the trotters were still in feet form, oozing the sticky gelatinous stuff from their toes. (As a still a squeamish whippersnapper I had yet to acquire the taste for nose-to-tail dining.) At Bizerca they are presented in a more palatable pureed brick.
Still, the trotters at Bizerca, though faultless and popular, haven’t done it for me. Enjoyment has come from elsewhere: the specials menu. The bouillabaisse-like fish soup remains one of the best dishes I have ever eaten. The accompanying rouille (a gentle curry mayonnaise) ostentatiously opulent. Forget the Ferrari. No-one will call you a rich bastard for ordering soup.
Oysters with raw tomato and ginger have been super-fresh. Consistency has been Bizerca’s calling card trumped by Cyrillia’s charm, a winning combination of Afrikaner hospitality and first-world sophistication, that not surprisingly includes superb food knowledge.
To start the evening it’s a toss up from the extensive specials menu. The tomato plate; or the more traditional duck pâté with duck and pork rillettes (like a rough pâté)? This sounds like risking boredom: how exciting can a plate of tomatoes be, even if they are done three ways? That said ordering out of one’s comfort zone is often the best way to gauge a kitchen. Here goes.
First a bright taste to cleanse your palate of city smog in the form of a glass of chilled consommé (clear soup). Then it’s a caprese salad that could have come from an Italian ice cream parlour. As expected the mozzarella is there as is the raw tomato. Faraway basil comes in the form of a scoop of trendy sorbet, the sweetness flirting with invisible chilli.
The third way reassures with grandma’s baking: crispy puff pastry with a red cherry tomato on top (and two yellow ones to please the design crowd). The humble tomato successfully played with, it’s time for real food.
This comes in the form of beef cheek. It’s done in a style that apparently borrows from Burgundy (tastes like it’s braised in red wine) and Provence (no idea what that means). The meat is ‘jaw-dropping tender’, containing just enough fat for a rounded flavour. The juices it’s cooked in start off a little thin then as you progress rise like a full-bodied red. Little parcels of pasta wrapped around goat’s cheese are thrown into the mix.
My brother and the guest tuck into a Karoo lamb stew, with gremolata (garlic, parsley and lemon peel). Now the Karoo grazer is a sheep that can stand head and shoulders above the rest of the global flock, if it dines on enough of the herby Karoo bushes. (West Coast farmers will tell you their lammetjies are more melt-in-the-mouth.) My brother says it’s “like a good home-cooked stew”.
Earlier in the evening the visitor enjoyed a starter of trout tartare. Now I grew up surrounded by trout dams so as a kid I ate trout cooked a million ways: baked, fried and souffléd but never raw. It didn’t even cross our minds. What a waste of fresh fish. At least we are now experimenting with our fresh produce, even if it often takes a Frenchman, such as Laurent, to give us a kick in the pants.
The brother’s starter was salmon gravad lax (Scandinavian salt-cured) with remoulade (another one of those mayonnaisy sauces with herbs and capers) and chopped celeriac. The salmon was good but the remoulade as parsimonious as a Shaun Pollock over. The raw celeriac is like a cole slaw with the mayonnaise missing.
Without Cyrillia in the house the service isn’t quite on its toes. Bizerca doesn’t promise fine dining. There are no white tablecloths. It forsakes the most expensive ingredients that makes up dishes (such as foie gras and truffles), without compromising on quality. It rather picks luxury items that stand on their own as a course, such as a starter of oysters.
What they do invest in is time, such as making stocks from scratch. There are also no amuse-bouche and petits fours thrown in. Believe me these tasters, while often a pleasant surprise, are no freebie in fine dining establishments. The costs are included in the prices of other dishes. This matters not a jot. For Bizerca bills itself as a bistro, offering top food at a discount to the most expensive establishments. But shouldn’t the waiters at least know what the guests have ordered when they bring out the food?
Still dependable but not at its best tonight.
Restaurant design and décor a little too much like a cold fishbowl for my liking, though I am now used to it. They probably got a good rental deal on this glass-surrounded space. There isn’t much demand for ground floor retail space in the officeland of the foreshore. A Tavola have made better use of a similar space in Claremont, warming it up with curtains and colour.
The cost for three with two courses, a glass of wine each, coffees and two grappas: R857. At La Colombe a lunch for two (without wine) was around R750, with the tasters and a dish that included foie gras.
Bizerca’s wine list includes good variety by the glass. I enjoy a glass of Raats Chenin Blanc (R40) Silly me I forget to check the year.
Tom Robbins
March 31, 2010
Bizerca Bistro
+27 (0)21 418 0001
Email: bizerca@mweb.co.za
www.bizerca.com
Jetty St (go to the website for directions, finding it is a little tricky)
Foreshore
Central Cape Town
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