Our second night at Delaire Graff we chose to dine at the main restaurant, considered one of the finest spots in the region. It is a truly elegant setting with a choice of indoors or outside on the large terrace (which does lack that fabulous sunset view from the night prior). There was a Signature Chef's Tasting Menu which I immediately wanted, but Will was feeling full from the night before and wanted two courses only. After a lot of back and forth between the servers, managers, chef and staff, they finally agreed to do the two different types of menus as we told them just to being Will's starter with one of my earlier courses and his main with mine! Really a simple solution for what they seemed to think was an impossible task!
Since there were two meat mains and several light starters and it had been a warm day in wine country, we took the sommelier's suggestion for a fabulous Oliphant's Bay "The Matriarch" 2019 made from Roussanne, Grenache Blan and Chenin Blanc, another mastery of blending that is done so well in the region. An amuse arrived of a very sweet macaron with brie, fig, pancetta and gooseberry all of which was nice save for the sweetness of the macaron which should have been savory. The gorgeous bread arrived in the form of warm butter rolls with sea salt on top. They were accompanied by delicious red onion chutney, salted butter(no need for the salt with the rolls salted) and a new-to-us biltong dust to sprinkle on the rolls, which just added more salt.
I have to apologize for some of the Facebook photos as I took them halfway through the course as I forgot to take pictures! Perhaps a result of too much wine tasting during the day! The first course of my menu was a truly magnificent Asparagus with an asparagus/parmesan velouté, crispy kale and shaved Italian white truffles with a tad of basil oil. It was a dreamy and simple dish taken to the greatest heights, alas only to fall later on.
Garden Beetroot Salad was a wonderful dish with lemon creme fraiche and hazelnuts served in a beautiful bowl that alas always had the silverware sliding into the dish! Why do they not figure out these dishes are stupid and make your silverware all messy!
At about this point Will got his starter of SPRINGBOK CARPACCIO with Kei Apple, Potato Sorghum and Nasturtium Pesto. The carpaccio was not thinly sliced meat, but indeed a hacheed tartare and was quite huge. The pesto was nicely spicy but the potatoes which were really shoestring (not sure why they call them sorghum) were unbelievably oversalted. Feeling full, and a tad disappointed, Will cancelled his main course fish dish.
I moved on to a yummy West Coast CRAYFISH with summer cucumber, cream cheese(ther only ingredient that was weird), onion and a superb pea velouté. The cream cheese was a lump in the middle of the velouté with the cucumber as was so out of place and tasted just gross.
Eastern Cape VENISON was my first main with heirloom radish, daikon, coriander and a superb pine nut salsa verde. The meat was cooked to perfection just past rare and crusted magnificently, but alas the crust was so oversalted had to cut it all off to be able to eat the meat! At this point, I mentioned to the staff and manager that everything was so salty and wondered if something was wrong with the chef. They apologized and then brought out y main course of KAROO WAGYU PRIME & TONGUE with tomato sauce that was so salty I just brushed it away, sorghum (popcorn) which I alas cannot eat, seaweed and bordelaise sauce. The tongue was fabulous, and it is always one of my favorite dishes which was a main reason I wanted the tasting menu, but it was just one small piece. There were 4 large pieces of perfectly cooked Wagyu again that was so salty I left 90% of it. The manager asked if I wanted it redone and I just told him to forget it as it was getting late, and we were tired.
I was excited about the "cheese" course of HILTON BLUE CHEESE MACARON with ganache and candied sage, but the macaron was so sweet (like the amuse) that it overpowered the cheese. Dark Chocolate Chip Cookie was a crunchy warm marquise with hazelnut, sushi rice and miso caramel ice cream. It sounds weird, but was yummy and YES, SALTY! I decided to call it quits and just tell them we were very disappointed and all they could do was apologize and not even take a dime off the bill!
The next morning at breakfast we were offered a consolation for the poor meal, a $10 bottle of the Rose that we like. I would have preferred the 950rand($52) refunded (or part of it); incidentally a truly amazing price for a tasting menu of that type!
