Candice Philip wasn’t short of offers after she popped up and then was the Chef in Residence at Basalt for a good and meaningful while, but we’re all relieved she held out for a truly autonomous situation. Now she’s truly her own boss, free to determine what meals she wants to serve and when and why and why ever not. The space is hers to use and fill with what she likes, and so it is. Cyra is calm. The other people at other tables are too distant for any eavesdropping.
I listened to myself tearing a ball of fresh lemon bread to smear with miso butter, made of the luscious white miso, but it was very gentle, not a rip. The bread course also involved two appetisers or mouth amusers, a snappy toast under something I immediately made mmmmm noises about, a beef and mushroom tartare. Later, I realised that two bites of that had done it.
I would most likely be a slave to Cyra. There was a little puffy doughnut of parsley and parmesan, but I was already spoken for. Two mouthfuls of Colombar MCC and I was casting a longing look at the remaining toast crumb. The man I was eating with at my first meal at Cyra kept stroking his chair. “Ooooh it feels fantastic. I could sit here forever.” We were going to be there for seven courses, so it was just as well. And, of course, mine was just as suede-soft and endearingly kind to the body, creamy coloured and, okay, quite desirable, unlike most trendy restaurant trendy seating.
We hadn’t arrived together. I’d arrived from Parkview and he from Cape Town. Ah, I liked that.
It was a bit early on a late sun summer’s evening to be wearing anything overtly suitable for the evening, so at home I’d been eyeing my footwear, wondering if casual sandals would tone down a slightly shiny dress. Then I’d realised, “What the hell, my feet will be under the table.” I needn’t have fretted because Mr Cape Town had strolled in straight from the airport in what would be a basketball outfit if it’d had numbers on it, if a sort of Madison Avenue version.
It’s a bit non-U I think to compare women chefs, rare as they often are in the upper leagues, but when I saw TOMATO on the menu, I did think of Chantal Dartnell once of Mosaic and her long-long dish of lots of versions of tomato, including a clear, almost colourless liquid, very slightly pink tinged, in a thimble of a glass. It had been the juice from one of our own very ripe tomatoes, without any flesh, the stuff we usually shoo off the board with the seeds when we’re cutting up tomatoes for cooking. It was a lesson for me in tomatoeyness, without the classic scarlet visuals. As was Candice’s perfect tomato plate. In it was a variety of tomatoes, hers crimson, poached and roasted, all b-b-bursting with wallops of a richer sort of that essential tomato flavour. Ginger and tomatoes I reckon are made for each other. Chef Candice’s ginger was gentle in contrast with the fullness of the fruit and other herbs and vegetables in the dish.
I’d semi-forgotten how masterful she is, using all her knowledge and technique to turn the simple things into the stupendous things. That’s her. Maybe you remember the South African Design Indaba’s Most Beautiful Object in the year that it was a food object. It was Candice Philip’s pea dish. When I had to think of an outright favourite dish, this Tomato affair could easily have been it, but I was swayed later, as you’ll see. Funnily enough, even the Zevenwacht Chardonnay served with it tasted distinctly of tomatoes. Well, that was my experience.
Cape Town and I discussed the nicely slick, timeously sleek service and went on to the female aspect of the name Cyra, or sun of Persia. Just the name Persia seems to plump me into a reverie of pomegranates, black limes, brightly sunny saffron, sour-sweet fruit molasses and spices and cornucopia of plenty. The name Iran does not do that, sadly. Maybe that’s more minty kebab and thin yoghurt. There are no outright Persian clues around, we decided, which is probably too facile a trap, no lions or sun pictures, no chariots. Just the name carries the promise of every day being new again, of its own powerful energy that creates our food. Cape Town said that if he had to picture it, it’d be a demure sun.
That sounded too timid to me for what we had there. Chef Candice Philip is confident with her many experiences and awards behind her. She may not be a pot thrower in her kitchens, but she achieves exactly what she wants. Exactly. The tables have creamy roses on them but the tablecloths are leather, still soft looking but definitely on the audacious side. More tactile stuff. And then it arrived. Unlikely as a dish called OSTRICH may seem as a food winner, It Just Did It. It showed what she does more than any of the other dishes, I’d say later.
Cape Town and I exchanged glances: Chef Candice is back. Things are going to be different from now on.
The curtains, as I thought of them, were not just for show. Candice called them “beetroot paper” but they were soft and sank into the dish under appreciative attack, adding to the wonderwork of taste and useful textures of ostrich carpaccio and more profound beetroot (yes, not as you or I’ve ever known it). It was turned into a sumptuous, dark and velvety dish with assistance from the sultry work of cherries and even duck liver. Renaissance meets 2025. Cape Town and I exchanged glances: Chef Candice is back. Things are going to be different from now on.
I think we were still blinking when SEABASS arrived. It was another of those dishes of hers that you think is simple, and in a way it was. But she turned that fish into the most memorable of seabass with the aid of leeks and spirulina, which reminded me not of biology class’s algae, including Chlamydomonas. It reminded me of how much I love everything about seabass, especially a crisped skin. Our fun, storytelling sommelier had this fish with a Pinot Gris for a change, from Usana.
Walnuts are a bit Persian, I was thinking, remembering tarator with pomegranate seeds at a friend’s meal. Instead, Candice’s BEEF dish had a very male food aspect, with those walnuts, with the main ingredient of course, with shiitake mushrooms and with truffle, the aroma rather than the taste often compared with male sweat. It was also good to have the truffle in the beef jus, adding to the overall taste rather than trying to be it, as is maddeningly often the case. This was a good looking and sensible presentation, the walnut and shiitake flavours on the side, separately, in what looked like a gift box, with a moreish stick whisk of kataifi plonked on top. Nothing nouvelle here, a dish for tucking into.
Cape Town and I happened to say Do You Think The Cheese… when lo, it was there, not as either of us would have guessed — in well behaved, medium soft alpine chunks with croutons, chamomile centres, rose geranium and apple biscuits, all served in a clump like a tidy Eton Mess. Very demolishable.
We were already trying to gauge which of the courses had tasted the best, been the nicest to eat, and I’d just been fickle to my tomato course in favour of the ostrich, just as the pudding course of different try-me’s was put in front of us, fruitily naartjie-ish, coconutty and tasting of lemon verbena, but the wow part was when a little hibiscus syrup, with that slightly Egyptian dustiness or, rather, smokiness as in the tea, was poured into our Silverthorn MCCs, even nicer than a kir.
Our chef, Candice Philip, is back on the top of the heap and I was delighted to find her almost more like she was before, as a chef. I faced into the warm evening outside the open sliding door and relished my own pure pleasure. I also enjoyed watching Cape Town having his basketball socks happily removed.
