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The long view of Cape restaurants and what was lost

The undying tradition of the Peking duck pancake; fill, fold and eat. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

6 Dec 2024

In the space-time continuum of Cape restaurants, what was new not long ago is now old or gone. Even the flavour of the month of little more than a decade ago has been replaced by a venture that’s looking to the future, while exotic Eastern fare sees a forgotten relic of Cape dining revived.

Old spaces remade. Same old space, different decor, different menu, and a cuisine unknown back in the days I’m remembering. “Old” being a relative concept. One person’s “old” is the next person’s “last week”.

We’re nearly a quarter of the way through a century which started seemingly weeks ago. It passes from generation to generation. In the mid Seventies, in conversation with my then (shipping) editor, I referred to the Fifties as “all those years ago”. He replied, “What!? The Fifties were just the other day!” To him, they were.

The Forties seemed aeons ago to that young me, but they seem closer to me now than they did then. That decade, which started in a world war, was just over 30 years earlier than the year I started in newspapers. To us now, that’s 1994/5. All that seems like “last week” to me too, now.

So here we are. We’re weeks away from 2025, my mother would have turned 100 last month, and my relative longevity (to date, cross fingers, hold thumbs) gives me one thing: a long view. It’s something I’ve always admired and contemplated in writers who have lived long years and are still writing. What does it do to their pens, to their memories, to their thoughts?

If nothing else, if we’re blessed with a mind that is still on top of things, it means that memories of long-ago places and spaces mysteriously return. The details that seemed long forgotten, blurred, suddenly retake their old form. Nuances become clarity. Age, it seems to me now, sharpens the older memories, brings them into view like a mirage that, when you get closer, remakes itself into a perfectly formed piece of the road ahead. And every part of any long road is essential, or none use of will ever get anywhere.

Which brings me to recent restaurant spaces I have found myself in. One was older than me, much older. It has been there since 1899, although its heyday — or the heyday of the part of it that I’m referring to — was the 1970s and ’80s. The other only opened its doors in 2010, yet now it too is gone; sort of. The first is the Mount Nelson Grill Room. The other is The Test Kitchen. See what I mean? I can almost hear you: “It only opened in 2010? But that’s just last week…”

And both spaces, in recent years, have been remade, given a new direction.

Being back in the old Grill Room space was a strange experience, bringing all sorts of memories back while others disappeared in the ether, the way memories do. But first, Woodstock...

I love everything about TTK Fledglings, short for The Test Kitchen Fledglings as it is now. Its heart, its soul. And yes, its food. I did not realise that Luke Dale-Roberts’ operations had this amount of soul in them, and I own up to this with due humility.

I did always admire The Test Kitchen. A true trailblazer for high-end cuisine, for delicious nuance on a plate. It’s a pity such places have to “go”, have to make way for the new. But I do like the new that has replaced it in more recent years. So soon, though. Is there no space for even an attempt at longevity any more? Is this the inevitable consequence of the lemming mentality that has dogged the Cape restaurant scene for three decades or more by now? Everything must be new, new, new, the latest, the on-frigging-trend.

Surely there are tourists arriving in the city every day who hope to go to The Test Kitchen. And who find that it is no longer there. If I go to London I will hope to find that The Ledbury is still operating, in Notting Hill. I’ve just checked — it is. Business is business and Dale-Roberts will have had his reasons. But if interest had waned to that extent for the most sought-after of all South African restaurants for several years, what hope is there for the rest? Or is this all down to that lemming mentality again?

When does the last curry-mince samoosa leave the stage to make way for one more bao bun?

In broader terms of the inevitable shifts and changes in the shape and flavour of Cape restaurants over the decades, I suppose it happened incrementally. Morsels replaced old-fashioned servings. Presentation became art, and ultimately art on a plate became de rigueur. Now seemingly half of Cape Town is doing what Dale-Roberts and his ilk did, or trying to, and it’s become more tedious than exciting. Where’s the innovation when everyone is emulating everyone else? And how much innovation do we really need, anyway, if every latest innovation cancels out some part of whatever might remain of our intrinsic food traditions?

Whatever they were or are. When does the last curry-mince samoosa leave the stage to make way for one more bao bun? What will they do with all the bowls when everyone wakes up and realises that a food receptacle does not a food craze make? When did we forget all about our traditional Cape chicken pies, the ones we once called a hoenderpastei? Does anyone under 40 even have a clue as to what that is/was? When last did you encounter mace as a spice in something on your restaurant plate? Yet this was once the Cape spice.

Mace? Anyone? Last call… going, going… actually, it’s long gone.

But back to those two old-new restaurants.

Fourteen years ago, The Test Kitchen was freshly open, barely days old (it opened on 24 November, 2010). Just last week. Before long, it was world renowned. Now I’m there, in the same space, for lunch with a VIP. A place of opportunity, new directions. A place of turning points, and hope. More than anything, a place of innovation and hard work. I was so thrilled to observe these young people working so hard, turning out such fabulous food.

