chaplin's grill hurlingham

Tuesday 10 September 2013.

The thing about surprises is that they have the uncanny potential to end in disaster, in elation or somewhere in between.  When a BMW driver actually indicates his intention to change lanes using the flashy lights on the side of his car by nudging the lever-thingy near the steering wheel either up or down, for example, is a good surprise.  When you’re sixteen kilometres into a half marathon and you happen to stand on a full water sachet packet and it explodes into a convenient, single, high-powered jet of water that shoots right up your shorts and cools down your nethers, is a combo surprise; and taking a sleeping tablet and a laxative at the same time will lead to a bad surprise.

September Steak Club saw the fragrances of spring blast into action, tree buds burst into little leaves, hibernating snails attack my vegetable garden and also saw us follow a suggestion to try out Chaplin’s Grill in Hurlingham.

I was the last to arrive by a significant margin and as the purpose of this blog is to embrace the entire experience of the evening, rather than just to report on the food, there was a short recap session courtesy of Pete who explained that the answer to any family related matter, sensitive or otherwise, regardless of age or gender of respective family member, is to harden the f*ck up.  After getting me up to speed, I quickly perused the drinks menu.

 Ive ranted before about beer.  There simply isn’t a commercially available beer that I can feel anything more for than toleration.  When craft beer is made available I fail to understand why anyone would drink anything else.  Chaplin’s has a great selection of beer, if a little biased toward the &Union brand, but it still makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I can savour a beer and fly a bird in the face of mediocre SAB products at the same time.

It was a quiet evening, especially as we sat under the stars while a few other tables grouped closer to the plethora of Charlie Chaplin regalia adorning the walls of the inside section.  Charlie Chaplin was fun.   He had character and was a bit goofy.  This was a far more interesting and welcoming selection of décor than at The Local Grill which has portraits of bovine varietal side head-shots.  A bit like when you see a TV ad for Verimark’s latest carpet cleaning machine and they show you the amazing before and after results.  Before the steak was being eaten from a pool of blue cheese sauce on your plate, it was connected to a meandering cow in a field and this is what its head looked like.

I ordered my drink through, it must be said, a competent although boring waitering duo.  It’s a fine art, waitering.  You need to engage with the client, make them feel comfortable like they’re sitting on their own couch in their undies, but looked after enough to feel that they’re receiving great service and value.  These guys were good, just not great.

There are some things in life that are pointless.  Doilies, indicator lights on BMW’s, having thirty extra cushions on your bed, warm beer and being given sharp, sturdy steak knives at Chaplin’s Grill.  Just bringing cutlery near the beautifully char-grilled lumps of meat meant they obediently fell apart into bite-sized chunks of melting pockets of beefy flavour.  My rump was superb.  Probably the best rump Ive had this year – smooth and distinct while you navigate the bulk of it with the occasional sharp spike of chargrilled flavour until you take in a little nugget of fat, then you have an eruption of sweet, buttery lava that smothers everything in your mouth and you have to stop yourself from falling off your chair.  It was that good.  I don’t think there anyone who didn’t have a similar experience, and we explored the boundaries of the menu, from straight up fillets to prime ribs to a carnivore platter.  This restaurant deserves to be fully booked every night of the week. 

The meat comes from the best two abattoirs in South Africa – Chalmar Beef and Greenfields Free Range.  Regardless of which you choose, you will not be disappointed.  The owner and chef, Rainold made sure we were had a superb evening with an interesting conversation about grappa and homemade beer and how beef could be certified differently, depending on what soundtrack is playing over the loudspeaker.

Apart from the stark realisation that Vaseline should only be used for a specific and limited set of uses, other topics of discussion included how smuggled food tastes better, muzzle velocity, yellow fever and silverback gorillas.

We ended the evening with a fond and warm handshake from our host at Chaplin’s, firm in the knowledge that Joburg Steak Club would be back and I reckon all of us independently too.  So far Chaplin’s is the surprise of the year – a good surprise – finding a hundred bucks in a seldom worn pair of jeans kind of good surprise.  Put Chaplin’s into the ring with Wombles and Local Grill and you will be hard pressed to choose a better meal between them, but hands down, Chaplin’s offers a better experience.  

Steak Club heads east in October. 

