Serendipity, Wilderness

21 September 2019                     

SERENDIPITY

Freesia Avenue, Wilderness

The wife and I are always in two minds about revisiting the source of past triumphs. Will it be as good as the first time or will it disappoint? We’ve experienced both outcomes yet one must accept risk for potential reward.

Our first dinner at Serendipity was in September 2016 and it was rather splendid. The Southern Cape is a part of the world we often visit but had so far mostly despaired of finding a decent bite anywhere. Serendipity went some ways towards restoring our faith.

On this breakaway we stayed at the guesthouse for a night and dinner. Chef Liezel was present and correct, but her husband Rudolf was indisposed. I don't think she recalled us as well as we did her but we kind of rebounded after we repeated our enthusiastic appraisal of the previous meal. One thing that I can truthfully say, and I don't think Serendipity needs it, but we've sung its praises far and wide amongst our friends, family and acquaintance.

Obviously, we were slightly apprehensive about returning to the scene of former glories, but we needn’t have been. The food was as good as it had been three years ago.

There was a very good deal of starter, soup, a palate cleanser, main course and dessert for R395,00 a person (the 25% off September special we hadn’t known of when we booked) and apart from three possible main courses, there were two choices each of starter and dessert. There was no choice on the borscht soup and if you don’t like beetroot you were  bang out of luck, or refused the soup.

The bread course was a major surprise and delight, no so much because of the excellence and variety of the bread, but because the common-or-garden olive oil or artisanal butter were replaced with an olive oil foam laced with balsamic vinegar, like the best of oil and ordinary butter, but smoother, lighter and far more unctuous, literally, with the sweetness of the balsamic providing a jam-like addition to the morsel of bread you pop into your mouth.

We like to be astonished and delighted and this simple twist on the usual did it in spades.

The amuse bouche was a smooth Parmesan panna cotta, another innovative idea, though it was too subtle on the salty, cheesy front.

The wife started with a prawn and pea mielie rice risotto and my choice was the Wildebeest bresaola (cured meat) and tartare. The choice of starch for the risotto was odd but it worked very well.

My bresaola was still moist and with only the slightest hint of spices and the tartare was as moist, tender and almost chunky compared to beef tartare I’ve eaten before but hugely delicious. This was probably my first taste of Wildebeest meat ever and though I’m not the biggest fan of venison, this manner of preparation seemed to suit the meat.

I liked the thin, clear borscht with pieces of beetroot but I can’t quite see myself cooking up a batch of borscht next winter. It must be an acquired taste. The wife doesn’t care for beetroot at all yet even she admitted that it wasn’t a bad little soup.

Our palate cleanser was not quite a sorbet or granita but a creamy buchu and lemon slurpy, which was pleasant enough but odd when one is used to a crackly texture, and it wasn’t tart enough for our taste.

The main course choices were between pork belly, line fish and mieliepap and Blaaukrantz cheese croquettes. This is where we would’ve liked tasting portions of each because they sounded super delicious. Instead, we opted for the excellent pork belly, with crisp skin, and buckwheat and apple pilaf, blackened bay fennel, crackling crumbs and a red wine jus.

The meat was tender and flavourful and the best I’d eaten in a recent period of disappointing bellies. The crackling crumbs offered the textural variation and an innovative take on crackling. It’s another simple, ingenious idea. The sauce was rich and deeply savoury, and I loved the fennel. A good pork belly is a thing of culinary beauty.

My dessert was the banana chocolate bread and butter pudding with peanut butter ice cream and the wife had the orange date cake. Of course, the bread and butter part of the delicious, rich chocolaty-banany pud was nothing like the bread and butter pudding I ate in Voortrekkerhoogte many years ago when there was a huge surplus of stale white bread, but it wasn’t too bad. The ice cream was the only dud of the night in that the hard little ice cream cake seemed to have been overworked and frozen for too long, which made it difficult to eat with a spoon and grainy in texture, though the peanut butter taste was spot on.

Our drinks were Kir Royales made with prickly pear syrup, and a bottle of local MCC wine.

The slight niggle of the ice cream aside, the various dishes were excellent and deeply satisfying. I still heartily and unreservedly recommend Serendipity.