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.