Until we meat again..

the local grill parktown north

Tuesday 9 July 2013

There are only a few things in life that you can rely on absolutely, only a very few things that you know for sure, with complete certainty:  The sun that warms your face on a glorious winter’s morning in Joburg, is a star; the most painful thing in the world to stand on is an unexpected upturned plug from the vacuum cleaner; and the almost 17 year old jack russel sitting next to me right now will have spectacularly bad breath regardless of how many chewy things he gets to eat.

The second outing of the Steak Club winter-threesome saw two of the members arrive rather majestically on their nimble scooters, while a third bludgeoned his entrance in on a giant adventure bike.  The rest of the club arrived in more sedate, four-wheeled transportation.

After arguing with the door and having a moment of slight difficulty getting it open (turns out it’s a push, not a pull) I caught up to the rest of the members as we were ushered through to the same table that we’ve sat at three years in a row at Steak Club.  One thing I noticed, as I realised that my psychedelic yellow, high-visibility vest over my scooter jacket was attracting slightly more attention than I had hoped on my way past the tables, is that there was a general sense of steakstacy* on the faces of the other patrons.

I need to, at this point, officially welcome our previous chairman and Steak Club founder, Sean, back to Joburg and back into the uncontested seat of the highest order.  Caretaker, Ian, and reluctant stand-in, Dr Gavin, were only too happy to hand back the burden of administration in organising our monthly meats, through an enthusiastic toast. 

I am unrepentantly ecstatic to report that for the first time in two months of Steak Club, a toast could be made with a beer that came from a keg, poured by a bartender who has the control of the tap to delicately adjust the overall delivery of head to the golden honey in a big glass.  Granted, it was Stella Artois and not a Mitchells or a Nottingham Road or a Gilroys, but it was beer that hadn’t spent the past month in a plastic-lined tin can or in a bottle with a bullshit cold-activated label.  Explain the logic please, SAB – let’s get the Castle Lite to almost freezing so that you stand absolutely zero chance of tasting anything while you numb the functionality out of your tongue.  Ever drunk a warm Castle Lite before?  Yup, that’s how disgusting it ACTUALLY tastes.

It didn’t take long for the content of the conversation to take three dramatic and very distinct steps downward into the messiest part of the gutter and for it to marinade itself there until soaked through.  It was difficult to shake off the stench through several attempts of decency rectification.  Motorbikes, creamy beer head and very bad pick-up lines will do it every time.

Thankfully, our attention was diverted to the menu where we all perused the simple, but substantial offerings.  From trusty fillet and skinny chips to fat rumps and colourful veg combo’s and a T bone somewhere in the middle.  They’re all available from two farming options – Chalmar Grainfed or Greenfields Freerange with twelve thousand different combinations of salt or pepper or butter as a marinade/rub.  Because I am a notorious cynic I had to order a rump from each farming option, expecting slight, if even barely apparent differences.

The owner, chef, waitrons, hostess, barmen and everyone else are very proud and very passionate about their restaurant as you are invited on a tour of the kitchen and preparation facilities.   Salt blocks, wine barrel chips that are cooked with the steak in their gas-fired grills and very controlled meat hanging are all part of The Local Grill experience.

Like a paint-by-numbers portrait is always going to start off looking distinctly uninspired as the orange bits are filled in first, the steaks arrive on the blank canvas of a big empty plate.  As each of the side orders and sauces arrive, pockets of colour and flavour and overall sense fill in the gaps while the meal is constructed in front of your senses.  Then the first forkful hits your lips and the melting steak bursts into beefy tang and smokey aroma and smooth flavour while your body slumps into an uncontrolled “mmmm!”.  *This is steakstacy.

While the Greenfields Free Range rump was more obedient in dissolving and exploding with beefy, chargrill flavour, it looked rather bland.  It was grey in colour and didn’t have an overly appealing attraction.  The Chalmar Grainfed rump could have stood its own ground against any other rump Ive eaten – it had a deep brown colour, charred lines criss-crossing it and a healthy bit of buttery fat that carried out an x-rated scene in my mouth.  I cant really choose between the two and I am not going to try – each of them was absolutely awesome.

