Meat Pies and Fork

We kept hearing about these meat pies that we just had to get while in ZA, so when were were in the grocery yesterday and spotted them we decided to grab some for lunch.  They come in a variety of flavors such as beef and kidney, pepper steak, and spinach and feta (not meat, but still my absolute favorite).  They are essentially filo dough that has been heavily buttered and stuffed with the various fillings.  I'm ashamed to say that I forgot to take pictures of them (they went so fast!), but since we've had them for an afternoon snack the past two days I'm sure there will be another opportunity to capture their buttery awesomeness on camera.  By the way, paired with a few bottles of red wine, they definitely call for a small siesta afterwards!

After yesterday's afternoon snack Jack, Dad, and I walked down to Beach Road (Mom opted for the siesta) to check out the park right on the waterfront.  Every time I visit a new city, there's something that draws me to it and makes me want to live there, and this was it.  The beach itself has boat lockers to store your sea kayak, the parks are large, open areas that would otherwise be difficult to find in the city, and the walk down the beach front is great for viewing the sunset.

Cape Town Stadium

Dad and Jack on the beach front

One set of a series of statues along the parks

 And now for last night's restaurant review.  Since we made a late lunch of the meat pies, tapas seemed like a great idea for a light dinner.  Well, that was our pretense at least.

We pulled up to Fork (http://www.fork-restaurants.co.za/) and immediately saw that the table in the window was for four.  This table also happened to have very comfortable leather sofas as the seats, so we were already hooked.  We took the waitress' (who also happened to be the manager) suggestion and each ordered 2 dishes to start with, and she ensured us that they would come out staggered. Our courses were the following:

Round 1:
Deep fried goat's cheese with sun-dried tomato biscuits and port and onion marmalade
Grilled tiger prawns wrapped with pancetta
Raviolione with ricotta, spinach and a poached egg served with sage butter and chilli
Roast pork belly with a mustard and parsley crust

Round 2:
Oso buco braised on borlotti beans with gremolata
Roast chicken on fondant potatoes with curry sauce

Round 3:
Moroccan meatballs
Marinated lamb cutlets with a creamy spring onion and cumin sauce

Everything was absolutely wonderful, but a few of the dishes stood out.  The undisputed winner was the raviolione with ricotta.  This dish had the most complex development of flavors on the tongue, and the fact that the chef managed to soft poach an egg inside the pasta just blew us all away.  In the words of Anthony Bourdain, we are most definitely egg sluts.  There were two contenders for second place, the pork belly and the lamb, and that was split 50/50 across the table.  The pork belly was creamy and unctuous, while the lamb was perfectly cooked with a large portion of fat left on that I've never seen in the States.  Our waitress brought over the dessert menu, but we instead decided to go with Round 4, with a repeat of the raviolione and the lamb.  Again, I'm failing as a food blogger since I forgot to take pictures of each dish, but I did manage to snag the lamb on the second round.

Our wonderful waitress presenting the lamb (yes, we got two servings of it each round...)

That should whet your appetite a bit.

More tomorrow!

Peace

Robben Island

Robben Island is a 12km (circumference) island that was used as the prison facility during apartheid during the latter half of the 20th century.  Leaders such as Dr. Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela were held in this facility during this dark period in South Africa's history.

Sobukwe in his solitary confinement cell. He was not allowed to have any contact with the other prisoners during his 9 year internment

The tour was very well run and informative.  It was split up into two sections, a bus tour around the island and an on-foot tour through the maximum security prison.  Besides Jack's wonderful neighbors on the bus, who also serenaded us during the prison portion, the entire tour was very enjoyable.  This is a must-see for anyone visiting the city, and is definitely something that could be done on a poor weather day.

Jack enjoying his bus ride next to the screaming baby

Our tour guide through the max security prison. He was held here from 1980 to 1991 for trying to blow up a building with a bazooka

The hall of the max security prison. Lots of history here, very eerie 

On the main road into Robben Island, I saw the following sign but was very disappointed that there weren't any penguins running around the island on the tour.

And then I saw this little guy on the way out. He and his friend were basically posing for pictures and let us get within 2 ft of them.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

Cape Town: First Impressions

We've been in Cape Town for two nights, and I don't think there's anything to complain about so far.  The first day, we just walked around to (attempt to) ward of the jet-lag.  The waterfront looked enticing, so we headed down that way and naturally found ourselves sitting down in a Greek seafood restaurant after Jack and I agreed that the menu looked far to good to pass up.

An all-too-familiar pose: studying the menu

Dad's seafood soup

Mom's calamari

My seafood pasta

Jack's seafood platter, fit for a king

That was yesterday, and we did more today but I'm extremely tired and about ready to pass out so I'll let everyone know about that in a later post. For now here are some pictures of the landscape around Cape Town, I definitely want to take a few hikes if the weather cooperates.

Devil's Peak

Table Mountain, which we'll hopefully be rappelling off of

The hill behind our hotel (couldn't find the name), with the Lion's Head poking out from behind it

 I'll try to get time to post more tomorrow.

Peace,

Andrew

Introduction

I must preface this blog with the following disclaimer: We are gluttons, and as such, we travel through our stomachs. If reading overly-indulgent descriptions of food and looking at the accompanying pictures doesn't interest you, then you may be skipping vast portions of this blog.

The travelers on this journey across the Atlantic include Jack Robinson, Jane Jylkka, Dan Jylkka, and myself (Andrew).

The 'Planners' (someone else still holds the map)

The 'Tag-Alongs' (and yes, that's how we usually look at each other)

Our trip commenced on August 27th, with our flight getting out of JFK just in time to miss Hurricane Irene.  To any of you reading this by headlamp or candlelight, I'm sorry.  After a short 14 h 48 m flight, we landed in Johannesburg, only to hop on another flight to Cape Town.  The planned itinerary is as follows:

Cape Town for 5 nights
Stellenbosch (Wineland) for 3 nights
Johannesburg for a night
Safari in Pilanesberg National Park for 2 nights
Back to Johannesburg for 5 nights
Back to the US on September 13th


I'm unsure of how the internet will be in Stellenbosch and during the safari, but I'll try to get up some posts in between those.


Another post will be up in a few minutes about how Cape Town has treated us (and our stomachs) so far.