One of our challenges as a food site based
in Cape Town is trying to draw in as much from the rest of the country as
possible.
Everyone knows where to eat in Cape Town,
down to the minute, but there’s a real dearth of information on where to
impress folk in Joburg, how to have a great yet family-friendly dinner in
Durban and where to have incredible breakfast in Port Elizabeth. Which is why I
was very interested to hear that Nic
Dawes, editor of the Mail & Guardian,
despairs of finding a fine dining restaurant in Johannesburg. And that Abigail Donnelly from Eat Out agrees with him.
Our own Joburg reviewer, Baglett, got very
defensive when I drew her attention to the issue, retorting by saying that “having
dinner while feeling like you are in a parking lot is a problem, [she’s] had
many a crap meal while overlooking Camps Bay; it was merely masked by a hot
waiter and the sound of seagulls.”
I understand that from Nic and Abigail’s
point of view, this is a fine dining debate. But I worry that it’s besmirching
the real culinary scene in Joburg – places where people get together night
after night for a great time, not restaurants to go to once in a lifetime to
propose – and undermining hardworking chefs the city over. Abigail goes so far
as to say ‘that there are not even a handful of Joburg chefs who use or are even
aware of high quality ingredients’. Can that be true?
The voices missing from the debate are
obviously your own. From our review pages, we can see that you really love to
eat at Pomodoro, Trentino’s and Oyo, to name but a few.
Baglett has, in full dudgeon, also made a list of her Top 10 Johannesburg
Restaurants.
But I want to hear from you, Johannesburg. Tell us about your favourite Johannesburg
restaurant. And I want you to ask your friends to do the same. Sure there’s
a R250 kalahari.net voucher for the best review, but your pride is also at
stake.
Don’t let yourselves down.
Tell us about your
favourite Johannesburg restaurant, by reviewing it on Food24.