Wine rack

I have a two bottles of wine waiting for a bit better event than "the two of us are making dinner again". I have limited cupboard space and would like to start collecting more wines (less than 140 litres though to prevent falling a victim of potential new liquor laws).

The solution was to buy a basic wine rack at Mr Price Home which could hold 10 bottles which seems like a good amount for someone living alone.

The problem?

Only one of the bottles could fit. This made sense as the other bottle was a magnum bottle. So, I had this wine rack with only one bottle of wine. It looked dreary, so I went shopping. I was so excited to finally have a wine collection ranging from a Nederburg Lyric to a bottle of wine "The Chocolate Block" which I will also save for a bit better occasion.

The next problem?
Almost none of these normal sized bottles would fit into the rack. I returned the rack, and now I have a problem that there's more than two bottles that need a home.

Temporary solution:
The bottles are in my lounge, underneath the side table until I can get a wine rack that can take normal sized bottles.

Famous fish from The Famous Fishhoek Co.

To equalise the negative, I will have to make a post on a restaurant that never lets us down: The Famous Fishhoek Co.

This is our go-to-restaurant (like normal people that go to Spur if they do not know where they want to go). It is basically a family restaurant in Pretoria. The menu is embedded with South African homour, the staff is always friendly and efficient.

The wine:
Not your platinum wine list, but there are a few decent dry whites.

The food:
Their hake and chips are perfect. They have right to talk about their "Famous beer batter".

They have a unique selection of salads which gives you a taste explosion. As with many places, you unfortunately have to order this taste explosion as a main meal as the portion size is quite big. Their sushi is good and the other fish is ok.

The one downside is their prawns, here you will have to rely on my boyfriend's opinion as I am allergic. He says that the spices do not compliment it and that there are much better places to eat prawns.

I will continue going there as they are decently priced and reliable.

Mistake I will never make again

My boyfriend and I have been very lucky in our dining experiences we have had over the past year and a half (I use this time frame as we were poor students before that).

It grieves me that the first post I will make will be about a mistake we made to confuse the restaurants Karoo Cafe and KAROO - Cattle and land

I had a big craving for fillet and so as we have heard many good things about "Karoo" we Googled it, saw that it was close by and went. We ended up at Karoo Cafe.

The decoration was peculiar (very Karoo farm) and we enjoyed browsing the second hand books wile waiting for our food. The wine list was short and sweet, and I ordered a bottle of La Bri Affinity 2009 which would have gone perfectly with a good fillet.

The food:

Our waitress took her sweet time to bring the food, we could hear the kitchen bell ringing for a few minutes while she was socializing at another table. I ordered the 200g beef fillet (Served with mash potato or rice & vegetables) and my boyfriend ordered the Karoo lamb chops (3 Chops and a caramelised onion & pap tower served with salad).

My fillet was tough and my boyfriend's lamb chops were dried out and flavourless (I might be used to my perfect lamb chops I make on the braai). The pap was like rubber which have been might be the idea, I have never had pap in a restaurant before.

I can commend them for the mash... It was delicious, but I cannot justify paying more than a R100 for good mash.

All in all, it was a bad experience and we actually gave less than 10% tip, something we never do having waitered ourselves. We are planning to try out the other "Karoo" this weekend and I hope that my fillet steak craving will be satisfied there.