a beautiful and delicate dish that combines the flavours of Peru with one of South Africa’s best-loved fish, perfectly illustrating Dale-Roberts’ unique take on fusion cooking.
One of a series of umami dishes was a wonderful vegetarian course of rainbow carrots with house made goat’s milk ricotta. Randles turns the goat’s milk into a labneh with fresh lemon juice so that the curd splits from the whey. He then cooks the carrots in the whey with fresh honey comb, olive oil and thyme.
The carrots are finished on the kitchen’s open braai (barbeque), and rolled in roasted poppy seeds. They are served with tarragon oil, the goat labneh and salted roasted sunflower seed and honey comb crumble. Simple but full of flavour, earthy and subtly sweet, it was one of the unexpected highlights of the night and a dish I wouldn’t be surprised to find on a menu in California.
Also from the umami section and one of the Pot Luck Club’s signature dishes is smoked beef filet with black pepper and truffle café au lait. The beef is smoked with American oak barrels, while the sauce combines caramelised black pepper and truffle. It’s a dish so moreish – the beef so tender and smoky and the sauce so powerfully rich in umami – it will leave you cleaning your bowl.
From the sweet section came a dish of robata lamb (cured in sumac and lemon, then cooked sous vide for nine hours and finished on the open fire) served with walnut and date puree and white bean tabbouleh with a coriander, mint and Amasi dressing. Again it’s a dish that deftly combines international flavours with a South African ingredient – Amasi being a fermented milk beverage that forms a nutritional staple for most native South Africans.
Onto desserts and the Pot Luck Club’s take on a lemon meringue pie reminded me of a dessert I’d had at the Test Kitchen two years prior: a “poached egg” comprising a yolk of lemon curd and a soft white meringue. It’s a light and refreshing, and cleverly constructed creation that sticks in the mind.
The front of house team at the Pot Luck Club is young, the service casual yet informed and slick and our waiter had the relaxed and friendly South African charm down to a tee.
The Pot Luck Club showcases Dale-Roberts’ very personal style of food in a more accessible light. The cooking is as bold and inventive as it is intelligent and skilful, confidently marrying imaginative flavour combinations that result in delicious and thrilling dishes. It’s world-class cooking in Cape Town.
The Pot Luck Club
Silo Top Floor, The Old Biscuit Mill
373 – 375 Albert Road Woodstock, Cape Town
thepotluckclub.co.za
Kerstin Kühn is a freelance food and travel writer, specialising in restaurant and chef stories. The former restaurant editor of Caterer and Hotelkeeper, she relocated from London to Los Angeles in 2013, where she lives on the city’s trendy East Side.
With a vast network of chefs from around the world, Kerstin has profiled the likes of Michel Roux, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, the Roca brothers and Massimo Bottura. She is a regular contributor to the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, FOUR Magazine, M&C Report and Spinney’s Food, and also writes her own blog,
La Goulue. You can follow Kerstin on Twitter
@LaGoulue_
>>>Read more of Kerstin's blogs here.
