Fish 'n chips from Woodlands Eatery

 18 September 2021

 

WOODLANDS EATERY

Corner of Breda and Jasper Street, Gardens, Cape Town 

 

Woodlands Eatery relocated from their Highlands Estate venue to the building where La Frasca and Limoncello once reigned supreme, and I understood at the time that it was meant to be a temporary situation, but by now it seems to be quite permanent, which is good news for us, as we live maybe a minute’s walk from the restaurant and if, in these trying times, we don’t go there as much as we perhaps should, we do order take aways directly from their website often enough. I take a quick, brisk pre-prandial stroll to collect. If they say it’ll take, say, 20  minutes for our food to be ready, they keep their promise.

 

We ate at the restaurant last year with the elder goddaughter and her special friend, and earlier this year the wife and two colleagues had dinner there. Other than that, it’s been take aways all the way.

 

To be quite blunt about it, I can only recommend the joint for its great food. Between the wife and I, we’ve had the carbonara a couple of times and the other night I had a sweet potato and butternut gnocchi dish with a Bolognese sauce (the alternative is a quattro fromaggio sauce) and if the sauce was so chilli rich, I thought I’d been given an arabiatta sauce instead, the gnocchi was superb and could quite easily replace the standard potato version. I also ordered a quinoa salad, with slices of zucchini, plenty petit poits and a metric funk tonne of rocket leaves. Delicious and so self-congratulatorily healthy.

 

Sadly, up to now I’ve not taken many pictures of the takeaway food but, frankly, a huge portion of spaghetti carbonara in a takeaway container is not visually appealing in any shape or form, unless you’re turned on by the sight of bulk pasta.

 

Last night the wife had a craving for fish and chips and, recalling a review on this group of the piscatory product that Woodlands Eatery offers, she ordered two portions of beer battered hake and chips and a caprese salad that, unfathomably, also features avocado. The South African inspired twist, I guess.

 

Each of us got three substantial chunks of fish, some hand cut  “slap tjips,”  tartare sauce and a segment of lemon. The positives are that the fish was perfectly cooked, succulent and flaky, with light, crisp batter, and the fries were just the right degree of limp, fortunately not drenched in vinegar, the way I  shudder to recall the fish and chips from my youth, as purveyed by Helderberg Fisheries in Stellenbosch. 

 

Mystifyingly, though, the fish was devoid of seasoning. This detracted from an otherwise faultless dish. I may not be a man for all seasoning but, dammit, I prefer at least a few grains of salt and five bits of grated black pepper on my food.

 

The hake portions were so generous the wife saved one for the next day, but, as it turned out, it was my supper tonight  because she and a friend from Israel had an excellent four course lunch at Foxcroft in Constantia. I trust she’ll write a review.

 

Regarding the salad, I had only about half of it and couldn’t form a more accurate opinion of it than merely  the overused “nice.”

 

The two portions of hake and the salad came to R353,00.

 

To conclude: the pasta dishes at Woodlands Eatery are excellent, the takeaway service is exemplary and one should watch out for the seasoning on the beer battered hake.