A little while ago we went to Knife for Salty Cracker. Hello, salty goodness! The meal and the experience were top notch, despite the slightly odd in-a-hotel out-of-the-way location. The rump steak I had was the best I have had in Cape Town. Better than Hussar’s (solid, if sometimes unexciting) or even Nelson’s Eye (a little pricey, but high quality). If you’re serious about the meat you put in your mouth (and you should be), check out Knife in Century City.

Last week on Monday I continued my ongoing experiments in Japanese cooking. The timing was a bit off, but the four stir fries were nummy. Thank you, Wagamama cookbooks! I feel like I’m losing my spark with The Cookings a bit, hence the branching out.

Last week Thursday we went to the Dias Tavern (info on eatout.co.za) before waddling down the road to the Fugard Theatre to watch Shakespeare’s R&J (on for a few more days, go see it!). Despite being in CT for almost double digit years now, I had never been to the taverna before. It is awesome! Big, tasty, Portuguese pub grub. Word on the street is that it gets extra rocking at weekends.

Last night the Crackernauts (plus celebrity guest star, Mum o’ Doc) hit Park’s Menu (details on Dining out coza). As usual, it didn’t disappoint, but excelled in tasty Korean goodness. Sadly, we didn’t make it all the way to a Korean BBQ / Hot Pot course. We did have a couple of main course dishes for starters, then a couple more main course dishes for mains, though. Our bellies were full and happy.

And tonight: Chippies. An easy eating, very tasty, prego steak roll and chips (with barbeque sauce) as a reward for studying hard at our Tuesday isiXhosa evening class.

I like eating.

p.s. *tap tap* is this thing on?

So, rather than the traditional Thai food stylings for The Sunday Crowd, Jo and I made some Japanese food. Same same, but different. Frying of the stirring variety, similar kitchen kit required, but very different flavours. The decision was definitely inspired by the most excellent time we had at Haiku on Friday for Salty Cracker (review to follow there later), and by our wuv (and owning two cookbooks of) Wagamama noodle bar in London *. So, we spent the morning poring / drooling over the books and making a (long!) shortlist of what we wanted to cook. We ended up going for:

• Tori Kara Age (Deep fried chickeny bits with rosemary and oregano and OMG it is tasty.)
• Ebi Yakitori (stuff on stick! Prawns and veggies in this case.)
• Cha Han (Stir fried chicken and prawns and veggies and rice, yakitori flavours.)
• Poached hake with shiitake mushrooms (Nom!)
• Pork mince and prawns w/ crispy noodles (they say use rice vermicelli, but we used cheap 2m-type noodles with good results. Flash deep fry them for crispy, crunchy goodness.)
• Chive and Chilli noodles (side dish, chilli, vinegar and lime dressing)

Took a bit longer than usual (had to keep looking up stuff in these “recipe” things. They’re basically lists of ingredients and instructions and tell you how / what / when to cook stuff. Kinda cool.), but it was a success!

New flavours. Good flavours. We will be doing this again.

We had coffees, a croque monsieur for me, and a bacon and tomato souffle omlette thing for Jo. The service was a little on the slow side, and there was some confusion as to what food went to what table, but our waitress was very nice and dealt with it well. The food was ace, and the coffees nice and fresh. The menu is quite small, but there are lots of cakes and tarts and things that we didn’t try that looked nummy.

We had a brief chat with the owner / manager (role unknown) on our way out and he was very friendly. We left with a happy, smiley, feeling and a spring in our step.

Yesterday evening, me, Jo, Jim and Julie had a plan to go to The Quarter, touted as a gourmet Bunny Chow joint.
Excited, we were. (Interesting, but now essentially useless restaurant info at Rossouw’s, 24, Relax with Dax)
Alas, upon parking on Long Street (thanks, Jimbob for driving!), we saw that the place was closed.
As in not open.
Ever again.
Hmm.

