Warning to Sensitive Readers:

If you hate posts about people’s lunch….maybe skip this post and the next.

I plotted in silence until the plot thickened just enough. I let Andrew marinate in a stew of South Africa's fine wine and fresh vegetables. I plied him with a cocktail to open his mind, and then opened my “amused bouche” to say:

“We cannot possibly sail into a city with not one but two restaurants ranked in the top 100 in the world and not try them out, can we?”

Soon, the arbiter of our schedule (me) set upon the maitre'd for La Colombe to set a table for us. “We can stick to the limited menu,” I said with no real conviction.

It took me several tries to obtain lunch reservations, with dinner being entirely out of the question the whole time we were in Cape Town. The day we were scheduled to go dawned a thick grey, with Cape Town wind blowing rain sideways. Clouds were pouring off table mountain and swirling around its foot.

It was a perfect day to settle in for a five hour lunch.

La Colombe is a French fine dining experience located on the property of Silvermist winery. As we turned off the main road, a rumbling brick path twisted through Eucalyptus forested hillsides and grapevines glazed with rain. Stepping through the entryway, we were led to the top of a set of stairs that overlooked an open dining room with dove sculptures nested in the corner of rafters and a series of windows that let the cool grey light of our day slant inside.

They led us to table with a cozy half-shell couch made of soft sky-blue velour fabric. This was a stroke of luck, as Andrew tends to vocalize his discomfort for lack of adequate “personal backside cushion” whenever he is forced to perch on hard dining chairs. At the center of a table dressed in a crisp, white cloth, was a bird’s nest built from dried plants pulled from the Silvermist property. Tucked into the nest were two smooth, heavy ceramic “birds eggs.” This egg was plugged with a tiny cork and filled with a lemon juice sweetened with simple syrup to cleanse our palates. A note as laid before the eggs, a tiny envelope printed with a blue feather held a card inside that said: “Food is our theater, we hope you enjoy the show.”

 And, we did.

The next morning, while lounging in Sonrisa’s cockpit, fat and happy from our La Colombe lunch the day before, I received this message:

Pete and Jen were at sea aboard Steel Sapphire somewhere in the middle of the South Atlantic and, apparently, were craving a fine dining experience. This happens to me, too, on a long passage. Sometimes, I will spend my watch flipping through photographs stored on my phone of nice meals I’ve eaten, king sized beds I’ve slept on, and hot showers I’ve taken while standing on hard, dry, stationary land.

“We did go! It was awesome,” I replied.

“Don’t just say it was awesome, give us the blow-by-blow!”

“You don’t want a blow by blow of my lunch! It’s a fixed menu, you already ate the same meal.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Pete said.

“You must have had the blind tasting, right?” I asked.

Pete emailed back, “Oh, yes! I impressed the pants off the somelier. He brought us a "mystery" wine, and asked us to pick it. I nailed it immediately [***Secret Wine Disclosure Here***]. Pretty obscure, but one of my favourite grapes. I felt so smug!!!”

“Well, we did have the same blind tasting wine, and I AM impress you nailed it. I felt smug enough when I picked it's ‘like this but not like this’ sister.” I replied.

“What did you eat? I bet it wasn’t the same.” Pete said.

I ran through the list, and in response, Pete claimed their meal was not the same. I shrugged to myself and began typing.

“All right, I'll give full report then.” 

La Colombe Course #1: The “Sharing” Course

Course #1 was served in a wood mushroom & acorn setting, with food arranged to conjure the magic of a fairy garden. It began when the server lifted away the top of the mushroom to reveal "cherries" with shiny, red skins flecked with edible silver flakes. These, however, were not sweet like you might imagine, but a mushroom mousse wrapped in a bright red gelatin nestled in a little crumb savory crust/plate.  We popped that in our mouths and enjoyed the experience of unexpected but delicious flavor profile that comes from eating a thing that looks like a cherry but tastes like truffle mousse.

When the acorn was broken apart, we found a pickled beet mélange tossed in an avocado crème and topped with coriander micro greens and flowers. You had to eat that with a spoon and nibble on a hand crafted leaf shaped cracker for a bit of “crunch”. In the top of the acorn a smoked fish spread, with a handmade citrus and curry-spice mayonnaise. Half of the fish spread was topped with coriander micro greens; the other half was topped with crispy fried shallot crumbles for crunch. This was divine, and intended to be spread over a sweet potato sourdough bread, naturally risen.  The chewy-firm texture of the sourdough bread sent my half-assed bakers' heart soaring. 

