Alan Pick, of Butcher’s Shop & Grill fame in Sandton, is no Boomtown Rat. But if Garth Almazan’s Meat-Free Mondays wheeze takes off, Alan will be first in the queue booming out “I don’t like Mondays…” In an attempt to do his bit to reduce CO2 emissions, Garth offers a meat-free menu on Mondays as farting cows, poeping pigs, flatulent fowls and gassy geese produce 18% of the planet’s CO2 – in fact even more than the transportation sector – and cubic kilometers of barnyard aromas. Of course if Garth was as Irish as Sir Bob Geldof, then Meat-Free Mondays would probably be run on Fridays.

Meat-Free Garth Almazan

Angela Lloyd, that arbiter of quality on the Cape Town Restaurant scene, declared earlier today that décor, ambiance and company “can enhance or ruin” a “happy experience eating out” – even at freebees. After a rumoured R7 million spend, Catharina’s at Steenberg would easily pass an Angela analysis for décor and ambiance, while the company: a brace of Dutch designers Joost and Emmy Alferink; Madeleine, Johnathan and Krige from Paarl bio-logic producer Avondale; Jane and Christian from WINE magazine plus Luan and moi made for a jolly table of nine.

A three course set menu is offered for R185 and matched with organic wine from Avondale and Reyneke, that price rises to R280. The wines chosen from three spectacularly misnamed “dry runs” for press and luvvies like Angela. Garth declares the recession over “we’re just starting the season, but it’s the best I’ve seen in 11 years at Steenberg.” That said, the restaurant was quiet, a function of Monday lunchtime and an unseasonably rainy morning.

While we were busy saving the planet eating thyme potato gnocchi with grilled king oyster mushrooms, gorgonzola cream, aged balsamic and a Waldorf salad followed by wild mushroom phyllo tart, a shitake mushroom flan, parmesan cream, buna-shimeji mushrooms, basil pesto and slow baked plum tomato rounded off with a chocolate and beetroot flourless cake with marscapone semifreddo, beet syrup and chocolate ganache, the neighbouring table of two elderly ladies who lunch was tucking into steak and fries rounded off with treble brandies all round.

The pick of the whites was an Avondale Snow White (the seven dwarves AWOL) 2008, an elegant blend of Viognier with a touch of Chenin and admirable restraint, evident in the 13% alcohol. A restraint duplicated in the Avondale Chardonnay with subtle wooding. The 2007 Reyneke Sauvignon Blanc is starting to show a bit of age, something you could not accuse Johan’s 2008 Pinotage of. The Herold Pinot Noir battled valiantly against the gorgonzola cream of the starter, but Snow White reinforcements saved the day.

Joost and Emma were brought to SA by the Design Indaba and fondly remember Sir Terence Conran blubbing on stage against the British invasion of Iraq. The couple now spend four months of each year in their house in Tamboerskloof. Joost is even writing a book called The Heart of Tamboerskloof referring to the donor of the world’s first heart transplant who lived in the suburb. The Cape has clearly got under their skin as the couple now import organic wine from Upland, Reyneke, Bon Cap and Avondale into the Netherlands. “Only organic and only SA” says Joost. “The organic nature of a wine is important in Holland. This is a niche that is going to become main stream.” 3000 bottles in October with half already sold and the long term plan calls for a volume of 10 000 bottles.

Joost and Emmy Alferink

The only sins against green saintliness was that half the diners would pop out for a fag between courses and all of us drank mineral water from glass bottles, leaving Constantia’s finest untouched in the tap.

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