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.