Joostenberg Deli & Bistro vs Madame Zingara

Two chefs, two judges and this year’s winner of the WINE magazine TOPS at SPAR Chenin Blanc Challenge, whose identity has been withheld from all involved… “Create a dish to match it,” was our instruction to the chefs. Judge Jean-Pierre Rossouw reports. THE CONTESTANTS
Christophe Dehosse, Joostenberg Deli & Bistro, Klein Joostenberg Farm, R304,
Muldersvlei. Tel 021 884 4208.

Ryan Berry, Madame Zingara, 192 Loop Street, Cape Town, 021 426 2458.

THE JUDGES
Pete Goffe-Wood, restaurant and food consultant Jean-Pierre Rossouw, food and
wine writer

THE MYSTERY WINE
Spier Private Collection 2004, winner of the 2006 WINE magazine TOPS at SPAR
Chenin Blanc Challenge

The thrill of the new versus the comforts of the classic – this showdown seemed
timeless from the start. You could not wish for more contrasting approaches
to food than the two restaurants chosen for this chef shootout.

Sauntering into town was Madame Zingara, appropriately wild in name and with
every intention of making food that defies categories. Not that she is new to
the Cape – her boisterous ways, chocolate-chilli steak and merriment are already
legend with locals, drawing crowds from far and wide. Along the lines of “for
a good time, call Madame Z”, a meal here devolves into revelry faster than
most tequila girls can say “Some lime?”

Far more sedate a proposition (except when a horse bolts onto the lawn) is the
bucolic realm of Joostenberg Deli on the Muldersvlei farm. A country deli and
bistro, this unprepossessing spot has none of the mannequins, gregarious waitresses,
fancy hats and incendiary fun of Zingara, but it does specialise in the best
pork products in town plus a fine menu of country cooking, with a jungle gym
for the kids. Joostenberg is one of those places that over-delivers on quality
for the price and has a welcome focus on fresh and local produce. If Zingara
is fantasy, this is reality – croissants or a bit of cassoulet on a winter’s
day, and even a nursery alongside. Who could imagine a more wholesome experience?

The leveller, as always with such shootouts, is the wine – in this case a Chenin
Blanc that turned out to be no easy customer, in the sense that it is not a
wine of obvious expressive fruit. My fellow judge, restaurant and food consultant
Pete Goffe-Wood, and I had a preliminary taste and were agreed: the wine was
firm and structured, with none of the billowing, ripe fruit that many Chenins
are known for. Instead, it was marked by its wood tannins, its austere acids
and its sense of promise withheld. Our conclusion was that it was predominantly
wood-driven, at least at this point in its evolution, and that the palate was
dense but short. A wine to keep, therefore, to see what comes of it – alternately,
a wine that could be coaxed by the right dish, but certainly not any dish.

As a chef, Goffe-Wood’s philosophy of wine and food matching is simple: taste
the wine first and then make the food fit the wine, for you can’t change what’s
in the bottle. I agree – and also believe that the easy pitfall with matching
is to pair what the nose tells you about the wine, instead of what the palate
explains. A good match balances texture with texture, weight with weight, and
the tannic structure and acidity are more important to match up than a fleeting
melon waft.

Our first stop was Joostenberg, where Christophe Dehosse and his wife Susan
are the gracious – and, in the case of Christophe, talkative – hosts. First
we asked him about the wine and his summary largely matched the conclusion that
Goffe-Wood and I had reached: “I find the wine quite wooded, with some
creaminess and good acidity, which I enjoy. It doesn’t have the big fruit salad
of some Chenins, so I decided to play with the acidity.”

And play he did – who could have been prepared for our first plate? Pork cheeks
braised in their own juices with fennel, paired with a broccoli and a carrot
pure alongside some fondant potato! “We’re not used to eating the
head, unlike many European cuisines,” commented Goffe-Wood, tucking in
with little sign of hesitation, mopping up the savoury sauce with some more
of Joostenberg’s fine baguette. With great excitement, I also began to eat,
never one to be fazed by a blind-sider like a pork cheek dish…

Dehosse later discussed the regrettable fact that all our culture seems to want
is fillet steak, turning away from the many other, often very tasty, morsels
that our butcher could offer us. We were quickly drawn into a philosophical
conversation about the modern palate, one that wants ever-more-powerful, in-your-face
flavours and seems to have forgotten what simple flavours taste like. In a quest
for instant gratification and overwhelming sensory experience, we quickly drench
our food in chilli, we sprinkle raw garlic and twist strongly-flavoured black
pepper without tasting the dish first. Consider pepper: when last did you use
white pepper in a dish? Its lighter piquancy often suits and complements a dish
better than the robust black kernel.

