The Foodbarn Restaurant

10 August 2019

THE FOODBARN RESTAURANT

Noordhoek Village, Noordhoek, Cape Town

Important life lesson 101: never expect anything and you won’t ever be disappointed. Don’t lie awake all night on Christmas Eve, hoping for that Airfix model airplane kit because  you might wake up with a rugby ball with your name on it under the tree.

We’d heard good things about the joint but after the recent disappointments at Hartford House and Jardine’s Restaurant, I was intent on going with an extremely open mind (and empty stomach), not anticipating anything.

The Foodbarn restaurant has been on the “list” for a couple of years now from the day we tried for lunch (we were in the area) and couldn’t get a table but, if you consider it a day trip to drive to Table View or Blouberg to dine, imagine what kind of courage it takes to journey across the mountain just for a meal. The solution was to book a night’s stay at De Noordhoek Hotel, a few metres across the Village square from The Foodbarn.

The name of the establishment is appropriate. The interior looks like a repurposed barn, with a high, vaulted roof and exposed wooden beams. If you have imagination, it’s an old Norse dining hall without hay on the floor,  a massive log fire or roistering Vikings, though the restaurant, for all its open space, was pleasantly warm inside. If you like horses, or simply images of horses, the art is a visual feast of equine pictorials and a massive, wooden horse torso close to our table.

The interior wall around the front entrance is colourfully decorated with an impressive wall paper mural of fruit, vegetables and pheasants.

The table tops are shiny, polished light wood with the decorations and glassware not nestling on starched linen, and the chairs are hard, white plastic chairs for an upscale patio, I guess. They are sturdy and not totally bereft of style yet incongruous in the barn setting.

It’s worth making a special mention, despite the large, open, double volume space, that the noise level was no more than a happy buzz, despite a full house and a couple of tables with groups close to us.

The deal was (a) an a la carte menu, not on a card but on blackboards, divided between savoury and sweet dishes, or (b) the winter special menu of either two or three courses.  The wife chose the three course menu with wine pairing, at R345 and I chose the non-pairing menu at R305.  There was a decent selection of dishes to choose from, with the wine paired only with starter and main. Somehow I’d expected a dessert wine too.

(There was a pensioner special too, at R245 for two courses, I think, but the wife refused to allow me to benefit from my age.)

To celebrate love, happiness and our adventurous crossing to the Deep South, we opened the festivities with Rickety Bridge Blanc de Blanc MCC at a budget friendly R50, 00 a glass. I had two of those. You’re correct. My non wine pairing meal cost me R405,00. False economy, what?  The wife’s two further glasses were a pinotage and a shiraz, both Rickety Bridge, and she liked the pinotage so much (this is a woman who’s quite fond of her shiraz or syrah) that she ordered a carafe (R62) of it as well.  It was only a short stroll to our lodgings, after all.

These days one expects the bread course to be something artisanal and rustic, preferably weirdly plated and with exotically infused butter. We got slices of fresh ciabatta with a  creamy quenelle of rosemary infused butter and olive oil and balsamic vinegar in lovely Le Creuset containers. The oil and vinegar combo is still not much of a thing in Cape Town.  The first time I remember being offered olive oil and balsamic vinegar was at the Long Street Café in the late Nineties when one could order a basket of warm bread to chew on while you delicately sipped your beer. It sure beat a basket of fries for sophistication. I was young and inexperienced in the ways of food then.

My starter was the flash fried baby squid with thin courgettes (in a brik pastry (it’s Moroccan or Tunisian) “serviette” pocket), mechouio mayo, sesame gamasio and tender leaves. The wife went for the poached egg on toasted brioche with bacon, red wine and thyme jus, and duxelle. My squid was meltingly soft and the sauce was the perfect foil. The eggs was properly poached and the sauce was deeply, rich, which was needed for a brioche that was on the dry side.

Before the main courses were served our waiter asked whether we’d like an apple pie flavoured vodka palate cleanser (R46) and he didn’t even have to twist our rubber arms. It was sublimely apple pie like and it kicked like a mule, well, I felt a material sense of tipsiness afterwards, and I had drunk only one glass of sparkling wine yet. Who cares whether the palates were truly cleansed, eh?

The wife’s main course was the lamb cutlets with honey roasted aubergine with minted yoghurt. Moroccan jus and thahina . She had an emotional experience. At the end of her meal, her plate was clean and there were three bones left, picked as clean as if they’d been drying out in the sun for decades.

As is common practice for us, the wife read out the menu for me and when she said the magic words “tripe” I rudely interrupted her and requested her to read no further. This would be my main course. There are, always, two kinds of people in the world: those who relish in a tripe dish and those who abhor the mere thought of such a thing.  I love me a tripe. When I was a kid, relatives from the Karoo brought us some a couple of times a year and it was always a huge treat. My mother cooked her yellow, extremely mild version of tripe curry (I never understood what the big deal about curry was until much later in life) and in this instance it was I who left behind shiny, clean bones.

This ox tripe and sheep trotters dish was not a tripe curry. It’s described as a stew with tomato and mild chilli but was more like a very delicately spiced broth with perfectly cooked, succulent  slices of offal, and a dash of good mash floating in the broth. I can’t say I loved it to bits, but it was tasty and made me happy nonetheless.

Although there were several appealing options in the starter and main sections, the desserts represented a challenge. Most of them were versions of an ice cream, an oddity on a wet, cold evening when a warm pudding would’ve hit the spot. Kinda making the best of it, both of us chose the granadilla brûlée with a granadilla sponge and hibiscus ice cream sandwich. Well, we were most pleasantly surprised. The excellent brûlée was served in granadilla half shells and the crumb on the cake was perfectly moist. Lovely ice cream.

As I said, don’t expect anything, just experience it and you  might be delighted beyond expectations.

We finished off with good coffee. Le Creuset cups, natch.

The menu offered good choices (my reservations about the desserts notwithstanding), the food was excellent, the wine was exceedingly quaffable and the service was friendly and efficient.

The bill came to R1023,00 before tip. The winter special menu is great value for money, if you just stick to a couple of courses and the paired wine; even with our additional choices,  the meal was good value for money. A great night out on a wintry Cape Town Saturday evening. And it was a real bonus to simply stumble back to our room afterwards.