After dark in the Stellenbosch restaurant the world is noticing

Daily Maverick

2 days ago

Dusk, in central old Stellenbosch, has made a considerable mark in a few short years. The space is suitably dark and elegant. The food is inventive and playful. The wine is perfectly matched to the exemplary food. Is this not enough?
The first course arrives and suddenly you're a contestant on MasterChef Australia. Two slim spoons on a plate contain little coloured rounds that look like boiled sweets. The waiter looks at us like he's a MasterChef judge, eyebrow raised.
Choose one each and guess what the flavour is. Your time starts now. Eek.
One is orange, the other yellow. Intern Naomi Campbell is with me for dinner and I must have said something disparaging about orange at some point, because she says, with typical courtesy: 'Tony, I know you don't like orange so how about I take that one and you take the red?'
I must have muttered something about some or other orange garment earlier while browsing high street boutiques, but I love orange and even have a great big orange wall at home. But no orange shirts. I take the red one in deference to Naomi's thoughtfulness. It's strawberry or maybe raspberry, but when the waiter returns I say the former and it's correct. It's an easy one, as strawberry's flavour is distinctive and hard to confuse with anything else.
The orange flavour, less so: is it peach, or is it apricot? Naomi vacillates between the two and says apricot. But it's peach. I wouldn't have been sure either.
It's a fun way to get the palate paying attention to the many flavours that lie ahead.
Our palates did need a refresher. We'd been to VUUR for a very long lunch. I got back to Bonne Esperance Boutique Guest House at 5.30pm, climbed into bed and set my alarm for 7.15pm. Woke up, had a refreshing shower, and met Naomi at Dusk — or actually at 8pm, some time after dusk. The menu says dusk was at 18.10.
I was expecting it to be dark inside, and it is. That kind of dark that works because it makes everything else disappear into the background except for the food and wine on your table. And you need focus here, because this is a restaurant with a philosophy. With a vision. Oh, and a mission.
Contemporary fine-fining buzzwords abound on the Dusk website. Immersive. Bold. Disruptive. An experience. Quality local produce. Bold. Fresh. Did I mention Bold? Bold is a good food word. Disruptive? Well, if a dozen or so restaurants in your region are also doing food that is bold, fresh and creative, how disruptive is disruptive? This is not to diss the food, wine and the Dusk 'experience' in any way — I'm talking about the use of words, and how they cancel each other out if everyone uses the same ones. It would be more disruptive not to say anything.
Of all the Cape restaurants doing this kind of thing, does Dusk more than hold its own? It does. Does it do more than that? Well, I don't know but they also say that Dusk is 'unlike anything else on the South African dining scene'. That sure is a bold claim. I'm not sure why it needs to be stated at all.
Hear verbatim how they view their approach: 'Chef Callan Austin leads with a bold and creative culinary vision. His menus are built around storytelling, nostalgic memories from his childhood, subtle social and political commentary, and a sense of mischief that adds charm and depth. While inventive, the food is always rooted in bold, expressive flavour.'
The place is refreshingly in neither the La Colombe nor Luke Dale Roberts stables, yet is clearly in competition with them (and others such as FYN and The LivingRoom) and more than holding its own. Three stars (Eat Out) for two years in a row says a few things. Not only that, the Eat Out judges are paying attention.
At a cosy table, TGIFood intern Naomi Campbell and I are game for another long meal. And here comes the food, to paraphrase what she said earlier at VUUR about the wine.
Duck and citrus. That's a marriage made to last. Duck l'orange is not a classic for nothing. This is the 'snack' course: duck liver (and poultry liver is also a perfect match for citrus) is prepared with yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit that looks like a lemon but — like a lemon — is too sour to enjoy as it is. Even more so than lemon.
They look like chocolate truffles on tiny round biscuits. Dark and intense, a luxurious pâté that sings to the Boland night. Alongside, a crunchy pretzel-like biscuit concoction seemingly from the cuisine of another planet. It looks like a lot of trouble for a bit of fun. Tastes nice, very crunchy.
Pairing the wines is sommelier George Young, a bodybuilder with an apparent shyness that seems at odds with his physique. Anna Trapido wrote about him last October when he was based at Vergenoegd Löw not far away — we were to go there the following morning for an indigenous food and wine pairing. We were hosted by the ever-smiling Le Roux Malan and Billiard Rasai, known as Billy.
On a sunny Boland morning we tasted bokkoms, amasi, roosterkoek and biltong, paired with their own stupendously good chenin, chardonnay, merlot, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon blanc. Indian Runner Ducks do their thing in the vineyard on cue, munching anything that moves, then stroll around the lawns. I can't wait to explore more of this breezy estate. What a grand and pleasant alternative to the more formal wine tasting everywhere.
Back to those little rounds of duck liver: George Young's chosen wine for this impeccable pâté is De Wetshof Lilya rosé 2024, and even the colour of the wine seems to like this dish.
Next: Scottish salmon gravalax in a course called Freshness. Maybe this was from that salmon that eyed me at Wild Peacock Fine Foods earlier. This is what I wrote down:
'Salt, sugar, herbs and lemon powder. Horseradish panna cotta with curry leaf extraction gel. Finished with trout roe. Carrot and tamarind broth infused with smoked kombu oil to finish dish.'
