Sozzled at The Waterside

 8 October 2023

 

THE WATERSIDE

V & A Waterfront, Cape Town

 

The Waterside offered a special menu for restaurant week at R695,00 per person and we took advantage of it to visit a place that had been lurking in a remote corner of our radar for a while.

 

Caveat: we quaffed generous amounts of bubbly and much of the lunch passed in warm haze of well-being but that also meant that I’m very fuzzy on the meal. The menu descriptions tell me what we ate yet the finer details escape me.

 

The restaurant is spacious, features simple yet elegant wooden furniture and if you have a table at the windows you have a most excellent view of the waterside, natch, of the Waterfront.  It was windy today and therefore not pleasant outside but inside it was cosy  and comforting.

 

The restaurant week offer seemed like a good deal, though I was immediately incensed when I saw that the pork belly required a R100 supplement. If you have prixe fixe menu, why do you have a  dish on it that you charge extra for?  I call bullshit on that. 

 

I get the additional charge for caviar with the yellowtail, as it’s an expensive extra, whereas the pork belly is not.  If it’s too expensive to fit the basic cost, don’t offer it. 

 

Suffice to say, we didn’t order the pork belly.

 

The bread course arrived in a stack of wooden containers that mimic bamboo steamers. The milk buns were super soft and delicate and came with a subtle combination of flavours, as you can see from the menu description. I’m writing this long after the event and neither I nor the wife can quite recall what the other items were but there was a butter and, I think, tiny artichoke tarts. Whatever, it was yummy.

 

The wife’s starter was the prawn salad she described as breathtakingly delicious and mine was the yellowtail, which was quite good too, light and refreshing, though there was so little fish that it was unidentifiable as specifically yellowtail. It could’ve been any old monkfish.

The palate cleaners were scintillating and cleansing  granadilla and watermelon lollipops.

 

The wife, a dedicated carnivore, chose the lamb while my choice was the line fish, thankfully not Kingklip but cob. Apparently the lamb was <expletive deleted> delicious, succulent and tasty and the fish was perfectly cooked and the side elements were also light yet elevated the dish.

 

My dessert was the smoked honey confection and the wife, as much a chocolate lover as she is a carnivore, went for hazelnut, chocolate, coffee and pear thing. Both desserts were beautifully presented and were the perfect insubstantial, sweet end to a lovely meal; sometimes you don’t want a big hunk of malva pudding.  

 

But wait, there was more. The final sweet offering was the bonbon chest from which we took three each, with a variety of tastes and flavours.

 

The bill came to R1878,00, including drinks, plus a gratuity of R253,00 (helpfully already added to the bill) minus R500,00 paid up front with the booking, leaving a nett balance of  R1631,00.

 

It was a lovely experience with the quietly efficient service one expects from this type of establishment, a table that was one of the best in the house and superb, beautifully presented food. Would definitely recommend!