Why these guys have won The Steakhouse Championships for 2013 is easy to understand – apart from the sun, an upturned plug and a smelly dog, you can be guaranteed that The Local Grill will produce not only one of the best steaks you’ll ever eat, but an experience that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else (and for value that your wallet will like).

Apart from look of horror and perhaps a glint of excitement that ran across an attractive blonde’s face when she had walked into the unisex restroom thinking it was the gents when she saw me washing my hands, the rest of the evening contained only fleeting moments of respectable content while the majority was simply unsavoury.  Hotdogs and sauce splattered across a face, the remarkable facebook stalking ability of a certain Steak Club member, the unbelievably exciting explanation of what custody bonds are, the slightly creepy portraits of cow head paintings adorning the walls and Pete’s unparalleled skill at spading the fairer sex saw us through to coffees, desserts, farewells and good evenings.

While Wombles held the crown for a month, The Local Grill snatches it from them with ease.

Check out www.votesteak.co.za for the 2013 contenders and the results.

Until we meat again at The Grillhouse, Rosebank in August.

wombles parktown north

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Depending on what magazine your dentist has in the waiting room, you may or may not be inclined to believe that global warming is causing the polar caps to melt. Regardless of which side of that fence you've planted your organic vegetable garden on, you must concede that ice melts. It changes between phases from a solid to a liquid. This is a naturally occurring process. Perhaps a slightly more complicated feat is for a chunk of steak to melt.

In the absence of our chairman in attendance at Pappas last month, we cultivated a cunning plan to survive the teeth of winter by visiting some old favourites for the upcoming three months. Its the winter threesome, if you like, and Wombles was first up.

I had never been so enthusiastically greeted by a doorman before. I thought for a brief, terrifying moment that i was being attacked and was worryingly close to soiling my new pair of jeans. Stepping underneath and around a leopard print blanket after discretely checking my underwear, I emerged into a toasty warm room and was greeted by a very well presented, overly organised man. He kindly showed me through to the bar area where a bunch of the usual steak purveyors were enthusiastically enjoying a pre-dinner drink.

I failed spectacularly at trying to order a draught beer. Turns out, at my own gawking dismay, that there aren't any taps. I even scanned the bar area to make sure the waiter hadn't misheard me and thought i asked for a for a tube of toothpaste. There truly was no beer on tap. I refuse to become accustomed to these little disappointments about decent beer being available.

I expected Lancelot and Arthur to greet us at our table. It was a setting fit for a feast. If i had heard the final squeals of a wild boar from the kitchen, it would have matched the ambiance perfectly. Dark, solid-wood, heavy, high-backed chairs and wine glasses big enough for a reasonably sized koi fish to make a comfortable home in added a sense of homely contentment to what our evening was to become.

There were twelve of us long the sides of the very long table. It was impossible to remember what everybody ordered, but from the superb delivery of hot plates by the excellent waitering team, from around me intrigued the billowing smokey aromas of a fillet on the bone covered in exotic mushrooms from the right and a heavy wholesome beefy smack in the nose of prime rib from the left. I was very pleased with my momentary, but obvious brilliance at ordering both a 360 gram rump and a 220 gram fillet. The gentle, controlled explosion of perfectly cooked fat that cradles one side of a rump when the juices smother and entice your taste buds to receive a subtle, sweetness which your entire body seems to agree with, confirms that you are eating quality food. Its a very bleak note to make that the rump itself was overcooked and dry but crammed full of flavour. Fortunately for me, as part of my blinding brilliance, I had ordered my favourite blue cheese sauce which would recover the parched clack that my mouth makes when struggling for efficient chewing and swallowing. Like when you get the peanut butter to bread ratio wrong and your tongue feels thick and stupid and useless. Unfortunately for me, my blue cheese sauce turned out to be a mushroom sauce.

The fillet was a sheer frustration that easily trumped that of the beer situation, although perfectly cooked, it was like a stubborn polar ice cap and refused to melt. It lacked flavour and provided enough reason and justification to eat a vegetable in between bites to try and give hope and reassurance to my taste receptacles that we had not accidentally been teleported to the local Spur.  It was faulty. It was broken. It was tough, flavourless and was nothing special.

