With three eateries to fill in South Africa’s hotly contested gourmet capital, Matthew Gordon should really look more concerned. Driving up Franschhoek’s oak-lined Main Road towards the three arches of the Huguenot Monument I expect to meet a worried man; furrowed brow and anxious hands.
 Instead, I find Matthew relaxed, cappucino in hand, on the pin-stripe banquettes of The Grill Room, his latest offering in this ever-popular winelands village. Welcoming, self-assured, confident… the prospect of filling another two-dozen tables every day is apparently not an issue for this chef-patron-entrepreneur who could well be the Gordon Ramsay of Franschhoek. Minus the temper.
“I find the business aspect of it very rewarding, it’s very challenging. I’ve been doing it for a while though… I think my first restaurant opened when I was 26… so hopefully that means I’m good at it!” chuckles Matthew. “And the restaurant business is not the easiest to be in, especially in Franschhoek; it’s a very competitive little town.”
After training in Johannesburg, and cutting his culinary teeth in the kitchens of London and Vancouver, Matthew was brought to Cape Town by the widely-respected Garth Stroebel to cook for, perhaps coincidentally, the old Grill Room restaurant at the Mount Nelson.
“Then in 1992 I moved out to Franschhoek and started my first restaurant, called Le Ballon Rouge. In those early days in Franschhoek there wasn’t a hell of a lot around, and in its day it was very popular.”
In 1995 he moved on to open the fine-dining Haute Cabriere Cellar Restaurant, in partnership with eccentric cellar-master Achim von Arnim. Evidently not kept busy enough, French Connection on the town’s main drag followed in 2002, and remains the restaurant Matthew is most proud of.
“The Grill Room is my new baby, and it needs to prove itself, but French Connection is probably my favourite of the three. It was something where I really hit the nail on the head with what it offered… a bistro; informal, serving French food with a South African twist. That was a real success story for me; I saw the concept and I knew it would do well, and I’ve remained true to that concept.
But it’s the “new baby” – The Grill Room – that’s drawn us out to Franschhoek this lunchtime. Daily specials are scribbled on a chalkboard; exposed brick walls and plush banquettes add a classy New York feel, while tables spill out onto a sunny terrace. Upstairs, an elegant private dining room flanks the wine cellar, while an on-site butcher offers the restaurant’s best cuts to take-away.
While we wait for Matthew’s guests to arrive he explains why he’s added another eatery to his repertoire.
“I think there’s a gap in the market here in Franschhoek… I wanted this to be an upmarket steakhouse with a great wine list and some excellent meat. We do offer fish, shellfish and Mozambique prawns, but I wanted the focus here to be on steak. I also wanted it to be a local-friendly restaurant; with a nice easy feel to it.”
With two kids to think of – Emma (10) and Kate (6) – it’s no surprise that The Grill Room is also family-friendly, offering a supervised children’s play area that’s out of earshot from the main restaurant.
“It’s such a winner with our young kids. We have to drag them back to the table to eat!” laughs Matthew’s wife Nicky, who’s popped down from the Cabriere restaurant to join us.
“It’s relaxed,” agrees Matthew, “but I still want people to be blown away by the food, and by the wine. There are some serious wines on our list, so that will certainly appeal to both locals and tourists.”
For the man who spends his leisure-time mountain-biking in the hills, or flying over them (he has a pilot’s licence for both helicopters and light aircraft), keeping it local is also important when it comes to fresh produce.
“We use as much as possible from the local area, and we’d rather work our menu around what we can get, not mission to find the things we can’t! We have a very good duck supplier down the road in Klapmuts, and there are several berry suppliers right here in Franschhoek.
"There’s nothing I haven’t done with a trout!”
“There’s also Three Streams Smokehouse, who smoke their trout just up the valley, near Boekenhoutskloof. It’s a great product and we use a lot of their fish. Across the restaurants there are usually always two or three trout dishes on offer. Tartar, carpaccio, gravadlax, sashimi… there’s nothing I haven’t done with a trout!”
