Isabella’s on the Dock side in Lambert's Bay is
where you go for seafood, we were told by our landlady
So we made a booking
for dinner during the week
We took a bottle of Groote
Post Sea Salter, a white blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon 2015 and this
seemed like the right occasion to open it. We were happy to pay the corkage of
R30. Groote Post, from Darling, is another West Coast winery and this wine just smells and
tastes of the sea. The richness of the Semillon and the crispness of the Sauvignon
marry well, with a lovely mouthfeel and long satisfying flavours, just right
for rich food like Crayfish
We ordered our main courses
and were then told there would be a 45 minute wait for the mains,
so we decided
to order starters as we were pretty hungry
Our very friendly waiter is
from, wait for it, Zimbabwe!
Gannets flying in to roost
for the night
What was on the end of that
rope? Could he have been fishing for crayfish?
The hide in the Bird Island gannet colony, which is at the end of the breakwater
The deep fried calamari
poppers stuffed with cream cheese were crisp
The Jalapeno Poppers were fiery
enough to be compared to mild Habaneros, and we are quite used to hot food
Lynne could not taste anything for a while! The wine cooled her down a bit
Perhaps we should have waited
Other dishes on the menu
Lynne learnt a salutary
lesson with the Crayfish Thermidor she ordered. She ordered a 400/499gm cray for
R200. She used to eat and love this delicacy at the old Harbour Cafe in the Cape
Town docks when she was very young. Created in France in 1891, it is famous.
This was not at all like that. If you love crayfish, just order it naked. Then
it will come fresh. Served like this, they can use older crays from the freezer
- we think the wait was to defrost it, not to cook it, as that takes moments. It
was chopped into small pieces and covered in a thick, gluey cheese sauce and
grilled. No sign of any brandy or other alcohol. Definitely very little
crayfish meat in the shell, lots of sauce. And missing that lovely texture and
sweetness that good crayfish has. So sad
John had Surf and Turf -
steak and calamari R150. Boring, perhaps, but quite good,
although the steak could
have been a little less medium and more rare
The current owner of Isabella’s is from Macedonia; he is married to a local girl whose parents were the previous owners
Our bill
Happy smiling Tonde, our waiter
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2019