Plates were cleared and tummys were full while we enjoyed the new members umm speeches, some gentle discussion on who had been covered in what variety and quantity of poop, how to countersteer a motorbike, the comparitive gestation periods of various mammals and the reason why they dont just pop out like a poleroid picture, a very short story about how Woody lost his razor, and a toast to this blog being read on 4 continents.

We left with handshakes and greetings from the waitering team and a warm fuzzy feeling that we'd be back.

Wombles is without a doubt the best steak restaurant in Joburg, its just a pity someone forgot to tell the steaks that.

Joburg Steak Club welcomes Gavin (another one) and Wade to the fray.

Until we meat again at The Local Grill in Parktown North in July.

pappas on the square sandton

7 May 2013

Nothing can hold a handyness candle next to ductape, but next in line in the most handy thing in the world category is a respectable length of string.  Its level of usefulness is quite astonishing, assuming you are easily astonished by such things. Failing which it would just be mildly impressive or would occupy some other degree of stale mediocrity, but it is impossible to deny that it is handy.

The monthly gathering of our Steak Club was held at Pappas on the Square in Sandton on Tuesday.  It was a chilly night as people shuffled through the doors in coats and jackets and jerseys.  There was another guy who was wearing a tshirt at another table. Maybe he didn’t have a smart phone with a weather app to tell him it was cold.

I had been looking forward to Pappas in great anticipation of their “Famous Steaks” section in the otherwise comprehensive menu coupled with the “Home-Made” theme that’s clearly a focus point in their marketing effort.

I was the first to arrive and I was greeted by all of the staff on my way through to find someone who could point me in the direction of our reserved table.  The points were racking up nicely, because I like friendly service.  A bearded and then a non-bearded man, both seemingly the managing types, greeted and welcomed me too.  A great introduction by Solly, our waiter-to-be, led to a quick, cold, well headed Peroni being served up in front of me.  Solly’s beer and general beverage management skills were top class.  No-one was ever left thirsty.

Overlooking Sandton Square while peering past the bronzed shoulder of the great Madiba statue, I noticed quietly that this was slap bang in the middle of tourist Joburg.  I played spot-the-local until the rest of the club arrived.  I didn’t see any, so decided that I was rubbish at that game.

I suppose the worst case would be to find an actual piece of string in your meal while eating, but a near second place would be to eat stringy meat.  Like someone forgot to tell the fibres of meat to let go of each other.  Strangely enough, most of us ordered a rump version of steak.  Pete picked the peach of a meal and Woody got the lemon. – the sheer struggle that I noticed his face going through while hacking away at a chunk of meat and chewing it for what seemed like an age was indication enough that the sirloin side of his T-Bone was a great disappointment.  Because there is still some good left in the world, the moment he threatened the fillet side with cutlery it separated itself from itself and each chunk lined up and waited patiently to be devoured.  Weird how the Dunst rating features again this month.

My rump was okay.  It could never feature on the spectacular end of the spectrum, but it wasn’t terrible either.  I smothered it in monkeygland sauce and happily chomped away.  Flavour was wholesome and defined, grill lines were impressively symmetrical (more points) and the whole thing was dripping in a basting sauce, which confused the specific flavour profile of my chosen sauce, but not to the point of ruin.

There was a bit of inconsistency in the temperature of the plates, some kept on cooking the steaks after arrival and well into the meal (like the timeless classic Spur hotrock) and others sucked the heat straight out of the meat leaving a cold insipid lump.  Everybody, it seemed, had issues with the uniformity of the cookedness of their steak.  It’s a tricky thing to get right, but because it’s possible then it should be done.  I suffered through the three-phases of meat.  The edges were charred and cooked through, the middle part was so undercooked it would have tried to eat Dr Gavin’s salad (if he had come to steak club) and the in-between bits were the medium-rare that I had ordered.  Inflated tourist prices on the menu mean that our culinary skill should be exhibited for the better of the country, not to emulate the otherwise inconsistent perception we, as a country, provide to the world.

Apart from Pete, who sat looking very pleased with himself for choosing the camembert fillet, everybody else appeared to enjoy their meal with long teeth and wouldn’t rush back to sit through more distinctive averageness on a plate.

