Nicola Ashe

Food
Red meat is the hero here: grain-fed and wet-aged for a minimum of 21 days then chargrilled to your liking. But there’s a good choice of other dishes on offer, catering to a variety of tastes with considerable attention given to presentation.

A wide selection of starters makes it difficult to choose an entrée, with seafood, chicken and meat dishes available, but the cheesy iterations are not to be missed. A generous portion of deliciously warm stringy mozzarella sticks is served with sweet chilli sauce and is plenty big enough to share. Deep-fried camembert bites with roasted almonds – though it arrives with sweet chilli sauce and toasted bread instead of sweet plum sauce and melba toast as advertised – are also tasty. Nibble on honey-and-ginger sticky chicken wings; pan-fried zingy peri-peri chicken livers; pan-fried calamari; a classic prawn cocktail; or West Coast mussels.

Both beef and venison carpaccio feature, the latter drizzled with olive oil and topped with capers, rocket and parmigiana shavings. There Roquefort snails, boerewors skewers served with pap and drizzled with chakalaka sauce, and oven-roasted marrow bones – you could be forgiven for never leaving the starter menu section!

For your main course, pick from their choice cuts and top with your selection of sauce and a side, or go with the butcher’s recommendation and try one of their signature dishes. Rib-eye steak and sirloin are both delicious served with piping hot hand-cut crispy chips – add a bowl of creamed spinach on the side. Top either rump or sirloin with camembert, bacon and green peppercorn sauce, or the BBC – pan-fried bacon, biltong shavings, melted cheddar and mozzarella.

Seafood dishes veer from a simple lemon-and-herb butter-fried kingklip to a sweet honey teriyaki salmon served on egg noodles and seasonal vegetables. Splash out with 6, 8 or 12 butterflied tiger prawns or a seafood platter of prawns, hake, mussels and calamari.

Poultry choices include chicken schnitzel, Florentine or espetada, as well as a chargrilled flattie, with your choice of baked potato, mash, vegetables, chips, pap and chakalaka, rice or salad on the side.

Desserts are decidedly decadent, with delicious South African malva pudding being a highlight. Chocoholics will delight in the Kahlua and Bar One crêpes or deep-fried Oreo cookies, with a tart lemon meringue pie, gooey chocolate brownies or Mississippi mud pie also on offer.

Drinks
A succinct selection of red, white and rosé South African wines are listed, with certain varietals available by the glass, as well as some imported bubbles.

Service
Friendly, but lacks finesse.

Ambience
It’s a pity that this restaurant, which once overlooked the beautiful Umhlanga coastline, now has a view of a building site. But Butcher’s Block attracts a cosmopolitan variety of diners, with a fair number coming from the adjoining Holiday Inn Express.

(August 2019)

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