I said to Andrew: “Asking someone to do a sharing plate at La Colombe is a test of our marriage, much like riding a tandem kayak.”

He agreed, but I am relieved to report we did make it through still married. 

 This was paired with a chardonnay bubbly fermented naturally on the skins. This fermentation process results in bigger, slower bubbles and a creamy, soft flavor that I can only describe as the good flavor that comes from yeast, rather than the sharp astringent flavor that comes from a carbon dioxide add. The label on the wine bottle was watercolor scene hand-painted, and I loved that, too. They used a light blue, purple, turquoise color palette that just made the wine inside the bottle glow.  It was so pretty.

At the close of this "breaking bread course", the server poured a cast iron kettle of billowing mist steeped in lemon verbena over a bowl filled with rocks, moss, and two little white tabs that - to our surprise - expanded into little towelettes. With their dry-iced chill, the towels freshened our messy fingers from handling the sweet potato sourdough bread.

"They think of everything, don't they." I said as I sniffed the lemon verbena mist.

"They certainly do," our server agreed. " Where are you from?" He asked. 

 And now, this was my opportunity to feel smug.  "The US," I respond, pause, and then say "Las Vegas"

We engaged in a back and forth about living in Las Vegas. Then he says: "It is very strange that you said US first. Most Americans just say "Texas" or "California" never the US." 

I laughed, and told him “We've been retrained.”

(Pete has spent the last three years breaking the Oddgodfreys of all the American-typical habits most irritating to his Scozzy-Australian skin, one of those being the American tendency to presume anyone would know anything about where any particular state might be, or that it is located in the United States in the first place.)

La Colombe Course #2: The Tomato.

The thing that really sets this kind of food apart for me is the intensity of the flavor they can cram into tiny little portals. The Tomato course displayed this in spades.  

 Served inside a white ceramic bowl shaped like a tomato, you open the ceramic tomato top and find a tomato.  But not a real tomato, a tomato reconstructed by the hands of the most dedicated chef.  It apparently takes three days to make. 

First, they roast and then puree aubergine along with pine nuts.

(This, by the way, is another point of re-training, as only thanks to Pete and Jen did I know that “aubergine” is what the rest of the English-speaking world calls eggplant. And as I write this now, my US-Style Spellcheck cannot figure out what I mean by the word “aubergine”. I might be spelling it wrong.)

They made this eggplant + pine nut puree into a paste adding a few whole pine nuts in the center, for texture. They deep freeze this until it is firm. Then, they dip it into a bright red gelatin flavored deeply of tomato essence. They freeze it a second time to let the gelatin set, then they let it sit in just the right cold temperature to have it thaw out before serving it to us. It is then topped with olive crumb, and rests in a tomato au jus in the bottom of the bowl.  

Upon serving, they come around with little oil droppers one bright orange and one bright green: a cumin oil and a chive oil.  They drop just one or two drops each. 

The flavor is intensely tomato, with that nice addition of “roastiness” that comes from the aubergine and pine nut. Savory, but the acidic depth that comes from tomato is just so pleasant. Yum 

This is paired with a really unexpected Pinot Gris wine. Pinot Gris being usually a white wine, this one was fermented longer on the grape skins, leaving it with a soft red with orange hue. Not pink! Red with orange hue. Just like a great garden tomato would be. The mouth feel was super clean, almost like water which might be a negative thing, but not in this circumstance. The texture of the food begged for a light textured wine. The flavor of the pinot gris lacked any sweetness at all. It was a savory wine, dare I say it tasted like the first bite of tomato warmed in the summer sun and straight off the vine with garden soil still dusting it's skin. The distinguishing factor between the tomato flavored food and the tomato flavored wine was the texture difference between the rich pate-like food and the thin, clean wine.

Absolutely unexpected, weird, and incredible. 

I should also mention: When first presented, The Tomato was topped with the stem from a real tomato, obviously chosen for it’s perfect shape and size. You weren’t supposed to eat that, it was to add to the visual experience of tomato-essence only. And so, they brought a ceramic tray splatter painted like it had been sitting next to Jackson Pollack’s work-station, but not too close to Jackson Pollack’s work station. It had a few black, white, and charcoal grey paint splatters over a matte finish grey plate. The sole purpose for this plate was to offer you a place to discard your one tiny green tomato stem before you set upon The Tomato you were intended to eat.

And again I say: “They think of everything, don’t they.”

La Colombe Course #3: Passionfruit Tom Yum

 Okay, Course #3. 