Post-meal discussions in general revolved around how many coffees a day is too many coffees in that day, the fairly disturbing squishyness of the thing that had plugged the bottom end of the salt cellar, the political landscape of the country and the solution to all its current problems, the apparent resurrection of our neighbouring Zimbabwe, and the questionable ingredients of “Greek Love” and “A blessing from Mr Pappas” that could be found in the yoghurt concoction and the crème brule respectively.

Mercifully, everybody avoided the temptation to order any salads and the only green things that made it onto our plates were a sprig or two of coriander for decoration.

Until next month, when we meat again.

fillet signature cut douglasdale

2 April 2013

There are a lot of disappointing things in life. When someone drinks your beer, for example, when you order extra length pants and they still only end at your shins, when an abnormally large pigeon drops a load on your freshly polished car and when you step onto a fallen autumn leaf and it doesn’t crunch under your foot. There is nothing, however, that is more disappointing than crappy food.

This month our record breaking steak club attendance filled the skirts of the biggest table at Fillet Signature Cut. It was a fairly quiet evening and eleven of us crowded the centre spot under the chandelier. The dark wood and sombre lighting added to the overall auspiciousness of the evening - our previous chairman Sean was back up in Joburg and joined us after being subjected to whatever they served during his missing-in-action months in the Cape. I was happy that he had arrived as I got to get shot of the baby blue girls' tennis hat that he had left at my house. Maybe he's a Blue Bulls supporter..

We were a marketing professionals nightmare - all the drinks in the first round seemed to be unique - there was a whiskey, a brandy, a beer, some wine and even a glass of water. I’m not surprised really, as there was no beer on tap.. not even Castle. Fortunately, everybody seemed to recover sufficiently to settle in to their varied respective beverage after the "no beer on tap" tragedy had passed.

The menu really focuses on fillet. There was fillet everything - from kebabs to mignon, from traditional pan-fried to steak rolls, from Portuguese style to covered in mushrooms. A great variety that could keep your taste buds coming back every day of the week. If it wasn't for Dr Gavin nobody would have known that there was also some kind of salad on the menu too. We decided that he would probably outlive all of us and would have no friends during his short finals and that it would serve him right for ordering a salad at steak club.

Most of the chaps ordered the fillet on the bone arrangement. It was a 600g beast that needed even bigger, even sturdier plates than at Giles the previous month. There wasn’t any crockery acrobatics from Pete this time. After the excitement of the successful morph suit acquisition, he seemed pretty content to behave himself.

Like the right amount of salt and vinegar flavour on a Simba chip requires a careful balance that doesn’t make your face suck itself into itself, but also doesn’t leave you wanting more, the level of charred-ness of a steak needs to account for the sweet piquant peaking of flavours on the tongue and play them off the more subtle beefiness of the meat. Each to his own, I guess, but my steak’s char level was absolutely perfect. I had the 200g pan-fried fillet, with a trinchado starter as a side. Like being torn between whether you think Kirsten Dunst is hot or not, the trinchado sauce was unbelievably good, but the meat was overcooked, rubbery, tough at the same time as being flavourless. It’s the same conundrum of Ms Dunst's hot body / weird face arrangement. You want more of only one thing, but have to concede the one to get the other. 

The pan fried lump was the redemption, it made everything in the world good again. Everything that a fillet should be, this was. Like biblical heros parting the sea, I had only to wave my knife at it and it separated into a convenient bite size chunk. After appreciating the naked elegance of the first bite, I smothered the rest in the jalapeno and blue cheese sauce and got stuck in. I disappeared into another happy world with each mouthful. But, and there had to be a but, the whole thing was too good. It was too good to be perfect. It was by the book rather than a masterpiece. Like a planned night out is good, but those circumstantial parties that just happen are better.

The steak was fantastic, the trinchado gets a Dunst rating and I’m sure the salad was lovely. 

Overall, there were no disappointing mouthfuls and thus no crappy food here.

After letting digestion take its natural course we sat back to enjoy the last drinks of the evening and welcomed Woody to the steak club fray by making him say as many umms as possible.

There was talk of motorbikes, soggy crotches from wet motorbike riding and some advice on how to annoy your neighbour with your motorbike. There was also a Volvo in a river, a delightful tale about a motorbike on fire and some handy travelers tips on how to smuggle meat out of Botswana.

Until next month, when we meat again.

