The Pot Luck Club, Cape Town

Dave, Eric, Bev and I were treated to an evening at The Pot Luck Club as I have subscribed to Taste Magazine since the first issue. They are celebrating 10 years of publication and I have read every single issue over the past 10 years. I want to say a big thank you to the team at Taste Magazine for this amazing experience.

Situated at the Old Biscuit Mill in Salt River, The Pot Luck Club is reached by taking a 6 floor trip in a glass elevator, on the outside of the old silo. The view going up was phenomenal – and from the restaurant itself is spectacular. The building is mostly glass and you can look over the city as you dine. We were fortunate to arrive before sunset and it was so worth going a little bit early to soak in the view.

Wine and Alcohol

While we were looking through the menu and waiting for Eric and Bev, Dave and I had a Laphroaig single malt whisky each. The choices of single malts available were good and the pricing well in line with other places we eat at. The Taste team had chosen a bottle of Neil Joubert Christine-Marie Méthode Cap Classique for us to enjoy and the choice went perfectly well with our meal. You can also order cocktails – priced from R50 to R60 per cocktail, draft beers or select a wine from the well balanced wine list. The wine list is divided into varietals and is a bit on the expensive side. The one thing we all commented on was the glasses our drinks were served in. They are really nice and thin.

Food

The menu is divided into Salty, Sweet, Umami, Sour and Bitter and is capped off with Sweet Endings. Our waitress, who gave us brilliant service, recommended that we choose between 3 to 5 dishes per person. Each table is given an order sheet and you write your choices down on the paper. Between the 4 of us we chose 15 dishes. These are brought to the table in order of lightest dish to heaviest. The tapas style food is meant to be shared among the diners and we really enjoyed this aspect of the dining experience.

The first lot of dishes to arrive at the table were the steamed edamame with miso and toasted garlic, char grilled prawns with tom kha gai butter with roasted chopped peanuts, chrisna olives with red pepper pesto and artisan bread and crispy pot luck pig tails. I loved getting the edamame beans out of the pod, and noted that Dave ate the entire thing. The olives were great to pick at while chatting and the red pepper pesto tasted amazing. I could not wait to tuck into a pig tail as we had pork cheeks the night before at home and I am love trying new cuts of meat. I am not averse to oxtail and the pig tail is a smaller version, with really tiny bones. This was a really good start to our meal.

The table is cleared away between each serving and new cutlery, chopsticks and warm plates were given to us at the start of each course. We then moved on to fried calamari, tumeric and ginger dressing with fresh leek and chilli salad, crispy duck spring roll, Korean fried chicken with pineapple and miso slaw and spring salad, sesame sushi rice ball with tamarind and tahini dressing. The calamari was soft and succulent and the you could taste that the duck had been cooked over a long time before becoming a crispy spring roll. I could have licked the tamarind and tahini dressing off the plate it was so good.

This course was followed by spicy tomato and sashimi salad, Thai mussels with a spicy matsiman cream, lemon and fresh coriander and grilled kingklip with a Thai style black pepper sauce, Thai basil. We fought each other for the last piece of sashimi as it was so tasty. And the mussels and kingklip were perfect.

Our last course consisted of Chinese style short rib with dark beer and doenjang glaze, wagyu beef with pot luck chimichurri and smoked beef fillet with black pepper and truffle café au lait. This course had my least favourite and most favourite dishes in it. Something in the Chinese short rib totally overpowered my palate and I was so glad I had tasted this last. It took me a few bites of dessert to get my taste buds back. The best dish of the evening was the smoked beef fillet. You could taste the smoke and the whole dish seemed to melt in my mouth. If I could have had a second helping of that dish I would have, but dessert beckoned.

Each and every one of the 15 dishes we chose complimented each other perfectly and I am so impressed with Luke Dale-Roberts approach to his menu. Given that there are only 4 desserts to choose from, we chose all 4. Three of them came with a different flavour ice cream and the best for me was the malted popcorn ice cream which went with the pear and almond tart. I really need to get more adventurous with my ice cream making as even the celeriac ice cream was divine. That went with a sublime pecan pie. The stem ginger ice cream was the first one I tasted after the Chinese rib and it took me a few scoops to ‘get’ the flavour. The went with a malted chocolate fondant and I love the combination of flavours. Our last dessert was an affogato that we all kept dipping in to and it seemed never ending, with different flavours and textures with each bite.

Service

Each and every staff member was friendly and polite and our waitress as I said in the beginning of my post, offered us brilliant service. The staff have a uniform which even though not the same, makes them easily recognizable. Each member of staff assists each other with taking dishes to and from the table which makes for a smooth service.

Ambiance

The view is spectacular and the noise levels comfortably loud. You can hear the music over the hum of the air conditioning and chatter from other tables. The open plan kitchen was amazingly quiet and even though we were sat at a table close to the kitchen I did not hear them once during the evening.

And …

Be prepared to share – this is the idea behind The Pot Luck Club

Telephone Number: +27 21 447 0804 bookings recommended

Open: Lunch Tuesday to Sunday. Dinner Tuesday to Saturday – 2 seatings.

Average main course: R66

Corkage: not listed

Food type: Tapas

Disclosure: our entire meal cost was covered by Taste Magazine. I was not required to write a blog post about the evening. The opinions expressed here are based on our dining experience. This post is in line with my blogging policy.

What I blogged:

• • one year ago – Smoked Marrow Bone Pasta
  • two years ago – Friday’s Food Quiz

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