It’s the small things. No, its ONLY the small things that
matter. A hot-cross bun dripping with
melted butter; a mosquito in the room while you’re trying to sleep; a fire on a
cold winter night; the smell of an old book while sitting on your favourite
couch; sliding your feet into a soft set of slippers; dealing with someone who
has an IQ score equivalent to a room temperature reading; or having a tiny
stone in your running shoe. The small
things separate the real, meaningful and memorable moments from those that
escaped recognition in your consciousness.
Let’s get onto steak club.
I’ve been completely useless at keeping this blog up to date. It’s not to say that we haven’t been
continuing our valiant quest to find the best steak in Joburg, it’s just to say
that I’ve been useless. Eleanor, an avid
reader of this blog, will tell you that I am not only useless, but fairly
long-winded too. I do try my best.
Rich Real Grill Bar, Bedfordview
It really was a case of moving from the sublime to the
ridiculous. After Chaplins Grill, which
was the best evening out and had the best steak we’ve experienced all
year, we went to Rich’s Grill Bar in Bedfordview. They had everything, from the best beef from
the best butcher to an opulent (if not a bit gaudy) setting. Similar to reading a dictionary, it had all
the words that would make for the greatest story ever told, but if you’ve ever
read a dictionary, you’ll know how catastrophically tedious it is. Not even us drinking an impressive amount of
wine and beer could improve this place’s personality. It gets a distinctly
average overall consensus and for the price, you’re better off hitting the
local Spur and leaving home with enough change to buy a medium-sized, pedigree
beagle so that you have something to feed the doggy bag bones to.
Thundergun, Blackheath
Convinced that we had simply made a glaring error in
believing that the east rand could produce a decent steak, we headed west. To the supposed institution of Blackheath:
The long-standing Thundergun. Maybe the
rent is cheap there and the booze overpriced, so they can afford to keep going,
but the steaks were (and I’m going to try and be respectable here)
horrendous. Torturous mouthful after
mouthful of anaemic, sub-standard leather that went down with hooks on, but
came out (in three cases) like the spray of a high pressure washer, meant that
we weren’t convinced that the Thundergun should be frequented for anything
except reaching your goal weight through food poisoning. There was, however, a fellow patron gentleman
sporting the most impressive mullet I have seen since the height of the 80’s,
so I guess the evening wasn’t a complete loss.
I must note that paying R24.00 for a condiment sauce that my
girlfriend’s one-and-a-half year old niece could produce better out of her
selection of play-dough and that day’s bodily fluids did give me a solid small
business idea using child labour to supply the restaurant industry with an
unidentifiable, yet imaginative range of sauces.
Chaplins, Hurlingham. Again..
Our December special, when we invite our wives and
girlfriends to join in on our festivities, saw us back at Chaplins. It was a balancing act. Some steaks were amazing but the service was
slow and some steaks weren’t cooked but after going into the kitchen,
uninvited, it got sorted out as quickly as an elevator empties after someone
opens their lunchbox in there. Reinhold,
the owner/manager wasn’t there and it showed.
Still, superb quality meat and a properly good selection of craft beers
meant that we saw 2013 out with keen fondness.
The Baron, Sandton
Ta Daaa! And we are current.
January 2014 saw the year’s steak club adventure begin at The Baron in
Sandton. In the few days coming up to
the opening act of Steak Club, I could barely feel the anticipation tickle my
baby toe, even if I wiggled it. Another
commercialised tourist trap in one of the most over-rated towns in Joburg, I
reckoned. Generally, I don’t enjoy
Sandton. Im pretty sure there are more BMW
drivers per square kilometer in Sandton than in any other place in the
country.
After sneaking past the side of the parking lot boom to
avoid the R20 parking fee, I parked my bike and headed toward the pretence. An unenthusiastic greeting from a waiter
manning the door saw us through to our table where our waiter knew very little
about the impressive selection of micro-brewery beer on offer. I am properly glad to find that South
Africans are waking up to the gloriousness of good beer. We love our beer. We may only rank 29th in the world
at 63 litres per capita per annum, but that does translate to 3.1 billion
litres of beer consumed every year. For
the love of all things savoury, could we PLEASE just make it decent beer?
The specials were rattled off by our waiter, which were largely
ignored and we all ordered our steaks. The usual habits were followed. There was big rump, there was small rump,
there was fillet, there was sirloin and there was T Bone. There may even have been an avocado on top of
a steak. The steak was good. It looked like a steak, lying there with its
chargrill lines. It smelled like a steak,
that wholesome beefy aroma that you get around a braai. It tasted like a 3am petrol station pie –
simply unbelievable. I think there was
genuine surprise and relief and appreciation for well cooked steaks all
round. The rump was so tasty, but also
impressively soft and obedient.
Threatening it with a butter knife did enough to get it to melt into
chunks. The buttery, caramelised fat smothered
the meat like the BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The steaks were superb. The chips and onion rings looked like they
were slapped on the plate by someone with carpel tunnel syndrome and were
completely average.
Should The Baron pay a little more attention to the details,
the little things, they could move from being good to being the one redeeming
thing about Sandton as a whole.
Until we meat again at Squires Loft in Parkhurst. Another institution of Joburg. Lets see if they're in the same league as
Thundergun.
