A surprisingly disappointing dinner

We went out to dinner at the Attic last night. It was my 3rd visit there, and the previous 2 times the food has been absolutely phenomenal. My expectations were obviously high last night - and I was actually quite disappointed.

Their new winter menu was launched only last week, so I was quite curious to see what they came up with. Some old favourites are still there - the chilli salt squid starter, the crab & fettucine main meal and so on. But we each had only choices that we haven't tried before.

My starter was a slow poached duck egg served over tenderstem broccoli with a herb aioli. Lovely stuff, but the egg was poached firm, instead of soft as I expected, and there were only three tiny pieces of broccoli on the plate. It was supposed to be served with toasted brioche, but instead there were a few crumbs on the plate, the biggest roughly the size of my pinkie nail. My husband chose the winter mushroom salad with gorgonzola, red onion and pine nuts, but there was no sign of any gorgonzola or red onion in the salad. The mushrooms were well cooked but when you order a meal with gorgonzola, you expect to receive it!

My main was the pork belly, which was mostly lovely if a little less tender than I expected. But it was served on a little square potato cake that tasted like the potatoes had been frozen - you know that almost floury texture that potato gets when it is thawed? It tasted like that. Plus the sauce that was served with the pork was entirely savoury, and usually pork is served with at least a touch of sweetness. So that was unusual. My husband had the duck 2 ways, and that was really well cooked, so no complaints.

Then we waited about 20 minutes to be able to attract our waitress' attention, and once she finally took our order for dessert it was almost 40 minutes before we received it. We queried it with our waitress after about 30 minutes and she had to ask again what we had ordered, and then said that it's "definitely coming". I had the salted caramel pot, very nice but the flakes of salt were huge so the taste alternated between too-salty and not-salty-at-all, a little disappointing. It was also supposed to be served with a sea salt tuille, but instead again I received a 1cm by 1 cm little square of baked dough, flavourless and adding absolutely nothing to the dessert. My husband's dessert on the other hand was HUGE, a piece of pear and almond tart big enough to serve 3 people, and the tart base was really hard and overbaked.

Then once again it took forever for our waitress to visit our table so we could request the bill. We told her that we were in a hurry to get home and relieve our baby sitter - the long delay on the dessert meant that this was about 30 minutes later than we expected. And despite us commenting on this urgency, she was still standing around doing nothing for about 10 minutes (I could see her from my seat).

When the bill finally came we were charged corkage on 2 bottles of wine even though we only had one, which caused more delays.

So yeah - all in all a really disappointing evening. Given all the other great restaurants in the area I honestly don't know if we'll be back.

Junipa's

The best husband in the world took me out for an early birthday celebration dinner (the actual event is on Monday, we went out Thursday night). We went to a small little bistro in Bryanston called Junipa's. And I fell in love.

They do artisan breads, roast their own coffee, and when you order a cappucino you get a cat design in the foam. I had a lovely salad with crispy duck and sour cherries, which was awesome, although the carpaccio salad with blue cheese might have been even better (I scrounged a taste from H's plate). Then a pasta Alfredo for me, pizza with slow roast lamb and olives for H, followed by chocolate brownies. Wow. Their artisan breads are made from a starter that is - get this - 8 years old.

This morning I drove past there again, and bought a sourdough loaf and some croissants, and having tasted it I'm happy to sacrifice the dream of losing weight. I'm in a little bubble of baking happiness. I can't believe this kind of food is available 10 minutes from my home and I never knew!

On the other hand, Gingko

So after the disappointing Maximillien experience, we were hesitant to use another Groupon restaurant voucher. But hey, we paid for it already. So on Friday we squeezed in a lunch date at Gingko, and it might have been one of the best decisions of my life. I have a new favourite restaurant!

Gingko serves mostly organic food, no preservatives or artificial anything, which appeals massively to my food ethos. I think Hanno bought the voucher in the first place to score points with his crunchy wife. It worked! The entire experience was 100% in contrast to the night at Maximillien, with the exception that the service for both was really really good.

Here’s my comparison:

Ambience:

Maximillien feels luxurious and plush. It gives the impression that you have to have money to eat there (and when you look at the menu that’s mostly confirmed).

At Gingko, you feel like you’re sitting at the kitchen table of a good friend. The chairs are plastic, I'm not sure if the floor is tiled or cement but it's not carpeted – and yet you feel 100% at home immediately.

Location:

Maximillien is in the centre of Sandton, wedged between Sandton City and Nelson Mandela Square, so sitting in executive space. Parking in the building cost us R10.

Gingko is in Parktown, about 2 turns off Westcliff drive. You drive through a residential area to get to the business part of Parktown, and then into the (free!) parking of the deli itself.

