Upper Bloem

Wednesday, March 13th, 2019

Reviewed by Peter Mason

I'm not much of a fan generally of SA food turned into shi-shi tasting morsels. I am a South African, and I grew up with all the tastes and flavours which typify SA grub - sosaties, bobotie, frikkadels, bunny chow, etc. I like them all, but truly SA cuisine (and I hesitated to use this word) is about large and robust flavours which mostly lend themselves to equally large and robust portions. Turning this into sand and foam and suchlike fluff is a wretched, gut churningly revolting idea. My wife booked at Upper Bloem because I asked her to book a nice restaurant in Cape Town for the Cape Town Cycle Tour weekend. She was unsupervised and, clearly not having the same qualms about fine SA cuisine as I do, booked here. I arrived at the restaurant vowing that that my spouse's brief lunge at independence could not be allowed to repeat itself in future, and eyed out possible nearby burger joints for a proper meal afterwards. With this introduction of sad misgivings, you of course know that the meal was good. It was superb. Better than superb because it was such a delightful surprise! Chef Andre is an enormously nice man. He is unassuming, and I would guess a great boss - there was no shouting or histrionics from the open plan kitchen, just calm deliberate cooking and plate after plate of delicious food. Andre has identified flavours and smells which, to a South African are immediately recognisable but also strangely unfamiliar. He takes the punch of smoked snoek and isolates just the subtlest hint in a spread for bread. Blink and you'll miss it. Turn around and go back. In fact, that is how I think of many of the dishes presented to us. Try them and then go back again, and again to discover their subtlety, complexity and layers. Dinner is served in 3 sharing courses. Each course comprises three separate dishes. Don't be fooled though, it is a proper tasting menu. The bread is lovely as are the various butters ..... the wild garlic is most definitely unusual (its difficult not to be polarised about this one). My favourites were the ostrich bunny chow - a delicious one bite morsel (if you don't know what bunny chow is, click here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_chow It has nothing to do with bunnys), the mussels in a tin - hands down the nicest thing I have eaten in years, and the buffalo curds and whey - man! You will want desert and you won't be disappointed by the Malay spiced carrot cake (if you have less of a sweet tooth), or the ginger bread semi-freddo sandwich (if you do). The service was attentive and knowledgeable and it was overall a delightful experience. What a find! Thank you Andre for the amazing meal and the large dose of humble pie, I wish you every success.