Vergelegen

Vergelegen is a winery near Somerset West (we're still in The Cape). It's an impossibly beautiful estate, maintained with fastidious care. With 53 hectares of vines, superb gardens and a small museum we ended up spending seven hours there.



We did a full wine-tasting which only served to illustrate that either I know nothing about wine or somebody at Vergelegen has got things dreadfully wrong. We devised a semi-scientific blind tasting test and I unerringly picked out the cheapest white and the cheapest red as the two which I most preferred.

This did at least make for an economical lunch. Equipped with a bottle of Vin de Florence white (£2.30), we were led to a table amongst the camphor trees and served a wonderful picnic of cold meats and fish.

In the townships the previous day, feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic, we had found ourselves in a broom cupboard sized shack talking to the jolly, toothless woman who lived there. The neighbouring shack had been gutted by fire. In the back yard, a very old woman was burning the hairs off a pair of pigs trotters with a blow-torch - one false move and the homes of a million people would go up in flames.

Aubergine

We spent the afternoon on the obligatory pilgrimage to Robben Island. Our guide, Ntando Mbatha, had been imprisoned there with Mandela and spoke movingly about the ghastly realities of apartheid. There was something very powerful in his bearing - eloquent and full of gravitas - he combined the disciplined anger of the freedom fighter with a very natural charm. He's only 46 so he should be there for a long while yet - but a living piece of history even so.

The trouble with fine dining is that it tends to dampen one's revolutionary zeal somewhat. Two hours after listening to Mr Mbatha, we were taking our seats in Aubergine, the best restaurant in Cape Town.

Make that the best restaurant in Africa. The amuse bouche (a parfait of butternut squash) sent a shiver of anticipation down my spine. For the second time that day, we felt ourselves in the presence of greatness, albeit of a very different kind.

I've forgotten exactly what we ate, but not the mounting sense of astonishment that accompanied the succession of courses. Aubergine is one of the very best restaurants I have ever been to. It was amazing, better than Le Manoir by some considerable distance. And so cheap! £34/head including wines.

After the meal, the head chef, Harald Bresselschmidt (young, German, handsome, relaxed) wandered amongst the diners for a chat. We were fulsome in our praise and tried to book again for the following night, but sadly they were full.

Africa Cafe

OK, this one is a bit out of the way for Nottingham locals, 6300 miles out of the way to be exact. But I wanted to write about my trip to Cape Town.

If you had asked me beforehand I could have given you any number of reasons to go to Cape Town but the food would not have been amongst them. South Africa is essentially a country created by the British and the Dutch – a recipe for blandness in cuisine if ever I heard one. The British were at least good enough to import large numbers of Indian people into the country but then they promptly exiled them to “coloured” townships where they could not bother white people with anything as frightful as curry. The Dutch stuck with what they knew; puritanical Calvinism and pea soup.

As for the Africans, the development of a refined cuisine does not appear to have been high on their list of priorities – what with losing 80% of their land to the onslaught of arrogant, belligerent racists from the North. Their staple diet is based around mealie pap, a grey porridge of maize which is, if anything, even less appetising than it sounds.

But how wrong can you be? The food in Cape Town was astonishing.

The first surprise came at Africa Café on Shortmarket Street. You get something like 16 courses in the form of an African feast and can eat as much as you like until you either give in or explode. The whole continent is represented, from the deserts of Morocco through the jungles of the Congo to the bounty of the winelands. I would give much to know what went in to the Ethiopian Iab, a white curd cheese with herbs, something like an Indian raita. I was certain that nothing could redeem mealie pap, but they managed it – mixing it with spinach to create delicious char-grilled patties.

Typically for Cape Town, everybody eating at the Africa Café was white and everybody waiting at table was not white. It really is incredible but Cape Town is the whitest place I have ever been to. A black person eating in a restaurant would have turned heads, would have stuck out like a pterodactyl or a Martian in fact.

The reason for this becomes all too clear when you visit the black townships. Jesus… so these are the fruits of victory 12 years after the end of apartheid. For this Mandela spent 27 years in jail. All the Cape wines that as a student I ostentatiously refused, the dreadful bands I listened to at ANC benefit gigs – it was all for this. 1.8 million people in Cape Town alone are still living in conditions that are simply appalling.

I suppose there are some signs of progress. There are schools in the townships now which look quite nice. There is electricity. But the cables festooning the miles of chicken-coop shacks seem to reflect a grim resignation – the shanty towns are here to stay.

After 3 hours in the townships even I was ready to become a revolutionary communist. The disparity of wealth between the black majority and the whites is just stunning. The whites live in vast mansions, surrounded by deep green, sprinkler-fed lawns. There are horses in the paddock, a soft-top Mercedes in the drive and razor wire around the perimeter. It was hard to understand why the Africans didn’t rise up en-masse, pour out of the townships like a black tide and sweep them all into the sea. All South Africans it seems, have something to thank Mandela for.

Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons

Expectations were naturally stratospheric prior to our visit to Le Manoir – it’s supposed to be one of the top 2 or 3 restaurants in the country after all. But, inevitably perhaps, those expectations were not fully realised.

It’s a beautiful place - one of those gorgeous, honey-coloured 17th century manor houses. You could probably spend half a day just looking around the gardens, though it rained continuously throughout our stay. The staff were abundant and unfailingly charming and gracious – rushing out to meet us with umbrellas.

There was plenty of glamour. Zoe Wanamaker (Harry Potter’s flying instructor) was there. A group of city bankers caused something of a stir by arriving and departing by helicopter.

The only thing in fact that was not absolutely perfect was the actual food. Granted, my starter (a parfait of fois-gras) was stunning, every element seeming to be the very definition of its own particular flavour. Particularly memorable were the tiny, sweet, silverskin onions which had been pickled in intense tarragon vinegar.

My main course (leg of suckling pig) was disappointing – the meat bland and somewhat greasy. It was also far from satisfying in its proportions – very small pieces of leg of suckling pig would have been a fairer description.

The desserts, which included a special passion fruit birthday cake, were masterly though, as good as anything I have tasted.

Lunch at Le Manoir is £47/head unless you go for the degustation menu which comes in at an emotional £110/head. We went for the former, but with celebratory champagne pushed the final bill to around £86/head. Big money for lunch in my book but worth it for the whole experience I think. It's one of those places that you just have to go to once in you life.

Antalya

Reader feedback from a most surprising source informs me that the city centre Turkish restauarnt Antalya does in fact have a website, contrary to the statement in my earlier review. I have corrected the entry accordingly.

On Thursday I am going to (gasp!) Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons for lunch. Watch this space.