Cape Town Restaurant Tour Part 1: Manolo

Eating our way through a long weekend in the Cape

Cape Town is often described as one of the most beautiful places on our continent, perhaps in the world. It also has a high concentration of great restaurants. My husband and I recently spent a long weekend there eating our way through a number of places. Some, we had heard and read about. Others, we happened upon.

We started our "tour"with dinner on Friday night at:

Manolo

30 Kloof Street

+2721 422-4747

http://www.manolo.co.za/

We had heard and read about a lot about Manolo as one of the hipper, cooler, etc...places. The restaurant is set in a beautifully restored house, age: 180 years; and boasts a renowned chef and nice staff members. We generally do enjoy the ambiance brought about by a beautiful decor and discrete music but ultimately, the proof is always in the pudding.

Because I ordered the ZAR200 (~US$27) 5 course meal, we ended up with 4 starters, some of which were quasi-repeats:

• corn soup with prawn ice cream
• line fish tempura with shiitake mushrooms with ginger and almond froth
• glazed scallops with kingklip tempura with turnip puree and grapefruit froth
• shiitake mushroom terrine with pea mousse and you guessed it! ginger froth

Do you detect a tiny bit of irritation in my tone? You are quite perceptive since this is what I would deem abuse of a technique en vogue (copycat or hommage to a great chef?). The corn soup was light and smooth, the mushroom terrine very flavorful, the scallop docile but the omnipresence of froth was sincerely annoying. In case, you believe that I am overreacting, let me jump to dessert where we had a pear mousse, light as a summer breeze, but accompanied by more froth. Surely, less would have been more. To re-balance the mood though, I do have to swear allegiance to my husband's dessert: the chocolate trio of chocolate fondant, chocolate ice cream and truffle. In that case, less would not have been more.

Before dessert was served, we did eat our main courses which were preceded by a guava gazpacho to clear our palate (of what exactly? Please send me the answer if you do know). This was some form of smoothie made with delicious, refreshing guava but I guess calling it smoothie would have taken away some of the panache so delicious gazpacho it is.

For main course, we had a most down-to-earth chicken with mashed potatoes and duck with risotto. Both were quite good but the chicken covered with cracked peppers beat the duck. The mashed potatoes had the richness of true comfort food and a great prelude to further comfort provided by the chocolate trio.

Overall, Manolo was a good start to our Cape Eating weekend but there was definitely more to come!