Giles Parkhurst

5 March 2013

The monthly gathering of intrepid steak surveyors grouped together at Giles in Parkview this Tuesday.  It’s a “pink-ticket” evening.  A bunch of blokes, talking about bloke stuff, eating steak and potatoes.  Most of the 8 met as agreed, on time, while the chairman found himself conveniently distracted and subsequently waylaid by some talent in the bar.  Pete filled the last spot as the icy lager from the Grolsch glass hit my lips.  The beer at Giles is quick, cold and quite frankly, was perfectly managed by our excellent waitron, Sophie.

Its not difficult to become a member of steak club really.  All you need to do is arrive, talk crap, leave your issues at the door and eat steak.  The made-up induction for the two new members took me back to my pathetic attempt at public speaking at school.  These guys were professional in comparison.  There was mention of bovine appendage, best cuts, some umms and some ahhs, a reference to fat and some marbles.  Im not really sure what was going on.  The beer was tasting amazing at this point.

As is steak club requirement, we flipped through the menus straight to the beef section.  There is no messing about in the starters section at steak club.  There were two options – a 220g Portuguese style rump with an egg or a fillet 220 or 300g.  I went for the fillet as I have been thoroughly disappointed by rump in Joburg at the moment.

The meals arrived quickly, very well presented with a little rosemary sprig sticking out of the fillet.  The steak had the distinctive rich taste of beef and the slightly charred edges gave a prick of caramelised sweetness.  It’s a fillet, so I would expect it to fall into bite-sized pieces when it’s just in the same room as a steak-knife and it didn’t.  There was some fight-back, some resistance.  For a R150 steak, it should be chewing itself.  The flavour was good and this was its redemption.  It had a certain depth to it.  Like when the pompous arse behind a wine tasting stand tells you that you should get a hint of vanilla and blue berries, a log cabin and a sea breeze and he’s right because that’s exactly what you taste.  This had something to it.  I cant quite put my finger on it, maybe I was just really hungry.  Akin to the 3am Bimbo’s burger being the best thing in the world.  Ever.  I reckon if they marinated in soya sauce and olive oil for an hour before cooking, we would have had a huge difference in how the fibres of meat parted ways from each other.

Portions were healthy, chips were those weird skinny jobs that help stop the creamed spinach from falling off your fork.  There were 2 accompanying veg – one orange, one green.  The plates were hot and sturdy.  Pete banged his hand down next to one earlier.  It was air-borne, it bounced, rattled, fought with the cutlery that was on it and didn’t break.  Quality stuff. 

We ordered a bunch of different sauces for the table.  Why anyone has a sauce other than blue cheese with a steak is beyond me (Giles doesn’t offer a blue cheese sauce), but the pepper one was good enough to liven up the chips and the chilli one had a decent bite that didn’t overwhelm all other flavours. 

The steak, although a bit lob-sided in its general shape, was very well cooked.  Slightly charred on the outside but impressively medium rare throughout.  We’ve eaten a few steaks during our ventures and often you end up with the 3 phases of beef – burnt, perfect and raw – all in one piece of steak.  This was different.  This was expertly cooked.  I suspect they stuck it in the oven for a few minutes after grilling the char onto it.  I do this at home and my steaks are perfect every time.  There weren’t any grill lines on the outside of the lump of beef though.  I know it only holds novelty value, but really, more effort should be placed into getting those lines on it.  Like when someone hits you with a squash racket.  The lines are very distinctive.

Then, there was the morphsuit.  Turns out, they’re available for purchase with overnight delivery for a measly 400 bucks.  We concluded that everyone needs a morphsuit at some point in their lives.

Other topics of discussion included a delightful tale about an old-fashioned telephone that you wind up to generate an electrical charge coupled with the smelly end of a goat, or was it a sheep; how they make polony burgers out of pool noodles; that a morphsuit should never, ever be confused with a mof-suit; and the consequences of criticizing a woman’s bum with a slap, a comment about the subsequent wobble and a probing question about the lack of use of the gym membership.

Giles was a good effort.  It stands no chance in the ring with Wombles or Local Grill, but it murders HQ and their rubbish excuse for a sirloin.  I found it a bit pricey and rather lacking in vibe, but the service was outstanding

We leave it there, until next month, when we meat again.