So, you have some people you’d like to impress: new in-laws, business partners, some hard-to-please relatives perhaps? And you’re looking for a way of doing it that is exclusive and next-level with some understated glamour?
Then call up the Sandton Sun hotel because its brand-new executive chef, Gerard Vingerling has been there just a month and has rekindled their Chef’s Tasting Tables.
A chef’s table is where you literally sit at a table set in the middle of the hotel’s kitchen and enjoy an eight-course meal planned just for you, all paired with wines chosen by the hotel’s sommelier.
This reporter almost rolled out of the kitchen last Thursday after being treated to an eight-course whopper that included two dishes which two of the hotel’s chefs were practicing ahead of their try-outs for the national Culinary Olympics team.
The main course – herb and hazelnut-crusted lamb loin, lamb pot pie and potato gratin with Merlot jus – was a spectacular creation by chef Jonathan Roos, who was hoping it would make Olympic grade. I would be surprised if it didn’t.
The dessert by talented pastry chef Jodi Gillespie – naartjie and apricot chiboust, coconut three ways and buchu crisps – was outstanding with a latticed sugar leaf decoration that probably requires a degree in chemistry to produce. With it she’d be a shoo-in for the Olympics.
The other six courses included highly creative fare such as gazpacho cappuccino, ostrich carpaccio, Cape Malay halibut, maple-infused pork belly, and a lime and basil sorbet to “cleanse the palate” – because it needs it after all that food.
There was also a “pre-dessert”, a cheese course, because why not? By now the diet is not only broken, it is sledgehammered.
So if you have a minimum of eight people to impress and about R1 000 a head with which to do it, call up the Sandton Sun and tell them to amaze you. The results will amaze not just you, but any hard-to-please mother-in-law as well.