I am delighted to welcome Neil Pendock on board as a contributor to Spill.
Authoritative, incisive, articulate and entertaining, he is South Africa’s leading wine commentator.
Neil will be writing once a month for us about goings on in the world of wine.
De Wetshof Riesling 2009
“We grubbed up our Riesling vineyard as I needed wood for my [...]
After a six week stage in NOMA, the world’s No.1 restaurant, Eric Bulpitt arrived back in Cape Town last week and is back in the kitchen in Jardine.
He took time out to tell me about his time in NOMA, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“Noma is nothing fancy as a restaurant. There’s lots of bare wood and brick [...]
Posted in Chef's Chat 
Tags: eric bulpitt, jardine restaurant, noma, rene redzepi, world's no 1 restaurant 
4 Comments read more »
Allee Bleue in Franschhoek have launched their first MCC, their second wine produced by award winning winemaker Van Zyl Du Toit.
It’s a brut rose, made from 53% Chenin Blanc and 47% Pinotage.
A delicate salmon pink in colour, it has been tank and bottle fermented and aged for 10 months.
This is a wonderfully crisp and well [...]
I like Clarissa Dickson Wright a lot. I’ve never met her, but I’ve watched most of her TV work and read her autobiography “Spilling the Beans”.
In it she recounts how she drank her way through a family inheritance of £2.8 million pounds in 10 years, and had sex with a British MP behind the speakers [...]
The funny thing about Spring is that as soon as you think it’s arrived it jumps up and bites you with some good old fashioned Winter weather.
It’s been like that today, so I have unearthed a favourite recipe for a vegetable curry that works well as a main course or as an accompaniment to roast [...]
Spring is definitely here.
The leading wine farms in the Durbanville Valley have come together for another fantastic programme of wine tasting, live entertainment, food, fun, activities and all round fun.
Over the weekend of October 1st to 3rd you’ll be able to indulge the entire family in a range of activities that will keep kids and [...]
Protea Hotels announced the results of three years research into hotel guests key requirements when staying at a Protea or African Pride Hotel.
The collated the results of questionnaires answered by over 300,000 people and came up with the astonishing conclusion that people really just want what they’ve wanted for decades. And that is;
1. Great service [...]
Michael De Klerk and Anthony Gird are two very lucky guys.
They get to melt, stir, spoon and mould chocolate.
And then they get to taste their work.
I joined them for one of their daily chocolate making sessions and it was an eye opening experience.
First of all they use unroasted organic raw cocoa beans in making their [...]
Decanting wine is an activity usually reserved for the posher variety of wines. IE: more expensive ones.
At least that’s what most people think.
And would you blame them? Most people don’t want to come across as wine snobs, and will do anything to avoid getting caught up in winespeak that passes for knowledge about wine.
Then again some [...]
Posted in Niblets. Tags: burgundy, carafe, chablis, decanting wine, majeka house, malolactic fermentation, wine snobs, winespeak 5 Comments read more »
A guy like Luke Dale Roberts will not stand still.
Having relinquished the Executive Chef reins at La Colombe, a restaurant he brought to No.12 in the world, it was just a question of time before his talents found new ways to express themselves.
Now he has decided to announce his new venture.
In an exclusive interview with [...]
Posted in Chef's Chat, Niblets. Tags: executive chef, la colombe, luke dale roberts, the biscuit mill, the test kitchen, woodstock 3 Comments read more »
What is it about firsts?
I never came first in a race, never got a first in an exam, never won first place in a competition.
But there I was on Wednesday, and it seemed to me that all my firsts had arrived at once.
I was eating in Reuben Riffel’s first restaurant in Cape Town. It was his [...]
Posted in Restaurants Tags: cape town, carmen, cellars hohenort, Chillli salted baby squid, franschhoek, Gordon Ramsay, maryke, One and Only, reuben riffel, reuben's, sage spiced butternut ravioli, sol kerzner, tony romer lee. etienne de villiers, wendy potter, Willow Creek Director's Reserve 9 Comments read more »
My perfect breakfast is poached eggs on wholegrain brown toast with crispy bacon or pancetta on the side.
But I have been grappling with my recipes for poached eggs and have never been totally happy with the outcomes. I’ve tried everything – whirlpool in the middle of the saucepan, using frying pans, vinegar to hold the white together. [...]
GIVE A MAN A FISH AND HE’LL HAVE A MEAL.
TEACH HIM TO FISH AND HE’LL WIPE OUT THE SPECIES.
It had to happen.
There’ll be no fish in the seas for us to eat by 2048.
When we humans are good we can be very very good, and when we’re bad we’re horrible.
As species by species gets [...]
With the news that kingklip and prawns and sole have been moved onto the SASSI orange list the fishing and seafood industry have been in a flap.
This means that consumers should think twice about eating these kinds of fish.
Fish on the red list can’t be eaten at all, and green ones are good to go.
“You’ll scare [...]
Posted in Recipes Tags: fishing and seafood industry, green list, kingklip, prawns, red list, sassi, tomato and thyme snoek, willow creek 1 Comment read more »
Ok, 7 winefarms in 7 hours. Up at 7am and out to Stellenbosch to meet the bus. Bleary eyed fellow wine tourers on board. Sat beside Harry Reginald Haddon – all curly locks and needing a good breakfast, which he’d missed.
Great Wine Capitals is a PR initiative (google it) and WOSA had organised us to [...]
Finding Bizerca can be a bit of a mission.
Trudge through windswept open squares amidst modern office blocks, use SARS HQ as an aiming point, and eventually you’ll get there.
Set in a budget sort of hotel, next door to a raucous pub, you get into the restaurant by nipping in through the lobby, turning right past the bored [...]
Chris Erasmus, it’s the name on everyone’s lips this week. Why? Because his restaurant, Pierneef a la Motte opened it’s doors on the 4th September at the swanky La Motte wine estate, and from day one it’s taking the public by storm.
Spill caught up with a very busy Chris Erasmus to pose some vital questions, [...]
I had a lovely lunch recently in Stellenbosch with the charming Gouws Family.
Now, it wasn’t just myself, there were a few other journalist types there, so I didn’t have Ernst, wife Gwenda and daughter Ezanne all to myself.
We ate in Decameron, a well known and respected Italian restaurant in Stellenbosch. And I have to say the [...]
David Donde is a man on a mission. His mission is one of evangelical significance for all you coffee drinkers out there.
Even if you are not a coffee drinker, don’t worry, you soon will be, if David gets his way.
David isn’t the MD of Truth. He is the “visionary“. He is a fundamentalist about coffee, [...]
This is a healthy low fat soup that is warming, wholesome and easy to make. I had a bowl of it at the weekend in the Newport Deli, in Mouille Point, and it really hit the spot. Seeing that the Cape Doctor started blowing today, I thought I’d share my favourite recipe for it.
This is for [...]
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