the sourcerer: ~ The Duchess Of Wisbeach ~

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

~ The Duchess Of Wisbeach ~

The birthday treats continue... I was taken out to dinner last night by the two big P's and one small. (A special thank you to the Tall Drink Of Water for the restaurant recommendation.)

We just loved The Duchess Of Wisbeach. Casually flamboyant, it's ultra-styley without feeling too contrived. Black, white and dove-grey. Small china dogs on each table. FULL of happy diners.

The grown-ups all had the Karoo Lamb Chops. Three to a plate! They came served with grilled baby eggplant + vine tomatoes and a velvety zesty mint sauce. Cooked to a tee. I had to send my compliments to the chef. Chef Amy is seriously good, she had her dishes flying out of that little kitchen hot and fast. She sent me a nod and a shy smile.

It was a relief when the Duke gave us permission to eat our chops with our hands. Miss Pucci has no qualms - she eats everything with her fingers. Messily, but with great delicacy. Then she dips her hand in the water glass for a quick rinse. The table looked like the scene of utter carnage what with all those bones.

The dessert. Well. I'm lost for words. Baked apricot pudding with toffee sauce and creamy banana ice cream. It vanished in two minutes flat.

A goblet of Grappa was taken for the constitution.

In the Ladies Room, a gold-framed fax page reads in a hasty scribble:

You are a lousy lover,

a careless husband and a bad father

and you can cook yourself an egg tomorrow night.

❤ Thanks to R, C and the munchkin. ❤
The Duchess Of Wisbeach: Wisbeach Rd, Sea Point,
021 434 1525

3 comments:

Marie said...: Oh! I want to quote that fax on my food blog. It's wonderful.

Live the water glass finger bowl.; September 21, 2010 at 5:53 PM
Marie said...: Love, actually.

But it can live, too...; September 21, 2010 at 5:54 PM
the sourcerer said...: Oh Marie - by all means share it!; September 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM

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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.