Meikles otherwise splendid five-star La Fontaine Grillroom, in a five-star hotel was not a great example of that last week, at least not on the starter course I chose!
Well, what do you make of: butter-fried quails eggs on crisped pancetta with sweet corn fritters, topped with a white wine sabayon?It was really posh bacon-and eggs!
Genuine pancetta is Italian bacon, typically salt-cured, and seasoned with such spices as nutmeg, fennel, peppercorns, dried ground hot peppers and garlic.
I reckon Meikles used Colcom’s best!
Nothing wrong with that, though. The dinky quail eggs had yolks the colour of a Zambezi sunrise and the sweet corn fritters helped mop up all that delicious yellow gunk. Bacon really was crisp…perhaps pancetta, after all?
And as for white wine sabayon?
Sabayon is another spelling of zabaglione: an Italian dessert! So that was a savoury version?
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Whatever, it was very nice with a still warm, in-hotel baked brown whole meal roll and butter at US$7 if ordered separately or the beginning bit of Meikles excellent table d’hôte US$35 menu.
Other starters were creamy coconut and butternut soup (US$6) or chardonnay and mushroom soup (US$5); smoked salmon and spinach roulade with garden salad, or chicken liver and port wine parfait with melba toast (both US$6). Prawn Kiev with a soya and lime dipping sauce was US$12 on its own but carries a US$5 supplement on the TDH menu.
I’m not sure I would serve very excellent, lean, de-boned lamb korma curry with red onion-roasted couscous from North Africa as starch! To me, curry means rice: preferably big, fluffy, grains of white basmati (or in certain low-life British pubs — would you believe? — curry-and-chips!).Couscous worked; but posh bacon and eggs, a very substantial starter, had just about done it for me and I couldn’t do justice to what proved a mild, but flavoursome, spicy meat curry, at US$19 if ordered separately.
It came with diced onions-and-tomatoes, I’ve recently heard called Durban salad! Creamed spinach and fruity chutney, I thought it maybe needed a bit more of, had I finished the plate.
Other mains include Meikles’ always great steak: fillet with a caramelised onion puree topped with a soft poached egg and potato gratin (US$21 if ordered separately) or grilled entrecote steak with Ponte Neuf potatoes and either flambéed pepper or mushroom sauce. That’s US$20 and many people would willingly pay it just to enjoy the flambéing display at their table!
I would usually have had fish as mains, but had just returned from Lake Harvest, Kariba, proud owner of a 12kg box of bream, so decided against Kariba tilapia fillets (US$20). As I aim to be in Scotland within a few days, I also declined black sesame seed-roasted Scotch salmon with delicious sounding caper-and-tarragon sauce and fondant potatoes (US$30/US$10 supplement on TDH)
For similar reasons the supreme of sea bass with wilted spinach, blistered cherry tomatoes and young potatoes (US$20) was declined.
(Thirty-odd years ago, if I’d been served wilted spinach or blistered tomatoes, I’d have had strong words with the chef. Now they’re must-eat items!)Cooking on Tuesday was young, talented executive sous chef Shane Ellis. He said the menu I was purely coincidentally trying was launched that day.I only went to Meikles as I’d bought tickets to London on Wednesday’s AirZim flight. (Surprise, surprise…it didn’t go; I’m writing this on Thursday in my office, when I should have been having coffee with my daughter and grand-children in Oxfordshire! Curses!
With an hour to kill waiting for medication I’d be reluctant to travel without to be sourced, lunch at Meikles — opposite AZ and near the pharmacy involved — was an obvious attraction.
After finishing a single bitterly cold Pilsener, (a very abstemious day!) I did manage “Trio of Desserts”: beautifully displayed small portions of wonderful coconut crème caramel, dark (almost black) chocolate mousse and Amarula pannacotta (US$8 if ordered separately).
The US$35 TDH package includes starter, main course, pudding and/or cheese board, tea/coffee and petite-fours.
If I weren’t flying to Heathrow tomorrow by Ethiopian Airways (I hope!), I may have returned there for Friday lunch!l [email protected]