Perturbed, we were.
Defeated, we were not.
We did what all great folk do in times of distress: had a sit down and a nice cup of tea.
Except the tea was cocktails on top of the Grand Daddy Hotel.
The cocktails were good (Caipirinha with a kick for me) and the venue is lovely (it’s unusual and pleasing to be a good few floors up in the city centre).
Miffed, I was, that three of the cocktails took about 15 mins to arrive, and mine took 5 mins after that. On the point of almost walking out, I was.
But, tasty, and weren’t in a rush.
Amongst the topics of conversation were where to eat now that our target was already neutralised.
Julie suggested Headquarters.

Wow.
And wow again.
The place is very swish and pretty inside, but I won’t waste time with that for now.
The menu is simple:

• Salad;
• Sirloin steak;
• Chips.

The only choice you have to make is how you want your steak done. Oh, and what to drink. I’m sure you’d get more than a funny look if you ordered anything more done than medium rare, though (rightly so, too! Ahem).
The sauce on the steak is delectable, and they have the genius idea of coming round during the meal with offered top ups on chips and / or sauce.
Full of, as they say, win.

I really highly recommend this place.
R140 a head for the food, the wine is a little on the pricey side, but where isn’t in Cape Town? Sigh.

Hmm, quite a lots of words up there ↑.
You can see where my priorities lie these days: fooooooood!

Started Saturday with an early(ish) morning walk in Newlands forest. Always makes me happy to be surrounded by Nature TM in the mornings.
Then, off to the other Tokai Market: Porter’s Estate Produce Market. Cute, and not as pretentious as other markets of a similar type. Like Parfles said: much more like an actual farmers market. Bit exposed. Had a mucking afazing burger (with bacon) for breakfast. Nom, om.
Then, moved lots of furniture with Eckbert and Sveno. Felt useful. And a bit tired.
Then, back to Tokai for a very enjoyable 40th birthday party Masked Ball affair (thank you masky-loany stuff, peoples). Even had a bit of a boogie, despite slightly dodgey DJ duo.

Sunday similarly lovely.
Huevos Rancheros, with a starter course of bacon (because why wait when you can have bacon NOW?), and a bottle of champagne (and OJ) between us and Honoured House Guest, for breakfast, picnic style in the garden.
Various bits of lounging, pool dipping and outdoor shower screen installing during the rest of the day.
Fantastic braai at Sveno’s house in the evening (dude, those lamb kebabs were especially incredible).

Can’t really believe how much we crammed into the weekend, especially Saturday.
Very pleasing.
: )

It’s a roughly similar concept to the (ritual hiss, spit) Biscuit Mill market – home-made, organic, small batches, very tasty stuff – but without the pretentiousness and the yuppie elbows.
This time we concentrated, randomly, on meaty stuff (sausages! With interesting ingredients!) and saucy things (olive tapenade, chilli chutney,…).
Also had a chourico and egg and cheese pancake for breakfast, got some unpasteurised cheese, and bought a delish white / rye mixed bread.

Highly recommended.
We went at 9 and it was pretty quiet, and was picking up a little bit by 10ish when we were leaving.
They’re also open open Wednesday nights.

I can’t bring myself to dig into the details, but it seems like someone beat me to it.

Yes, I can smell (and taste) the irony.

I’m looking for a site that has a recipe similar to something I cook (the basil and pig thing, in case you’re wondering) to send to a friend (because I’m too lazy to type the whole thing out myself), but I can’t really find one that I like.
I’m not so worried about the recipe being exactly the same, and I’m not worried about precise measurements of ingredients.

The main problem is that the readability of most of these places sucks.
I want to be able to pick it up on a skim read, but come back to it later if I want more info.
The tone is too conversational for my tastes – you have to plough through lots of text to get to the actual instructions.

Would anyone would be interested if I started up a recipe blog type thing, doing Thai?
I’d want to make the instructions modular and simple, give things three or four standardish levels, have icons for actions (slice, dice, crush) and amounts (small, medium, large) and timing (quick, medium, slow)…
Hmm…