Front-of-house legend Melody van Gesselleen, left, and head chef Nathan Clarke, right, at TTK Fledglings. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The smiling face of it all while we were there for lunch was Melody van Gesselleen, once mentored by the late lamented Frank Swainston at Constantia Uitsig, while head chef Nathan Clarke, whose talent far outweighs his shyness, steered a kitchen of astonishingly young people.

Other than Melody, it looked as though the kids had been let into the room to run the show while all their parents had a day off. I had the impression that they would all emerge as if from a chrysalis in time to become high-flying chefs in their own right, such was the level of talent and precision on display on every plate. But precision is nothing if the flavours and textures are not there, and every mouthful was a swoonful.

Cullen Skink, but it’s far removed from the Scottish dish of that name. It’s better however — utterly divine. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

We’re served oysters as a palate wakener, then quickly on to tuna tartare with black garlic and miso mayonnaise, and it only got better from there. I loved the way fruit and spices were woven into savoury dishes, such as the cullen skink with smoked and cured kingklip, apple, saffron and fennel, and the springbok loin, served beautifully rare and accompanied by celeriac and a jus of honey and quince. The latter will be in season by March, but in the meantime there are wondrous quince offerings in jars at every farmstall and yes, please, use these in your big city recipes, we need more use of our own products.

Tuna tartare at Fledglings. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

It’s easy to please with food of this calibre, but when they start you with a chef’s surprise of fresh oysters with nam jim and daikon, and end your repast with black cherry sorbet, that sounds like a done deal to me.

‘Crème berry’ dessert at TTK Fledglings. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

My overall impression was of bright, cheerful flavours, solid techniques that suggest proper training, and most of all a vibrant little community of young up-and-coming chefs and sommeliers trying hard to get everything just right. I was moved by the whole experience, and I doff my cap to Luke and Sandalene Dale-Roberts and a venture worthy of respect. I felt bad cutting our sommelier short as we had much to talk about, and he was so professional, so full of smiles and confidence, but it was an important occasion so I asked them to keep it simple. For the record: top-drawer sommelier service was offered.

Another view of The Red Room, where the discreet makeover by Liam Tomlin’s group reveals elements of the old Grill Room that was. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Days earlier, we had celebrated a milestone at the Red Room. Our minds, though, were remembering this space years earlier. We hadn’t been in that room for decades — as far as we could wrack our brains, perhaps the early Nineties. This used to be the Mount Nelson Grill Room, which opened as recently as 1968, and yes, that really does not seem all that long ago to me. I doubt that I’d yet had the privilege of dining at the Mount Nelson Grill Room back then. It was the sort of place where the city’s grand people were married, spent their anniversaries, celebrated milestone birthdays, or held debutante balls to set their having-come-of-of-age daughters free in society.

Prawn toast, bao buns and karaage cauliflower at the Red Room. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The Nellie was not for the down-at-heel, back in its halcyon days, and the likes of me were more likely to be found at Chicken Licken in Sea Point buying a load of fried drumsticks and salad to share with my friends at a borrowed church hall. That is, in fact, how I celebrated my 21st birthday. And now the boy gets to go to the Nellie and grand it up as if he had been born to it. Cheek.

It was with a sense of awe, expectation, even a little anxiety, that we went down those stairs again, to emerge in the space that is now the Red Room, and in the eternally expanding Liam Tomlin stable. Anxiety, because memories of the Grill Room are still clear after all the decades. In one sense, almost anything was bound to pale by comparison. In another sense, why the hell should somebody try to emulate an outdated grill room three decades later? Nobody goes to dinner dances any more, outside of weddings. Trolleys have all but disappeared.

The undying tradition of the Peking duck pancake; fill, fold and eat. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The food was fabulous. We were treated to morsel after delicious morsel, but first we were indulged with cocktails, a Red Room Old Fashioned of Woodford Reserve whiskey with lapsang syrup, angostura bitters, orange zest and rooibos chai; and a spicy Margarita of El Jimador tequila infused with chilli, cooled by cucumber, Triple Sec, fresh coriander, lime and of course salt.

The Chef’s Choice menu that followed was a thorough encapsulation of what the Red Room offers, and there was a special moment well into the dinner when the astonishingly young chef came out and offered us the Peking Duck instead of the main options on the menu. This was accepted with due grace and that lovely warm feeling you get when somebody does something nice for you.

There was nothing on the menu that I wouldn’t order again, which is saying something as that rarely happens.

I suppose I wanted to be transported back to those earlier times, and of course that was never going to happen. Nor should anyone expect it to.

Was that the rattle of a ghostly trolley being wheeled to that table over there? Was that draft I just felt the swish of the ankle-length gown of a stiletto’d society madam sashaying on to the dancefloor, pearls trailing at her neck? No, just the echoing canyons of an old mind; and when I looked past the modern Asian design elements trying to glimpse the Grill Room that was, the ceilings, the Persian-carpeted floors, the thought occurred to me: was this room really all that grand in the first place? Once the echoes of the trolleys and the jangling pearls dissipate and all that’s left is…

Let it remain grand in the memory. Old times are gone, new days and ways are here. Best we leave them in a dusty old drawer and remember them the way they were. DM

The Test Kitchen Fledglings

The Red Room

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