So I absolutely love Restaurant week. Well, I love food in general (especially fine dining if I can afford it), so when Restaurant week comes around twice a year; to say I get excited is an understatement.
I was particularly jazzed this year, as I’ve been wanting to go to Restaurant Mosaic for 3 years and every time I try to book on Restaurant Week; it is already fully booked. So this year, I went on (only about a minute after they opened the bookings) and low and behold, it was fully booked again.
I was so disappointed. I so badly wanted to go, but now I’d have to go somewhere else in the meantime and hope I’d get a booking when Restaurant Week comes around again in Sep/Oct.
Then, as if by fate, I was randomly checking on Restaurant Week last Thursday and there was a table available the next afternoon for lunch. I started laughing, clapping my hands etc and my boyfriend looked at me as if I was losing my mind. I booked it immediately and confirmed within the next hour with a deposit.
I haven’t had something to look forward to in so long, but the anticipation of eating at one of the best restaurants in South Africa kept me going for the next two days. I decided to dress all fancy and forced Luch (my boyfriend) to wear his very pointy, smart Italian shoes.
We arrived at what felt like a Turkish/Tuscan Castle and were greeted by the French Maitre D’ and asked if we would like to sit and have a drink before heading into the restaurant. We felt like we were VIP’s in a 5* hotel and not just there for lunch.
When we eventually finished our welcome drinks and walked up the steps to the restaurant, we were seated and treated to a complimentary glass of champagne and a lovely anniversary poem on the table (I had emailed ahead to tell them of our early anniversary celebration).
My favourite part of the whole day came next: The Bread Service. There were six different types of bread and five different butters. I’ve never seen so many cool butters in my life. My favourite happened to be the vanilla and cinnamon one, but Luch loved the anchovy one (see pics of butters below, even the wrapped white parcels are butter). I almost took a bit of each bread, but didn’t want to fill up before all the other courses (besides the fact that we’d had 2 snacks with our welcome drinks earlier).
Next, I decided to order us a bottle of wine. I thought I would never find one under R200, but there just happened to be a lovely Mooiplaas Cabernet Sauvignon (2005) or R180; so I was definitely in. The South African wine list was a book of 74 pages. Never in my life have I asked for the wine list and been given what looked like a first edition Bible and that was just the South African list, I can’t imagine what the international one looked like.
Our first amuse bouche was an asparagus mousse with a snail and it was plated in such a way as to look like the snail had literally just walked out of the garden (see below).
Our first course was cauliflower soup with Brussels sprouts filled with foie gras. Oh my goodness, sooooo tasty! Luch hates Brussels sprouts and all he kept saying was he could have eaten an entire bowl of those. Even I thought that the soup and the sprouts were epic and I don’t really a lot of veggies.
Next, we both decided (well it was more of my decision and Luch just had to go along with it) to try different main courses and desserts, so we could taste a bit of everything. So Luch went for the fish (two different types but the halibut was the best) and I went for the venison steak. Again, we were completely amazed at the textures, tastes and plating skills that went into our mains.
For dessert, even though I have a sweet tooth, I went for the extra matured cheese plate and Luch went for the baked pear with white chocolate. Both were incredible and afterwards we felt like we needed to undo our zips a bit to be able to breathe after all the epic food.
That didn’t stop us from going outside to sit with the remainder of our wine and eat our petit fours in the garden. It was so peaceful outside, with no one else around and by the time we were done; we were the only ones left in the restaurant.
A real first for us. We’ve been to a lot of fine dining restaurants over the past 4 years, but nothing has ever stuck with us like this restaurant did. It was the first and only time my boyfriend didn’t complain about any of the things that we ate. He was almost speechless, which is pretty rare. I can’t wait to go back, but now I just need a special occasion! Maybe my birthday in October 🙂
https://www.restaurantmosaic.com/
