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.
The menu is bespoke: carefully planned under Vingerling’s guidance by some of the hotel’s up-and-coming chefs. The idea is to let them exercise their creativity to the max, and show you what they’re made of. (So don’t get all “My mother-in-law doesn’t like beetroot” or “Fish? Eeeuw!” on them.)
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.
ALSO READ: 7 Restaurants to go to in Joburg if you’re celebrating a special occasion
Save