TGIFood

Table for one at the grillhouse in the shadow of greatness

Senzo Nqobile mans the imported meat cuts counter. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

11 Oct 2024

At the feet of a giant, the heirs of his sacrifice worship in designer gear while tourists in safari hues (because isn’t that what we wear?) nod respect before booking a table for dinner. A Karoo boy saunters by and gets lost in the memories that always find him, wherever he goes.

What an odd mix of austere tribute and Sandton flash Nelson Mandela Square is. Platinum-card metrosexuals sashay past mobile-toting tourists clad in the safari-cool hues they think we wear, hats a-tilt, cameras focused on the Giant Man. Fitting that the statue of Madiba that commands the square is so massively tall; ironic that the square he dominates is flanked by restaurants that, still, many of the downtrodden he fought for, and came close to losing his life for, can only imagine what it might look like inside. Unless they washed the dishes once.

Stream of Consciousness by Anton Smit. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

In decades of having visited Johannesburg once in a while, especially the eighties and the last three years, I have rarely stayed in Sandton. Back in the shoulderpad era, I mostly stayed in Auckland Park to be near the SABC headquarters, though at least twice I stayed in the Tollman Towers. If you looked out from the top floor of that thudding monolith now you wouldn’t recognise this Sandton. Sharp and shiny, it reeks of money and excess. It’s not a comfortable place to be, for me, which is why I mostly hid in the malls. I’m a proper mall rat, although in this case very much looking, wide-eyed, at the prices. But I had one lucky find: a branch of the KwaZulu-Natal spice chain, Gorima’s, at Sandton City, and I was able to share the news with Joburg friends that night at dinner. They hadn’t known about it. (Foodie journos, seriously guys? ?)

Scanning the square for dinner options (I had been put up by my hosts at the Garden Court hotel right next door), I skipped past Hard Rock Café (memories of the mayhem at the Marble Arch London branch were still too fresh), grimaced at the thought of spending my money at Trumps Grillhouse & Butchery, a meaty institution of note but I’d have been thinking about That Man throughout my meal), Tasha’s, where I’d met my colleague Ray Mahlaka earlier for coffee (okay, wine), Cilantro’s (I winced; I could actually hear the person pitching the name at the committee meeting called to name the place); I skipped past that too.

The Butcher Shop & Grill, Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton. Inset: a photograph detail of a newspaper cutting of an interview with Alan Pick by Janine Walker, framed on the walls. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Sighting The Butcher Shop & Grill, my mind did a flip back to the nineties when I knew all about it without ever having been there. It was famously the steakhouse of the year back in the day, and at lunch the next day my mate Tamsin Snyman told me that her late mother Lannice and the family loved the dinners they had there with owner Alan Pick. I checked, and it is still owned by Pick, who has a reputation for being a mensch who always pays attention to his customers. I’d only ever spoken to him on the phone, back in my Cape Times days, but when I asked after him that night I was told that he had “popped in this afternoon”. It’s special and rare when a venerable tradition is intact three decades later, with the same owner in place and still paying attention.

Quite an entrance. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Dining alone is not for everyone and, while I mostly dine with family or friends, which I relish, I also have no problem having a little table to myself. It means I can focus one hundred percent on the food, the detail, the mood, wander around to take photos of the menus on the walls, and take all the time I want with it. After passing beneath a display cabinet containing a sculpture of a huge cow, they quickly ushered me to a table with a perfect view of everything — the butchery, wine displays, many other chattering diners — as if sensing that was what I wanted.

Carcasses hang in a display cabinet. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

They’re very particular about their meat. Carcasses are hung for three days before being dissected. Steaks are cut — sirloins, rump, ribeye, fillet, T-bone, prime rib — and they are aged for a further 21 to 40 days. You can nip up to the butchery and point to your chosen steak, before they grill it to your liking. Before you leave, you can buy fresh meat or seafood to take home for supper the following night. There’s a range of private dining rooms of varying capacities, and rather strict rules about how much you’ll pay (not less than R200 a head), one bill per table, compulsory service charge (so check your bill, lest you double up), and deposit for bookings of 10 or more.

So much on the menu, and much of it rather old-school, refreshingly so. Oysters, garlic snails, mushrooms au gratin, baked Camembert, grilled calamari, mussels in white wine. Beef or game carpaccio, chicken wings, chicken livers and, ah here we go — sticky riblets (Chinese-style, sweet and spicy) and better still, Izimbambo Zemvu. If you put that into a google search, only this steakhouse and its Mouille Point cousin come up. But the small print explained it: grilled, salted lamb riblets. Honestly, it was straight off your home braai. Utterly succulent meat that pulled off the bone. Just lemon to squeeze over.

My salted lamb riblets. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

From the signature entrees selection I considered ordering the giant beef kebab. Rump, fillet and sirloin on one skewer. But it had taken me three decades to get here, and I needed a proper steak. I gawped at the steaks to share — côte de boeuf, Fiorentina, and chateaubriand — maybe another time for that, with someone to share the load. Haven’t ordered chateaubriand in a steakhouse since the old Hildebrand days, before they moved to the V&A Waterfront.

You order your sauces and sides separately. This was from the South African grain fed beef selection, priced at R950 per kilo on the bone. There was also South African grass fed Jersey beef, also on the bone, at R990 a kilo for either prime rib or ribeye. With hindsight, that wouldn’t have cost a whole lot more.

South African grain fed prime rib on the bone. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Of course, I wasn’t ordering a one-kilo slab of it, so I drew a deep breath and chose the on-the-bone prime rib steak, somewhere around 300g of it. I would only be here once. I chose an old-fashioned baked potato with sour cream on the side, and didn’t need a sauce. Off the bone rump, sirloin, fillet or ribeye were virtually half the price per kilo, but prime rib needs that bone, so is not offered off. For the other cuts, you’re paying pretty much double for having the flavour that being cooked on the bone adds to the meat. This isn’t a quibble, it’s just interesting. Incidentally, when we lived in the UK, I used to buy a great hunk of prime rib to roast and feed four. I sourced it now and then from a West Sussex beef farmer who farmed in the north of the country and manned his own meat stall at the monthly market in Chichester. Splendid.

I decided to eschew dessert. The choices were as familiar as you would expect. Malva, crème brûlée, tiramisu, lemon meringue, et al.

Senzo Nqobile mans the imported meat cuts counter. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Before ordering my steak I had sauntered over to the meat counter where blockman Senzo Nqobile walked me through the choices of imported cuts. Australian wagyu ribeye, R4,500 a kilo. Hmmm, looks lovely, I said, scurrying back to my table where I took a gulp of my wine. It was my old friend Achim von Arnim’s delightful Haute Cabrière Pinot Noir unwooded, 2024. As young and fresh as a group of millennial fashionistas gazing transfixed at the statue of Madiba outside on the square, trying to fathom the extent of his sacrifice, then sashaying into a cocktail bar and ordering a few rounds of Springbokkie shooters. Cheers to that. DM

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