This is the course that sold the full-shebang when I read the description on the website, so I harbored high expectations. It began when they arrived to place a silver spoon with a medium-long handle and a pair of scissors shaped like a bird on our La Colombe “silverware feather”. 

Did you have a La Colombe Silverware feather?  I assume you did. 

Next, they arrived with a wood circle, displayed with varieties of fynbos greenery and flowers, a rough stone-like ceramic bowl, topped with small pebbles, and a fully black-charred passionfruit, skin on. The passionfruit had a hole cut in the top, but only a small hole, through which they presumably removed the passionfruit pulp, mixed it with tom yum spices, mussels, and the most tender ginger slices you could ever imagine. Then, they stuffed this concoction back inside the passionfruit skin, then charred it thoroughly.

We were instructed to use our bird scissors to slice a small vertical line from the top of the passionfruit a few centimeters downward, then cut around in a circle to reveal our little bowl of soup.

From here, we dipped our tiny silver spoon into what was thick enough to almost be called a tom-yum stew. It coated the spoon and when I placed it into my mouth I felt the absolute awe you must feel in the presence of a genius who knew it was a good idea to combine traditional tom yum soup with roasted passionfruit.

There were only three, maybe four bites of food in this little passionfruit jar, but each one offered an experience that will stick with you for probably the rest of your life. It’s been a few days and I’m still inside my tom-yum passionfruit bliss.

This was served, as all good tom yum soups should be, with a Chenin Blanc.  The Chenin Blanc was a single vineyard grape, and in quite an unusual style, oaked. This meant the traditionally light, lemongrass, citrus flavors offered by a Chenin Blanc was softened by the addition of vanilla and warmed by the dry flavor of cedar.

Oh lord, take me back now please!

La Colombe Course #4: The Blind Tasting

The server offered us jet black glasses and the instruction that we can try guessing if we wish, or we can just sit back and enjoy. Our competitive natures (erh..hm) Leslie’s competitive nature takes over and we put our mind to the task of figuring out the mystery.

The wine is extremely passionfruit forward, some pineapple, a touch of lemon rind, with a backing of grass, sunlight, and minerality. Obviously, it’s a sauvignon blanc. But, obviously, they would not do a blind tasting of something so obvious and common as a sauvignon blanc.  “Cinsault.” Andrew says.  “It has to be one of those weird grapes we don’t drink very often.”

“Well, I agree with your second point, but Cinsault is a dry red. This is definitely not a dry red.” I object.

“Yes, maybe, but they just served us a red pinot gris.  Why couldn’t this be a white Cinsault?”

“Well, because, the pinot gris still tasted like a pinot gris tastes.  You don’t change the entire character of the flavor profile simply by leaving it on the skin.” But, this argument fails to persuade Andrew who continues to run headlong down the obviously incorrect path.

“I’m going with cinsault.”

I taste it again and again.  It takes me somewhere familiar.  Somewhere fun.  I sniff it.  It smells like good feelings and great conversation.  What IS it? “It tastes like the wine we drink with Pete and Jen most often.” I say.

Andrew agrees it does. But then, I am back to my original puzzle. “That is sauvignon blanc! I know it is.” I wrack my brain for a “weird grape” wine we’ve enjoyed with Pete & Jen.

I can’t do it, though.  Sauvignon blanc is all I have.

The sommelier arrives at our table to check on our progress. “It’s driving me crazy,” I tell her. “It has to be a more unusual grape than this, but it tastes to me like a sauvignon blanc.” 

Her eyes behind round, silver rim glasses crinkle with good natured fellow-wine-snob playfulness, she shakes her head. “No, but that is a good guess.” She looks at Andrew.

“I’m going with Cinsault.”

She holds her poker face, but I know she wants to laugh. “No, not Cinsault,” she says.

“Don’t tell me, yet.” I say, still hoping to arrive at the answer after thumbing through my mental rolodex of weird grapes.

They serve the La Colombe signature “dish” i.e. tuna can. The pop and metal peel of the tuna can reveals my chunks of tender, fresh tuna in a smoky, cumin laced sauce, paired with what I believe to be a grapefruit foam and topped with microgreens and edible flowers.

 I eat this paired with the astringent spice of mental frustration until our server arrives to clear our course and shows us the bottle of Albarino.

 All right….who’s in this post for the long haul? I bestow upon you the #1 Foodie Participation Trophy” and I”ll see you tomorrow for….the blow by blow report for the second half of our meal.

To be continued.