In contrast to this, Dehosse explained his dish as a neutrally flavoured plate
– the gravy, for example, unadorned or enriched. And what does pork cheek taste
like, for those of you who don’t eat “the head”? It’s delicious: a
tender, soft-textured meat that’s very rich and a little gelatinous. The broccoli
and carrot pures were dense too, having been made with farm butter,
while fondant potato is always a creamy affair.

Dehosse explained that he wanted the wine to play a contrasting tune to the
richness of the meal – the soft texture of the meat and the salty, savoury flavours.
He had decided that the wine was less about primary fruit flavours and more
about the structure of its acid and tannin – and he wanted the wine to be a
foil to the density of the plate, a dish where there were no powerful “bright”
flavours, rather a sense of texture and a full mouthfeel.

He certainly succeeded. With this meal, the wine’s quiet fruit was coaxed out,
its firm backbone of tannin a reassuring support to the dish and its acidity
the flourish that allowed it to stand its ground and refresh the mouth. Dehosse’s
meal had lured a still-brooding wine from its corner, prompting Goffe-Wood to
say “a good food and wine match is like 1+1=3″; each element shown
in the best light by contrast to the other; a subtly flavoured dish founded
on texture, paired to a wine that certainly was more about structure than fruit
when we drank it. It also just happened to be pork cheek, which makes for good
conversation.

The only quibble we had (but this was only in being very picky) was that the
pures were rather salty, which hardened the flavour of the wine a little.
Goffe-Wood suggested that this was Dehosse’s salted butter, a house style that
is more salty than most. When you cook with salted butter, he elaborated, you
easily lose control of the salinity – that’s the reason unsalted is recommended
in recipes.

Our next stop was Madame Zingara, the home of colourful fusion food, where both
Goffe-Wood and I were expecting something spicier and more modern, though Dehosse
had gone so far “back” that his dish had also become novel. Chef Ryan
Berry, deputising for owner-chef Richard Griffin, described the wine as “oaky”
with “grassy” and fruity flavours – flavours that would go well with
the chosen dish: Indian curried prawn and watermelon with lime leaf, coconut
and coriander.

This flavour-packed dish also had touches of lemon rind and a sweet-sour sauce
that later had us searching for a spoon to scoop up the remains like delicious
soup. The watermelon was a refreshing counterpoint to the spicy prawns, and
the coconut added a touch of richness and crunch. Berry didn’t comment on the
tannin or the austerity of the wine, and we both felt his initial observations
were generic Chenin remarks rather than a closer look at this example.

As it happened, the wine drank like a main course that should have waited until
this plate, a starter, was done – it came across as far too serious. The distinctly
sweet and brightly spicy character of the dish cancelled what fruit was emerging
from the wine, making it more austere than ever, leading Goffe-Wood to comment
that this dish would be far better off with a fruitier Chenin, or something
along the lines of a Bukettraube. This Chenin tensed up and was closed down
by the expressive flavours – more coconut richness could have helped to bridge
the two, but the chilli would also have had to be toned down.

“As a dish it rocks, but as a combo it sucks” was the regrettable
summation, and abruptly the shootout was over. The winner of this showdown was
certainly the straight-shooting Dehosse, who had read the style of the wine
more accurately and realised that it needed gentle food flavours to help it
shine.

We judges agreed that the flamboyance and creative exuberance of chefs was one
thing, but an understanding of and feeling for wine was something well worth
paying a dollar more for. As clearly as the basic guide of white with white
is limited, so is applying preconceptions about varietal character. Every wine
is informed by its
genetics, but is also an entity within its own right, with its particular structure,
character and quirks.

Noticing that the winning Chenin came under screwcap, we left the shootout debating
this point: shouldn’t the screwcap annul the convention of offering a taste
of the wine to a restaurant patron? Or can the patron still decline a wine that
is simply not liked?

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