Keep up your standards!
With the winter season now firmly established, despite sunny weather, the tourist season is at its lowest ebb, and this is the time when restaurants should be treating the locals as king. Kalk Bay is a favourite place at this time, when the streets are quiet and seats are plentiful, and there is opportunity to try out a different place on every visit. Brunching with the girls is the ideal pastime – not too early and finished before lunch, giving us all a chance to extend our socialising or go off on other adventures. With breakfasts offering so much more than bacon and eggs, lunch can be skipped altogether, and readers of these blogs will know by now that I am forever in search of the perfect Eggs Benedict.
This search has been quite revealing in the standards of service and skill in the kitchens of various well-known and top-class eateries. The service seems to be floundering, with coffees arriving after the food, not knowing ingredients or traditional accompaniments, and asking whether you would like hot or cold milk with your tea. A tiny plastic container of marmalade is hardly appetising as the offering for scones with butter and jam – there are few waitrons who know that marmalade is for post-prandial toast, or that tea is taken with a dash of cold milk.
The food is slipping, too. Cold plates, food not warm, cutlery not on table, the English muffin toasted so hard a knife cannot cut it. Yet on the same plate, an egg poached to perfection – luscious gooey egg yolk, a tasty slice of Gypsy ham and a lavish amount of Hollandaise made in the kitchen. Or alternatively, one soft yolk, one hard yolk and bacon cooked to a cinder with a tablespoon of Hollandaise from a catering pouch. I have even been served an Eggs Benedict presented in absolute perfection, but without the Hollandaise. Unforgivable.
My companions chose simple dishes: a croissant with butter and jam, and a stack of flapjacks which sounded very appetising in the menu description. The croissant arrived more than five minutes after our meals despite not having to be prepared in any way, and was warm on top and cold underneath, accompanied by marmalade. The flapjacks, although looking good, were about an inch thick and more scone-like than light and fluffy. All of these shortcomings were pointed out to the waitron, and in fairness she did apologise for the kitchen not getting it right, but one wonders whether the owner of the establishment has trained them in what the customer expects from such traditional fare. Perhaps the summer season, with one-time visitors, is sufficient to carry them through the winter, but for locals there are many more places to empty a wallet with more satisfaction.
I felt quite guilty for enjoying my Eggs Benedict, which could not be faulted, and had the most generous portion of sauce I have had anywhere. It is not my practice to name and shame, and I will only mention the establishment by name if I can honestly recommend both food and service. Kalk Bay, our eating adventures will continue, but we will be trying new venues for a while.
