La Petite Colombe

8 November 2019

LA PETITE COLOMBE

Le Quartier Francais, Hugenote Street, Franschhoek

On a balmy late Spring day the wife and I celebrated her birthday with a lunch at La Petite Colombe, part of a restaurant group with La Colombe, Foxcroft and Protégé, next door to La Petite Colombe at Le Quartier Francais. Now we have only the Protégé box to tick to complete this Grand Slam.

As we stepped inside the restaurant, we were guided to the bar on our left, for a welcome drink of citrusy sake served in a small, round stoneware ceramic cup, thematically in tune with the other serving vessels and bowls used during the meal. The drink wasn’t alcoholic enough (or enough, period) for a buzz and we were hurried to our table almost as soon as I took my first sip, but it was a nice gesture.  

La Petite Colombe is spacious, bright and elegantly modern, and on such a lovely day, the stack doors to the garden were wide open to give us an untrammelled view over the garden with its manicured shrubs and many lemon trees. Splendidly verdant.

In an unusual twist, the kitchen is at the rear of the space and though visible when patrons enter the dining area, it’s not a point of focus for the diner who might like watching chefs quietly cheffing until the end of service. 

We chose the Chef’s Spring Experience, a set menu except for a choice between two entrées, at R495 a head, with an additional R120 if you also choose to have a scallop and pork belly dish that would otherwise not be part of the deal.

We were told that the chefs had recently visited, amongst other countries, Japan, and that our food today would reflect that experience.  Not that it was sushi, sashimi, ramen or bento boxes.

Food theatre and quirky presentation are paramount The waiters never just plonk down a plate of food; with the  visual feast comes a learned-by-rote exposition.  Perhaps because each server learns just their portion, maybe two, for the day, there’s a steady parade of declaiming deliverers of delectables.

Over the course of the lunch I began suspecting that the entire experience had been meticulously designed and mapped out as a kind of Gesamtskunstwerk of dining aesthetics, in the combination of serving  artefacts and food (and wine, no doubt, if you do the pairing.)  it’s as if all the serving vessels, plates and ancillary incidentals would be discarded once this Spring menu has run its course.

We started with sweet, pink bubbly, well, no, it was a Brute Rose, of which I took a second glass while the wife quaffed a carafe of sauvignon blanc. It wasn’t a lot of booze but it’s easy to get day drunk, or just happily tipsy, if one has any wine on an empty belly, and I guess it enhances the often quite surreal experience of fine dining.

The opening fanfare of the feast is a trio of tongue teasers, (a) a chicken chawanmushi (yeah, me too), served in a porcelain faux egg shell, with bits and bobs of spicy chicken in  a citrusy broth, (b) the tiniest cone I’ve ever seen, with smoked snoek and curried labneh, and  (c) a soft lollipop of porcini, hazelnut, sherry and thyme.

For no apparent reason, other than as a talking point, these tantalisers were brought to the table in plant box on wheels.  A large, dark polished stone, or stone shaped ceramic,  that I thought was a bit of decorative art on the table, also ingeniously served as receptacle for two of the items.

For my palate, it was a case of diminished returns as I went from item to item and the lollipop was almost bland in comparison with the first two, of which the chicken dish was the most flavourful and delightful.

Next up was the bread course of a most lovely oatmeal, honey and sweetcorn roll with home-made butter. At some restaurants they bring a plate of sliced baguette and butter, as a belly filler while waiting for the real food; here it’s a featured event. I thought I’d have to break the roll with my hands until I picked it up and it neatly parted into quarters. Crisp crust, beautifully soft crumb.

Then followed a bit of magic I’ve seen before, in  a  different version, where two, small, tightly wound, cloth cylinders were presented in a bowl, with gleaming pebbles, and hot water was poured into the bowl to allow the  cloth cylinders to expand into hot cloths. It’s a bit ridiculous. and not as entertaining as the first time we saw the trick at the Green House restaurant, but I guess it adds to the vibe.

For the first entrée, the wife and I divided our selections: she had the quail and I had the tuna.

The rare, Malay tuna was accompanied by deep fried bits of avocado, and coriander, covered by tangled strips of brittle bric pastry for the crunch. 

The quail came with prawn, mussel and ham. Both of us were very happy with our respective choices, with the quail having a deeper base flavour but the subtle curry and succulent tuna were sublime.

For the second entrée of scallop, pork, wild garlic and celeriac additional dish, we, and three other couples, were shepherded to a station just in front of the main kitchen, where we stood while the lids on our bowls were lifted, a young chef earnestly told us what we were about to consume and poured some broth into the bowls.  More theatre, I guess, but somewhat pointless. We returned to our table to ingest the goodies. 

The scallops were diced into tiny cubes but were meltingly soft and the slightly larger pieces of pork belly (by the way, all of this was to be eaten with chop sticks) were by far the stars of the show. Juicy, flavourful, and on par with the Vietnamese belly at Saigon. As they say, I could happily have eaten a bowlful of it. The broth was good.

The palate cleanser came with more theatrical staging. First, you get a small planter with white pebbles, some planty things and a metal base. Then the waiter brings along a trolley with a treasure chest steaming with dry ice, from which comes the actual ice constructed (yes, from water) conical container in which the palate cleanser sits. It’s a geranium foam, with a Granny Smith apple flavoured granita underneath. This visually and conceptually daring contrivance failed as a palate cleaner in that there was too much bland foam and too little tart apple. My palate felt uncleansed.

In retrospect, this presentation was ridiculous. Over gilding the lily. However, the birthday girl loved it.

The main course was a chunk of fillet, pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, salsa verde and smoked olive. Where do they get these tiny carrots and where did they hide the pumpkin? The beef was perfectly cooked, and the accompanying vegetables had a varied textural mix, which combined sweet and savoury to good effect. Steak dinner it was not, but it was excellent.

The dessert was described as  coconut, passion fruit and pineapple, not my dream combo, but it was vibrant, not overly sweet, contrasted crisp textures with smoothness and was as exhilarating as the palate cleanser ought to have been, the perfect  confectionary  conclusion to a series of  small courses that added to a substantive meal.

After dessert came the post-dessert “treats,” a chocolate cylinder on a bed of faux-chocolate swirl made from paper, two marshmallows on sticks and the most cute, tiny macaroons.  All of these were quite nice but for me the dessert should have been it, as a proper high point to end off a splendid meal, without these afterthoughts. especially as we didn’t take any coffee.

It was a long, leisurely, luxurious lunch, with great service, in a lovely room, and a fitting way to celebrate a birthday. Typically, of this type of dining, we left sated and replete with the joys of having eaten intriguing food yet not bursting to the seams full and that’s the mark of a well-planned and perfectly executed menu.

The “Colombe Group” (or whatever it is they call themselves) has never disappointed us with their food and service. I don’t know, and don’t really care, where any of them rank on any list of top dining establishments, but I will recommend them and go out on a limb by saying you won’t be disappointed if you go. They aren’t budget friendly destinations, but they are exceptional culinary value for the money.