the sourcerer: Trendy/Not So/Lebanese

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Trendy/Not So/Lebanese

Two picky Virgoans and a Sagittarian went for a leisurely ramble on the pier yesterday afternoon. We're thinking: where shall we have a party? Drank a caiperinha at The Grand Café & Beach.

(Haul Rd off Beach Rd, Granger Bay, 021 425 0551)

Then went slumming on the other side of the fence at the Oceana Power Boat Club. They've been under threat of eviction by the V&A Waterfront since 2002! They have the only slipway for private boats in the precinct of Cape Town. Cocktails, maybe not, but a brandy and coke costs a laughable fraction of the prices next door. Atmosphere charming in that old-school clubby way.

As we were about to leave, this Ford Zephyr Zodiac II pulled up. 1963. Mint.

It had seats of the most brilliant red I've ever seen. The owner was suitably proud.

We uhmmed and ahhed about cooking and then, on a whim, went for an early supper at The Cedar. Still the same after all these years: family run, fantastic service, splendid food. We had Foul m'Dammas, Hoummous with fried lamb and cinnamon, freshly baked pitas and the best fried cauliflower in the world. Once I've figured out the secret sauce, I'll share the recipe. I could taste sumac, browned garlic...

76a Main Rd, Sea Point. (across from Laughtons)
021 433 2546

4 comments:

Marie said...: At the Grand, did your drinks arrive within the hour? We nearly died waiting.; August 10, 2010 at 5:28 PM
the sourcerer said...: :-) guess we were lucky - under ten minutes!; August 10, 2010 at 6:27 PM
tanjawilmot said...: ahhh, the cedar. glad it's still going strong. we're only making plans for nigel, we only want what's best for hiiiim...x; August 16, 2010 at 8:03 PM
the sourcerer said...: I fear our Nigel has moved on to greyer pastures - he now works in retail in the waterfront. But sister Beverley fills his shoes very nicely. In fact, she's given me an ace idea for a book.; August 16, 2010 at 10:59 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.