Souffle or Sausages

Soufflé or Sausages

If we employ culinary analogies to describe our cities, then Cape Town, the home of struggling fashionista’s, is undoubtedly an airy soufflé on account of its light inconsequential attitude to life. The food intelligentsia tell me it works equally well in savoury or dessert form but is not recommended with HP sauce, as is the custom in Blackpool. It comes out of the oven looking beautiful and bounteous; puffed up and full of promise. However once you pierce the golden crust, the hot air escapes and as the noon day gun booms, momentarily waking up all the insurance salesmen, the delicate soufflé that the stylish Laurent presents at your table with such a blowsy flourish, catches fright and collapses into a quivering heap, more beaten than egg. A sneeze would unsettle it. Outside the maternal heat of the oven it battles to survive and falls quicker than a harbour prostitute. What you see is not what you get. It does not deliver on its initial promise. You are left feeling somewhat cheated, craving comfort food; something, anything more substantial to sate your hunger. It makes you long for sausages. And in the nefarious drinks world, the noble red Shiraz grape would reign supreme if we lived in a just world; however the fickle Mother City has other ideas and pedigree is a word best left to dog-breeders rather than aspiring garagiste wine-makers. It is Pinotage, damp leather and smoked snoek, mixed with sharp Constantia Sauvignon Blanc in a secret blend reminiscent of vinegar laced with brown sugar. That’s the Cape for you. Always willing to innovate if someone else is paying.

Pretoria, otherwise known in informed circles as Tuscania, on account of the fake Tuscan themed or inspired architecture, includes suburbs like Faerie Glen, Garsfontein, and Montana. Only in Pretoria can names like Tshwane and Maroelana live side by side in mutually assured suspicion. The city with the best weather in the world and its sprawling bullet riddled suburbs is a one kilogram rump “wif” chips. This comes after you have demolished a rack of chutney basted spare ribs for starters. You’ll order a creamy mushroom sauce as a side accompaniment if you’re a sophisticated Pretoria female who longs to visit Paris and Tuscany but has to settle for the Toyota Double Cab with all the extras and a holiday cottage in Bredasdorp. If you’re from Waterkloof you’ll put pesto on everything including Wheatbix. A Black Label beer and a monkey gland sauce will do for the males, stretching all the way from Brakpan, Alberton and Springs on the East Rand, to Bela-Bela and beyond in the Far North. Vanilla ice-cream with melted Bar-one chocolate has replaced chocolate kisses for dessert.

Bloemfontein is equally unpretentious meat territory but here it’s mountains of lamb chops, lamb “ribbetjies” on a roaring fire for breakfast, lunch and dinner. As in Pretoria quantity matters a great deal, but Bloemfontein and the Free State in general places a much greater emphasis on quality, unrivalled hospitality and true friendship. Boerewors and beer is always a good starter and even a worthy substitute for vegetables and the overdone butternut. Dessert is melktert with coffee and Richelieu and coke all taken together.

Everything in Durban is “hot to go!” Fish and chips, politicians, the weather, the water, the women, the cars, candyfloss, cash even doughnuts and samoosas. I thought that Durban is a very hot prawn curry followed by disco dancing. I was right about the curry part but wrong about the rest. My culinary advisor, a mountain of a man, who has travelled extensively and knows his food intimately, tells me it is definitely TLC or tender lamb curry washed down with copious amounts of Cobra beer. Everything of course is heavily laced with “Mother-in-Laws Tongue” a potent blend of hot Garam masala ground spices purchased at the Indian market. Dessert is anything with blonde highlights.

Johannesburg or Egoli is surf and turf territory, the best of both worlds. As ATM’s explode around them and sirens wail, Joburg’s nervous executives network their way through consecutive power lunches and when they’re not thinking up schemes to list a company on the JSE and sell worthless shares to retirees from Cape Town; like landlocked people everywhere in the world, they’re always longing for the sea. So it’s a 3 inch thick fillet-mignon topped with a West coast crayfish tail to impress your newfound BEE partner. Dessert is Italian gelato or a trio of sorbets to keep things light and remind them of Cape Town. The only drink is Johnny Be Black on the rocks, which is also a fitting way to describe the present state of the country.

Costas Ayiotis
21 August 2008
Hout Bay