Food:

Well, you know what I think of the food at Maximillien. The Gingko meal, on the other hand, was one of the food highlights of my life. Really. The lunch menu is well priced (most meals between R50 and R75, I think) with the option to do a buffet which pays per weight, R140 per kg.  I don’t think they have a liquor license, at least I didn’t see a wine list, but the drinks include organic lemonade or gingerbeer, smoothies, freshly squeezed juice and a whole selection of interesting teas. And of course organic, free trade coffee.

Price:

These two restaurants clearly don’t play in the same league. At Maximillien you currently pay R600 per couple for the disappointing meal that we had on Thursday (which, to be fair, includes a bottle of wine so it’s not BAD value for money). Our voucher, on the other hand, entitled us to R225 worth of food for the two of us and we didn’t use up all of that. My (rather generous) plate of food from the buffet came to R68, Hanno’s was R59. Chocolate pot desserts for R24 each on the special. We shared a carafe of organic gingerbeer which cost R24 (I think) for 500ml. The most expensive item on the menu is a grilled salmon which goes for R97. When was the last time you were in a good restaurant that doesn’t charge above R100 for anything?

So, on to what I actually ate:

I chose the following off the buffet:

Butternut, pear, gorgonzola and walnut quiche

Panak paneer curry (cottage cheese in spinach curry) with basmati rice

A brown mushroom and polenta bake

Couscous and roasted vegetable salad

Baby zucchini and tahini dressing salad

It was simply fantastic. The couscous salad was probably the least impressive, not because I could find anything wrong with it but it tastes like the one I make at home, so it wasn’t as surprising in flavour as the other foods. Everything was simply beautiful. The respect for good ingredients just shines through the entire meal. The tahini dressing on the zucchini, and the flavour in the mushrooms – wow.

So in this instance, the Groupon voucher did exactly what it was meant to do. Attracted two new customers who would otherwise probably never have heard of the place, and strongly incentivised us to come back, and come back soon (and often). I was on cloud 9 for about 5 hours after eating their food. Yes, it was THAT good. They might even turn me into a vegetarian if this continues.

Oh, I should mention: The buffet was vegetarian but they have meat and fish dishes on the standard lunch menu. The lamb kebabs looked fantastic, and I strongly considered the chicken prego or the prawn stirfry as options before I strolled past the buffet and all thoughts of eating anything else evaporated.

I didn't actually plan to be reviewing restaurants in the blog, this just happened. But watch this space - I want to tell you about the German chocolate cake I baked over the weekend...

The Maximillien

So we had our date night at the Maximillien last night! As always it was awesome to spend some one on one time with the awesome man I married - isn't it weird how sitting at a table in a restaurant affords you time to chat about things that otherwise just get lost in the wash?

But if you'll allow me to play food critic for a moment, I have to comment on the actual restaurant. The atmosphere is amazing, service absolutely excellent. Before we even ordered starters Hanno was planning our next visit already. But we've both changed our minds about going back - at least, we'll go back for a cocktail, maybe, but not a meal.

I ordered the rocket and orange salad as a starter. It was great, except for the obvious lack of rocket (a herb that I adore). Instead the salad was based on some rather tasteless frilly lettuce. The roasted pine nuts were fantastic, the cheese creamy and everything came together really nicely. But the description said it's a salad of rocket and baby spinach leaves, and what I got was a salad of frilly lettuce and spinach that couldn't possibly be described as baby - teenager, more likely. Hanno's carpaccio was OK but the meat itself lacked flavour.

My main was the chicken in parma ham cooked in a sherry sauce and served on tagliatelle. Again, no sign of the parma ham, which was the main attraction in my choice to order the chicken in the first place. I couldn't taste any sherry either, so what I got was a cooked chicken breast (beautifully cooked, moist and tender) in a nondescript savoury sauce over slightly overcooked pasta. And it was supposed to be served with stir-fry vegetables and roasted butternut, but instead I got plain cooked vegetables (cauliflower, carrots and green beans) and cooked butternut. The plain boiled veggies made the whole main feel like a plate of cooked food instead of a restaurant creation, kwim?

Hanno had the fillet medallions in pepper sauce and it was really beautiful - cooked rare, flavourful meat and delicately seasoned. The pepper sauce was less overpowering than some restaurants make it, and the mashed potatoes were a work of art. Of course, he also got the boiled veggies to go with it.

Then for dessert we had a choice between berry cheesecake and crepes suzette, and we both ordered the crepes suzette. Which was OK, I suppose, but definitely not fresh. Mine were cold on the inside, so clearly these were made a few hours (days?) before dinner service and simply heated up and covered in sauce.

I think in summary there's no chance I go back for the food - if we had paid the full R600 for the meal instead of getting it half price on a Wicount offer (that's the voucher than Hanno bought, btw) we would have been really upset. Hanno suspects they give lower quality food if they know you're coming on a voucher, which we told them stupidly when we booked. But if the point of the Wicount offer is to attract new customers and then have them come back again and again to relive the experience, the Maximillien has failed miserably this time.