Tasting Cape Town

Last night Slappy and I ventured to Green Point for a styling evening amongst the well-heeled at Taste of Cape Town. I usually avoid these things like I avoid hipster hangouts because (a) they are usually over-priced, (b) there’s never any parking and (c) the queue for food and beer is enough to make to you cry. But I won tickets and thought Thursday would be a good evening as nobody ever goes to the first night of anything, let alone out on a school night.

We finally got to this food-infused shindig after a beer at Ragazzi (we figured that there was no way we were going to get anything as cheap as R11 for a beer at ToCT so it was a good way to start the evening) and as usual, parking was a nightmare. Being the good lawless citizens that we are we found parking in a spot that made the parking guards edgy and made our way to the entrance. Seems the tickets I had won got us in, but not much else. Not even a wine glass for tastings. Gasp! Those unfortunate wine lovers (or alcoholics depending on how you look at it) with no glass had to buy one for two “crowns” (R10). I was penniless (as we know from my last blog) so we decided to share a glass. I also knew that at some point someone would be drunk enough to leave their glass somewhere and I would just pilfer it. Which I did. Being penniless makes you savvy and being drunk helps the penniless.

Our first stop was at the Original Cocktails stand where we  had a shot of gluwein for free and spent our first crowns on a Pina Colada (me) and a Cosmopolitan (Slappy). Then it was the Lindt chocolate tent where we got free Lint truffles and samples of their 70% cocoa range. On to the Jack Daniels tent where the promo girls felt sorry for us as we didn’t get a bag with promo items in it  - “Why did you not get a bag? They must’ve made a mistake.” -  and before we knew it we were seated at the bar and tasting the new Jack Daniels Honey (lip-smackingly delicious) and being dealt cards which afforded us a cocktail-shot. So far so good! 

We were quite comfortable at this little beehive, but realised we were meant to relinquish our seats for the next lot of honey-samplers and so reluctantly left the bar to go try a spoonful of Paella from the Spanish Cooking School. And so it went on … moving from stall to stall pretending to be interested in their products, while eating as much bread smothered with various dipping sauces or oils as we could get away with. Some finer moments included:

• Just about popping an entire green chilli in my mouth at the “Eish” stall while thinking it was a chopped green bean. Thank goodness the stall owner stopped me before I had a very eish moment indeed.
• Not listening to Slappy's advice and putting too much habanero sauce on my square of bread, resulting in me burning the roof of my mouth off and trying to soothe it with copius amounts of bread lathered in olive oil.
• Pressing a baby tomato firmly into some garlic salt flakes and needing a gallon of water. Turns out you are only supposed to use one flake, not cover the entire tomato as “this is very strong salt”. No shit! Slappy, being the eternal goth, was quite taken with the charcoal salt. I can see goths lining up at Spar stores across the country to buy black salt in the near future.
• Slappy buying a pink flamingo keyring at the Beefcakes stall and then wedging it in her glass of wine for a photo. Goodness knows what she’s going to do with the flamingo, but perhaps she keeps losing her keys and needs a bright pink beaded keyring to assist her in locating them. Or she has a secret flamingo fetish.
• Taking photos of people’s portions of food and saying things like “How do you feel knowing that you have just paid 8 crowns, for a tiny piece of raw ostrich? And did you know about the avian flu going around ostrich farms at the moment?” Piece of raw ostrich with coriander leaf: R40, look on his face: priceless.

In between dunking mini pieces of bread into various sauces and nodding politely at the stall owner’s promotional waffling, we quaffed wine and made friends with the people at the absinthe stall (best absinthe ever!) resulting in us having been invited to Wellington to visit their farm and see how absinthe is made. We may never make it back. Slappy also treated herself to a magnum of whisky liqueur while I tasted my way through Hawaiian cocktails. The evening was going swayingly well.

Half way through this soiree we realised that we didn’t have many crowns left and had essentially spent the entire first batch on booze. So we went to get more (you can only buy R100 worth of crowns – sneaky bastards) and set about finding food. The choices were endless and ridiculously expensive considering the portions, but we ended up tucking into a rather delicious lamb potjie pie which was definitely worth its 5 crowns (R25). If you can only afford one thing to eat at ToCT, have the pie. It will keep you full for days. 

Before we knew it, it was closing time. We had 5 crowns left in our stash and wondered frantically what we were going to spend them on (you can’t return them for cash). We did think of donating them to the rhino people or perhaps the angel people. But then we remembered the Lindt tent. One crown got you two truffles. 

All charitable thoughts went right out the window and we left Taste of Cape Town with 5 Lindt balls each. Marie Antoinette would’ve been proud…