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