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MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
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Lion’s Head on a wintry day, from Cape Town docks
In this week’s MENU:
• Products
• Our market activities
• Luke Dale-Roberts, Awards & Pot Luck
• Taj Expressions of Stellenbosch
• Masterchef SA
• Chicken & peanut stew
• Wine courses, Events and Restaurants
Products We hope that our order of Prego sauce will be ready tomorrow. The public
holidays of the last week tend to throw spanners into the works of business. We have
lots of the wonderful Mexicorn salsas and delicious French and Italian delicacies… patés,
truffles, balsamic reductions etc. For those and any other products you need, you can
access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need,
let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an
email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is
increasing and more orders are coming from it.
We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things
we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet
foods is what drives our business. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious
ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our
website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa.

2. Our market activities We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and
atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday and every Saturday
between 09h00 and 14h00. Come and visit us at Long Beach Mall on Friday 11th May
from 09h00 to 16h00.
What makes an award winning chef? In our opinion: Experience, subtlety, flair, a
great palate, adventurousness, care for detail, consistency, food knowledge, stamina,
great management skills, financial nous and the ability to pass all this on to their staff
and still run a happy restaurant, and lastly, the ability to make money, not just
reputation. Bravo and congratulations to Margot Janse at Le Quartier Français and Luke
Dale Roberts of The Test Kitchen for making the top 100 Restaurants in the San
Pellegrino & Acqua Panna Restaurants Awards this week. Yes, they have been higher
on the list before but there is a great deal more competition out there in world
restaurants in a recession. People have to work very hard indeed to make these lists.
Last night, we were invited to Luke’s other restaurant, The Pot Luck Club at the Biscuit
Mill (next door and connected to the Test Kitchen) and it was a truly wonderful
experience. We had fun, we ate like royalty and we will definitely go again. They have
two seatings: 6 to 9 or 9 to 10.30 and we were booked into the early session, not always
our choice as we do prefer to eat later. However, if you want to see your dishes cooked
and get a blow by blow rundown of what each of them consists of, book a counter seat
on an early session. Then when you know what you like, you can go to a late session and
order it all. This dark and moody industrial style restaurant with an open kitchen and art
on the walls gets busy early but is not as bustling, loud and fun as it is later and you can
enjoy your food and discuss it at the same time. Some of the food is life changing in its
ingenuity, simplicity and layers of complimentary flavours. It shows the many influences
from the places that Luke has travelled to and worked in during his successful career. It
is served Tapas style so you are meant to share but you could hog a whole dish to
yourself if you absolutely adore it. And there are dishes that Lynne is now intent on
trying to recreate at home, something she only does when she is intrigued and
absolutely delighted by the food. The chef in charge of The Pot Luck Club kitchen is Nic
Wilkinson, a local lad who has come from working at Scott’s in Mayfair in London (the
older amongst you will know it as Ronnie Scott’s). He was assisted by the trainee chef
Romy Jansen (amongst several others) from Silwood, who also explained to us the dishes
she so ably served us. The staff is so impressive in the open kitchen, responding quickly
to instructions and working smartly, quietly and quickly to produce lots and lots of
dishes. And the service is slick. Do you want to see and read about what we had to eat?
Follow this link.
The Pot Luck Club & Gallery is open for dinner from Tuesday to Saturday inclusive, and
lunch on Saturday. For booking enquiries, call +27 21 447 0804 or email
reservations@thepotluckclub.co.za
Mint Restaurant at the Taj, Expressions of Simonsberg, Bottelary and Stellenbosch
with Guest Chef Christiaan Campbell of Delaire-Graff and wines from Greater
Simonsberg, Stellenbosch Valley and Bottelary Hills
We joined the wine tasting at 6 and tasted some very impressive wines from the area
like Bartinney’s classic cats pee and elderflower flavoured 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, their
very vanilla 2010 Chardonnay; Dalla Cia’s Chardonnay and great red Giorgio; a selection
of Warwick’s wines, the best of which was the Trilogy 2009, full of sweet liquorice, dark
red fruits and elegant tannins with a very long finish. Martin Meinert’s Synchronicity
2007 Cape blend, almost balsamic in character, stood out well with its soft fresh fruit,
red berries and lovely extraction of flavours. Jordan showed us their new The Real
McCoy Riesling 2011 which has great balance and long flavours. Thelema also showed
their drier Riesling, their Chardonnay and their Shiraz. Meerlust, their very French style
Pinot Noir full of forest floor smells, mushrooms and marmite as well as the classic
Rubicon red blend. Tokara’s Collection Chardonnay 2010 was smoky, limey and crisp and
Delaire let us taste five wines, two of which were paired with dinner. Nice to taste the