As guests arrive and are offered a glass of bubbly - Pierre Jourdan Brut from Cabriere, of course – Matthew talks me through the starter he’s prepping in The Grill Room’s open show-kitchen.
“It’s made from Royal Highlands Trout that’s actually farmed up in Lesotho. The fillets are just lightly smoked, so it’s not too salty, and we then just sear it on the grill. And I think the crisp apples and lettuce of the Waldorf salad work nicely with the fish.”
Intrigued by these high-altitude trout, I quiz Andrew Stubbs from Three Streams over lunch.
“We only smoke these trout for two hours, so it’s a very light flavour,” agrees Andrew who, with his brother Gregory, runs the Three Streams Smokehouse. Fish are smoked with the oak shavings from local wine barrels and “because of the cold water in Lesotho we can keep the trout in the water longer, so we’re able to get fish weighing up to two kilograms that give us these wonderful big fillets.”
“Trout also has more healthy Omega-3 acids than salmon,” adds Andrew, to an appreciative nod from Karen Protheroe, local dietician and author. As talk turns to organic veggie gardens, wine estate gossip and the memories of an icy winter, Matthew wanders off to rustle up the main course.
The Grill Room is a place that takes its meat seriously, and Matthew’s hauled out some sizeable T-bones for this lunch.
“Why the T-Bone? Well, we want to show off our meat here, that’s what we’re all about. It’s served simply with Café de Paris butter and is very popular in the restaurant. I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to steak, and I love rump and T-Bone. The last bit of steak I would eat is fillet, it just doesn’t taste of anything, and that’s the first steak people usually choose off the menu!”
“We only use grain-fed beef at the moment, but we’re shortly going to be offering grass-fed on the menu too. Personally I don’t taste a huge difference between the two, so I think it’s more of an ethical decision than a culinary one. Who knows, if the grass-fed takes off perhaps we’ll drop the grain-fed. They’re all options, but it’s good that people are thinking about these kinds of things when it comes to food.”
The steaks are presented at the table on rustic wooden boards, a no-nonsense steak knife to hand and a gorgeous knob of Café de Paris melting slowly across the top. Side orders of julienne vegetables and a healthy baked potato complete the meal.
"Let’s try the ‘Gentle Giant’”
On one corner of the table is Rob Armstrong from Haut Espoir wine estate, and tucked under his arm as he walked in earlier were six bottles of his estate’s best red wine.
“Petit Verdot or ‘Gentle Giant’,” mulls Matthew, weighing up a bottle of each. “We have the Petit Verdot on our wine-list here, so let’s try the ‘Gentle Giant’.”
“This is a blend of nine different cultivars,” explains Rob as he noses the inky-red wine. “The backbone is Merlot and Petit Verdot, but there are also things like Chardonnay and Shiraz in there to make it interesting. We’re a small estate, only producing about 80 000 bottles a year, and most of those are actually drunk here in Franschhoek. “
Rob’s a broad-shouldered guy towering close to seven foot so, I wonder, was the ‘Gentle Giant’ named after him?
“No, it was actually named for my bigger brother,” he jokes, before explaining the real origins of the name. “This area used to be called Olifantshoek, so it’s simply a reference to that part of our history. Those elephants were the real gentle giants of the valley.”
As the remains of the T-bones get packaged up into real doggie bags for farm hounds, the artfully plated dessert appears.
“This is featured on the menu at French Connection… it’s a classic tarte tatin done up with pears,” explains Matthew. “The gingerbread parfait is nice and spicy, so it picks up the fruit very well.”
Served with a glass of Ratafia – a fortified chardonnay from the Cabriere estate – the honey-coloured wine marries beautifully with the rich caramelised pears.
As plates are eaten clean, I learn that Ratafia was originally created “to honour courage”. A fitting drink then, perhaps, for this restless chef and entrepreneur. With three restaurants under his belt, each requiring a healthy dose of courage, it seems Matthew Gordon may have a bit of Ramsay in him after all.
First published in Food&HOme Entertaining; November 2010
|
