Thursday, October 04, 2018

Wednesday Bistro and Vine at Harrington's Cocktail Lounge

One of our Media colleagues found a Wednesday special at Harrington’s Wine and Vine Cocktail lounge in central Cape Town, just down the road from Dias Tavern, one of our favourite and recently visited destinations, so we decided to go and check it out
The bar area, where they mix cocktails. The Wednesday special offers a choice of one of three main courses and a mini petit four dessert platter for R160 per person. You get a glass of wine on arrival and another with your meal. We decided to also opt for the starter which costs another R35 pp. So our bill was R390 for two, paid upfront through Dineplan. Not bad, especially with wine included. The menu changes daily, so it’s a bit of a lottery. They have a different winery showcasing its wines each week and it is that wine which you are served with dinner. This week featured Ken Forrester
and there was happy and smiling Bianca Brand from Ken Forrester behind her wines counter. You could taste any of the wines
Choices? We both plumped for the Old Vine Reserve Chenin Blanc to go with our starters
The venue is large and they can cope with parties
The menu of the day
The current list of wine farms whose wines are part of the promotion
We decided to have both soups and swap half way through. This was the vegetable and cannellini bean soup with garlic and jalapenos, topped with nacho chips. John loved this, Lynne found it a bit salty, but loved the combination of the beans and sweetcorn. The chips do go soggy, so eat them quickly. The topping was sliced avocado and some fresh coriander
The Home-style Chakalaka Soup with two mini boerewors meatballs; one each when we shared! NOT from a tin, we really liked the fresh spicy flavours. It’s topped with fresh grated carrot; definitely one to go for if you feel off colour. We thought that the portions were generous. Apparently, off the normal menu they are much bigger.. so said our lovely, helpful waitress Siobhan Kedian
We did the same with the two main courses. This is the tender and slow braised pork belly on a bed of smoky herb mash. It has interesting flavours with hints of cinnamon, citrus and soy, the smoke reminds us of Liquid Smoke, the pork is moist and tender but a little fatty. Topped with tooth-challenging crackling and spring onions. Lynne had a glass of the Ken Forrester Renegade red blend with her meat dishes and it went very well. John had the smoky Ken Forrester Merlot and it was a great match with this dish
The lamb shank was slow roasted and came on a bed of creamy polenta (mielie pap!) which reminded us of the texture of maltabella - we are both boarding school kids, so it’s not our favourite starch. It came with Brussels sprouts & capers with lemon. They said 'with chilli', but we didn’t detect any, which was fine. The meat was tender and fell apart, but was a little dry and stringy
The petite dessert. One very rich cubic inch of chocolate Brownie and a tiny meringue each, topped with what tasted like Orley whip?
And when we left, each of us was presented with a box of chocolates, part of the current promotion

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