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Beyerskloof Pinotage again, Lynne even agreed she might drink the Reserve 2009 often,
not something she often does with Pinotage.
Our all time favourite of the evening was the outstanding Stork Shiraz from Hartenberg,
a wine to rave about and wish we had the budget for cases of this wonderful, faultless
wine. Such intense fruit, such quality and still so much time to go. Their Chardonnay,
the Eleanor, was also the best one of the evening for us and it had some close
competitors. It is so nice to see good Chardonnay taking front of stage again. Several of
these wines were served with the rather rich dinner which followed. We had great
company as we sat at the Delaire table and enjoyed the meal and wine together with
their charming General Manager, Johan Laubser, his wife and their two marketing
ladies. See photos and descriptions here. You can taste these dishes in Mint restaurant
all through May, until the next tasting and dinner which will be Expressions of Robertson
& Tulbagh.
Masterchef SA We have not mentioned South African Masterchef before, as we
wanted to get into the series before commenting. Lynne is a great fan of the series and
has watched the UK programme for years, both the Australian series’ that have been
shown here and the awful USA programme with Gordon Ramsey, which was like an
abridged version with serious attitude. To put it into perspective, they have stuck to the
programme’s formula but is it art? Can they cook? We haven’t been shown much cooking
or presentation skill yet; in fact, very little. Are they keeping the good cooks in the
shadows? The new UK series started on Monday and the UK competitors (all amateurs)
have to invent a dish from a mystery box, go straight into a pressured professional
kitchen for a session, and then come back to the studio and cook their best two course
menu. And this is just to get into the show. They are producing restaurant level food.
We are not seeing this in the SA programme ... yet? Will it happen? We wait to see. One
element we don’t like is letting the contestants vote for their peers. We think this is
what the judges, who are the professionals, are there for. They tried this in the first
series in Australia and the contestants managed to get rid of someone who was a threat
and who might have gone on to win, rather than someone who was weak.
Chicken and Peanut Stew
The Sunday Times Food section this week featured recipes of interesting African food
and there was a spicy Ghanaian chicken and peanut stew; Lynne decided to try. It was
very interesting but, following the instructions to a T, she thinks it was cooked a little
too long because the chicken all fell apart and the sauce thickened up a lot. We had it
with samp and beans. However, it is good to be outside our comfort zone and try other
food from our continent instead of Europe, Asia or America. If you want to try it, you
will need to find a copy of last week’s Sunday Times.
Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy
There is a huge and rapidly growing variety of interesting things to occupy your
leisure time here in the Western Cape. There are so many interesting things to do in
our world of food and wine that we have made separate list for each month for which
we have information. To help you choose an event to visit, click on our Events
Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of
exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Click here to access the
Calendar. You will need to be connected to the internet.
We have had a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine.
Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run courses, some very serious and
others more geared to fun. You can see details here.
Some more restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special
offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. Click here
to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies.
We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be
taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be

4. responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our
observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to
give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All
communication should be with the individual restaurants.
Winter is coming in with a bang, but we can still expect some wonderful
clear and sunny days. Make the most of them and enjoy a picnic on a wine farm;
several wine farms offer picnic facilities. We have put together a list of wine farms who
can provide you with a picnic, We haven’t put in much detail, just where it is, phone
number, email address and a link to the website. The latter is where you will find all the
important information. Go and check it out.
3rd May 2012
Remember - if you can’t find something, we’ll do our best to get it for you, and, if
you’re in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country, we can send it to you! Check our
product list for details and prices.
PS If a word or name is in bold type and underlined, click on it for more information
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups
(up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have
fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in
English, German, Norwegian or Dutch flavoured Afrikaans.
Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and
are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these
newsletters are ©John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are
usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by
anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we
didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid
mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our
Avast! ® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned
continually for viruses.
Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made
at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters are ©John
& Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer
to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go
independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy.
While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally,
for which we apologise. Our Avast! ® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system
is scanned continually for viruses.
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because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves.
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