Chill at The Hussar Grill

 11 November 2023

 

THE HUSSAR GRILL

Crystal Towers Hotel, Century City, Cape Town

 

Six of us came here for dinner, and though it wouldn’t have been my choice, given the unfortunate experience I had at the Mouille Point outlet, when they overcooked my steak despite my strict instructions on the matter, it turned out to be good evening and everybody ate well.

 

The main reason for choosing this particular venue was that it’s very wheelchair friendly, in that we had a round table in the centre of the space with direct access through the hotel entrance.  

 

The joint was jumping but service was nonetheless friendly and (mostly) efficient and our position in the room more or less insulated us from the worst excesses of the ambient noise.

 

The wife and I shared the baked Camembert, served as four crumbed chunks of cheese and a couple of small slices of toasted bread. The crumb shells were lightly crisp and was an excellent contrast to the molten cheese. It was quite delicious.

 

Most of the others ordered steak, one guy had the lamb chops and I chose for the chicken stack because I’m not about to order a steak at the Hussar again. 

 

The wife ordered a filet stack with Bearnaise sauce and a side salad. 

 

My side was roasted vegetables, which weren’t served with my meal; I had to remind the server. It was probably a tad superfluous, though, as the chicken stack consists of two flattened, grilled chicken breasts on top of and below a copious amount of roasted vegetables. 

 

The other side orders were variously French fries, onion rings and side salad. 

 

There was also a pseudo-Greek salad for the table consisting of probably 90% leaves with only a smattering of tomato, cucumber, olives and onion.  This is not a Greek salad. The Greek Cultural Authority should sue them (and all the other restaurants in Cape Town who shamelessly do exactly the same thing) for egregiously misrepresenting an iconic salad.

 

The wife’s steak was perfectly cooked; juicy, tender and succulent; the Bearnaise sauce was the perfect enhancement; and she was very happy with her salad.

 

 My chicken was very flavourful although slightly overcooked, and the vegetables were marvellous; in fact, the vegetables that were part of the dish were superior to those in small rectangular side dish. I almost regretted making a fuss over the initial non-delivery of my side order.

 

The general comment from the others was that their meat dishes  were perfectly cooked and tasty.

 

My sweet things was a good malva pudding, with ice cream and custard. The malva was soft, unctuous, not overly sweet and with oodles of the characteristic flavour and taste. 

 

The main gripe of the evening was that it took possibly an hour to 90 minutes for our main courses to be served. The starters came to the table quite quickly but then we waited and waited and waited. At some point our server came to inform us that it would be 5 to 7 minutes to touchdown. Needless to say, we were still waiting 15 minutes later. This might be done to the very crowded restaurant but it’s still irksome.

 

On the whole, though, it was a good experience with good friends and good food.

 

Someone else paid the bill, so I’ve no idea what it came to.