Sweet dreams are not made at Droom

 30 July 2023

 

DROOM 

Die Meul, Main Street, Philadelphia

 

The father-in-law celebrated his birthday today and he, his lovely wife, my lovely wife and I ventured up the N7 to make a return visit to the venue where the wife and got hitched some 15 years ago because at the time they did us a very good deal on venue hire and in-house catering, 

 

Back then, the Old Mill building was the only game in town  as far as eateries went, and other than being a function venue it offered a tremendous spread of a buffet Sunday lunch based on the traditional carvery type of meal many Afrikaners grew up with.

 

There’s been changes over the years and currently Die Meul, apparently still a function venue, hosts Droom restaurant, which offers a plated buffet Sunday lunch (R350 a head) that is very much in the spirit of the buffet. 

 

There also seems to be at least three other restaurants in its immediate vicinity that might be worth trying in due course. Philadelphia is, so to speak, becoming the new Greyton.

 

We arrived in the midst of an ongoing load shedding situation. Strange how a once intermittent inconvenience has become a regular reality one has to plan and work around.

 

Anyhow, the interior of the building was dimly lit by a few electric lights dangling from the ancient wooden ceiling beams and tall candles on all tables. It was broad daylight outside, albeit overcast and cold, but inside it was a veritable fairy grotto of cosiness. At 12h45 the restaurant was already very full, with most guests seated at long communal tables set close together in one area

 

 Our table was at the farthest border of the space, without  the fairy-tale ambience of the rest of the room and rather cold, but the benefit was that we weren’t caught up in the noisy buzz of the conversations of those closely spaced tables. My general impression was that most diners were part of groups, rather than being simply a couple out for a hot Sunday lunch date.

 

It's a plat du jour menu with a bread course (“mosbolletjies” and ciabatta), two proteins (the standard chicken pie couldn’t be delivered because of load shedding and was replaced by baked chicken pieces), vegetables and carbs for the main course and petits fours as dessert.  We also ordered optional extras, at R65 each, of savoury rice and deconstructed “kool en kaassous”. The main course dishes came to the table on serving  platters. 

 

The accompaniments to the bread were a biltong butter, a pesto and a liquid Parmesan cream. The consensus was that the pesto tasted like grass, that the biltong butter was intriguing and that the Parmesan cream was tasty.

 

The chicken was a tad overcooked for my taste though flavourful, the slow cooked  lamb was probably overcooked too but the delicious sauce mitigated that deficiency. The potato cubes were crisp and fluffy inside, the green beans well-cooked and al dente, the pumpkin fritters soft and not too sweet, the creamy “deconstructed” cabbage unctuous and the savoury rice was piquant. There was also a good-looking salad that seemed quite superfluous to requirements and I had none of it.

 

There was enough food for the four of us that each one could enjoy an abundantly stacked plate. There was a downside in that, on this cold day in the cold corner, the food cooled down very quickly and without electricity, one couldn’t ask for the food to be reheated.

 

The petits fours were a relative disappointment, with blue cotton candy, a chocolate, a mini milk tart and a tiny ring doughnut. The individual items were sweet and nice(ish), but I would’ve thought that a warm pudding would have been a far better end to this kind of meal, and especially on the cold day it was. The blue “spookasem” looked like it was meant for a children’s birthday party.

 

We shared a bottle of bubbly and the other three drank about half of a bottle of shiraz (we took the remnants home); there’s no wine by the glass. The wife and I finished with what was called “Boerekoffie” and turned out to be unpleasantly weak plunger coffee. Load shedding kiboshed the prospect of cappuccinos.

 

The bill came to R2110,00 before tip.

 

It was a good experience, the food was tasty and unfussy (but with little wow factor), the venue looked brilliant in the dim lighting and the service was friendly and efficient. Clearly, Droom is popular on a Sunday and I suppose, for the amount of food, it is a good deal, but our consensus was that we wouldn’t necessarily drive out to Philadelphia again to relive this dream.