Monday this week saw us transported to lunch in
the Dining Room at the Leeu Collection Manor House to try out the new menu
A welcome glass of The Leeu
Collection’s Bas MCC on the nicely shaded glass conservatory extension to The
Dining Room. What a lovely place for guests to have breakfast
Lynne chatting to Chef Oliver
Cattermole
Smiling staff
Linda Potgieter, their social
media consultant and Mbachi Kamnendo, PR, Brand and Marketing Co-ordinator for the
Leeu Collection
Lots of leeus!
The menu
Canapés were served at the
table. These are small crumbed and deep fried croquettes of smoked beef
'potjie'. Rather chewy, the centres tasted of beef biltong. The bed of straw
was actually rather nice, crisp shreds of leek.
Entitled Whipped (were they
naughty?) Stellenbosch cheddar gougères, these
cakes were light and flavourful and were topped with raw red onion. Next to
them is the third canapé, cheese coated Courgette 'chips' with a tomato dip
Sharing the canapés were Liesl Saayman and Siegfried
Schäfer of The Franschhoek Tatler
A selection of freshly baked
bread was served with three flavoured spreads: Wine butter we liked, rich and
paté-like aubergine Baba Ganoush and
rather heavily smoked butter
One of the three starters, acid
cured yellowtail and vegetable escabeche in a fynbos vinaigrette and a dot or
two of a light curry sauce. The yellowtail has to be very fresh, and it was
Something from many South
African's teenage years. Summer watermelon marinated in Geometric gin, served
with crisp streaky bacon, and a feta cream. The gin does rather take away all
the flavour from the melon and make it very crisp and alcoholic
The vegetarian option was a
slice of butter nut squash served with buffalo mozzarella crumbed deep fried
balls, on seeds and quinoa with tomatoes
PRO Nicolette Waterford with
Chef Oliver Cattermole who explained the menu to us. The Dining Room is open to
casual visitors who book. The menu will be similar to this
Mr Singh with Chef Ollie
There were also three choices
for the Main course. This was the Roasted white fish (kingklip) with gnocchi,
garden vegetables and a velouté sauce
And the Karoo Lamb Skilpadjie -
a traditional South African dish, usually made of lamb offal like minced heart,
kidneys and liver and wrapped in caul fat
The lamb chop had been
dissected and stuffed with a smooth gelatinous offal mousse. Served on mash with peas and
broad beans with a rich jus. For us it is perhaps something you need to be
culturally familiar with, and we do like offal . The caul fat needs to be
completely cooked away
Slap Chips the way many South Africans like them dusted with cheese. We much prefer them crisp
Two desserts were offered. This
was a light as air, sharp passion fruit soufflé, served with a white chocolate
ice cream
A warm Valrhona chocolate fondant with a
suitably crisp outer and gooey middle, with a rum and raisin ice cream and coco
nibs
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