The menu calls it 'Freshness: salmon gravlax, horseradish, curry extraction, tamarind broth.' I loved every morsel and was intrigued by the savoury panna cotta. Fresh it is, it sings of it, revels in it. But there is a question…
Is it unreasonable to ask, given the stated commitment to quality local produce, whether it has to be Scottish salmon? Would a play on local salmon trout (yes, I know it's not salmon as such though it is in the same family) not be worth exploring? And a bolder choice? Dare one suggest this would bring the menu price down too, while making it more 'of Stellenbosch'?
George Young matched the salmon with DeMorgenzon Maestro 2021 white blend, redolent of fresh apricots and orange zest; perhaps my palate has been influenced by thoughts of that apricot puzzle earlier on, and its colour. It's a blend of as many as six cultivars, predominantly Roussanne. Somebody must have got pretty drunk in the blending of this.
How's this for pretentiousness, from the back label: 'At DeMorgenzon, Baroque music is continuously played, which is believed to have a beneficial effect on the wines produced.' I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
The next course is called 'Modesty': we're promised sweetbreads, gnocchi, wild allium and smoked cream. My notes also mention amadumbe; I don't remember why; I blame George Young.
I explain quickly to the pescatarian that a sweetbread is usually the thymus gland, sometimes the pancreas. She goes a bit quiet. But she is being brought alternatives, which she may write about separately.
The sweetbreads are surrounded by a generous pool of smoked cream, perhaps sensible as a counterpoint to the dark richness of the focal point. A red wine, Rainbow's End Cabernet Franc, is meant to be paired with this, according to the menu, but George brings us the fabulous Raats Family cabernet franc 2021. I see online that it retails for R800; excuse me while I grab the sal volatile and get up from the floor.
Next: 'Culture: cold-fired sea bass, dhania, cashew and coconut curry.' A Catherine Marshall riesling, vintage 2024, accompanies this delightful dish. It's fruity, honeyed and citrusy, an ingenious match for that pool of saffron-hued sauce on my plate alongside the moist, soft fish.
The fish is Moroccan sea bass. I was too tired to ask why, but if a fish can please a palate at this stage, who's complaining? It was fired in the Diablo oven, we're told.
The fish was sublime, wherever it came from. A dhania relish. Apricot emulsion. My notes tell me that we were told it was a 'cashew and almond Thai curry sauce'. It was delicious, but why Thai? We're at the Cape, right? Are Cape curry traditions so dull that we have to look East? Still, my palate was delirious.
On the side, a tangle of 'slangetjies', slimmer versions of the shop-corner snack beloved of generations at the Cape. This sort of thing is great, especially when your table companion is not from around here. So I explained what it is, that the real deal is somewhat thicker, that they're made of chickpea/gram flour, that the name means little snakes, and that dhania is our Cape name for cilantro/coriander leaves.
None of which involved any profanity, but we're told to wash our mouths out with soap anyway. This phrase, which I remember from my boyhood (Mrs Belelie across the road in Oranjemund was always yelling at one of her seven children: 'Daniel/Michael/Cathy, I am going to wash your mouth out with soap!') We lost touch so long ago. I heard along the way that Danny died young.
This is — let me see — the seventh course of the evening, or 13th of the day, if you count that MasterChef taste-off. A lidded soap dish is placed in front of you. It's removed to reveal a rather rude bar of soap (when did a 'bar' of it stop being called a 'cake' of soap?) draped with white foam. In ironic gold capitals, the bar/cake screams FUCK. There's a mound of what could be soap gratings at the other end. It's a sweetly delicious palate cleanser and tastes nothing like it looks.
Things get meaty, so Naomi is getting very different food now. On my side of the table, there's a venison loin that we watch being plated on the pass. As perfectly medium rare as could be. Cremonzola with pink peppercorn dust, fired cabbage, and with it a Shultz Family Wines 'Dungeons' cabernet sauvignon.
Then, 'Breakfast for Dinner': sheep's yoghurt, granola, and an almond financier, with Graham Beck Bliss Nectar, flying me back to the launch of Beck's MCCs in 1991 after having bought the farm near Robertson in 1983.
They've been a beacon of fine Cape 'Cap Classiques' ever since. I've never liked the name Cap Classique; why does it have to sound pretentiously faux French? I'd still go with Vonkelwyn, but what do I know?
Talking of which, next up is 'Nostalgia: banana, peanut butter, cardamom cake, rum & raisin'. I confess: with almost zero exceptions, desserts at this level of Cape dining are always excellent, moreish, etc etc etc, and this one was too, but where is the one that lands you on the floor and has your eyes popping out, while you scream for more? That's the dessert I'm waiting for. Oh wait: Donkieskloof Hooiwyn accompanied this. That will do very nicely thank you.
***
Is this food 'unlike anything else on the South African dining scene'? No South African restaurant can lay claim to such an impossibly rare standard, and why should they? This is exemplary cuisine at a level that can be found in at least a dozen other restaurants at the Cape. Does it need to be more than that, or is it about garnering awards more than about feeding people food you're proud to serve them?
Remove such hyperbole from the picture, and you undoubtedly have one of the finest restaurants in the country. That's enough for some of us.
Oh, a note about the service: just so friendly and expert, an absolute treat. Everyone was a gem, and every single one of them appreciated. DM