08 JUNE 2022
While fine dining can sometimes be fine, if oft unaffordable, there are times when a good pub lunch is just the ticket.
Bustling, welcoming and infested with TV screens, Cesco’s in Randburg is both a sports bar and a sit-down restaurant.
The food is hearty, a little hit-and-miss, but this is somewhere I love to go. If I lived in the neighbourhood, it would be my local: everybody would know my name and I would have a tab the length of James Joyce’s Ulysses behind the bar. But on to my guest.
Born on a wine farm in what was then the sleepy village of Durbanville, Michael Olivier rose to become one of SA’s top restaurateurs. He ran the damn good, reliable, top-rated Parks on the fringes of Cape Town. Now semi retired in Johannesburg, he continues to wine and dine, and to write and consult to a new generation of foodies and winies.
Great company as always, he and I wedged ourselves into our seats, and got down to the serious business of the day — lunch. The menu is extensive, ranging from simple and excellent-value Prego rolls to steaks, seafood and tons of other stuff.
As he would only be tempted by a coke zero, about which I have zero to say, I went for a glass of the house red. It was too warm and bland and I surrendered after one sip. The replacement was a draft Castle lager, which was beautifully chilled, and a delight.
To start, Olivier had grilled squid heads, which he raved over, and I had the prawn au gratin, which was a few peeled prawns drowned in a pool of processed cheese. Nothing wrong with it, the prawns were beautifully tender, and I can see why it might be a big hit with the pub punters, but for me, it lacked a certain … everything.
Squid heads and prawn au gratin at Cesco’s Portuguese Pub and Restaurant in Randburg. Picture: FREDDY MAVUNDA
For the main course, he opted for eight prawns which he devoured with all the delight of a kid in a sweetshop, while I battled with a sole and chips.
We finished by greedily devouring a sticky toffee pudding (he) and ice cream and chocolate sauce (me). Both were much enjoyed.
Simple food, with no cheffy tweezers involved in plating it up. It had its low points, but we both had a fine time.
While we munched away, Olivier recalled a happy childhood in the rural Cape. “My parents were wine farmers; they grew grapes and made wine. We also had a large olive grove. It was artisanal farming — my dad made good wine that was used by KWV. He was a member of KWV.”
After boarding school in Cape Town, he joined the hospitality industry as a trainee at the Lanzerac in Stellenbosch. He then went to London where he took two courses at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school. “The first was a basic one for Sloane Rangers who needed to be able to cook to get a good husband. The second was a professional chefs’ course.
“I was then head receptionist at the Mayfair Hotel in Piccadilly for six months and got to know some quite interesting people, such as Omar Sharif and Princess Lee Radziwill [the sister of Jackie Kennedy].
“I began my first marriage. It lasted about six months, but it was four years before I divorced.”
Back in SA, he worked for Tupperware (where he felt boxed in?) before returning to the Lanzerac as manager for three years. Then on to Boschendal for nine years — as public relations manager, though he was also responsible for the restaurant.
“We then started our own restaurants,” he recalls. This time with the current Ms Olivier, the lovely Madeline, who was often hidden behind the scenes in the kitchen while Olivier schmoosed the guests.
After Parks had to close — to my fury — because of a problem with the lease, Olivier became a food and wine writer and has been active in promoting wine farms. He was also a food and wine specialist at Pick n Pay for five years.
In 2013, he received the Eat Out Lifetime Achievement Award. He recalls: “I didn’t want to go to the function, but when I did get there, I discovered I was at the head table.
“The other awards had been made and, at the end, they were introducing the Lifetime Achievement Award. They started describing some person I didn’t know — and then they said it was going to someone who had started SA’s first online food publication — and then I knew it was me.”
What of the achievements of the SA wine industry in his lifetime?
“It has been stratospheric in terms of quality. Since 1994, more young winemakers have been travelling overseas and bringing back new tricks from both the new and the old world.
“It has been amazing: I don’t think you will find an undrinkable bottle of wine these days.” (I was too polite to point to my untouched glass of rancid red.)
These have been a few tough years for the food and wine industry, though.
“Covid-19 ravaged our business — it destroyed the restaurant industry as we knew it. We now see less fine dining and more very casual food spots. Quality, in terms of training of chefs in restaurants, has certainly diminished, though there are still some very talented people out there.
“There was a skills depletion due to the lockdown. A lot of places are using the names of classic dishes and serving something that doesn’t remotely resemble the classic — such as Caesar salad with chicken or prawns.
“Beef carpaccio amuses me; it was named after the painter who used red and white as predominant colours. Now we have zucchini or fish carpaccio.” These may please the palate, but they are not faithful to the palette.
“We also see a lot of outsourcing in restaurants where people buy in bread or desserts. I wish people would pay more attention to desserts — if they did, their sales would be up. I have no wish to be offered Italian kisses, or creme caramel which come out of a plastic container in individual portions,” he insists.
Olivier has an encyclopedic knowledge of the SA wine industry and seems to know everyone and everything. So, does he share some of my concerns about restaurants and wine?
“Many have wine because they feel a restaurant has to have wine, and they are happy to hand over their wine list to a big wine company that will give them umbrellas and TV screens in return.
“There are some people, though, who are interested in wine and will meet the makers. Some restaurants will have an evening for a winery, with the menu matched with the wines. Those are quite successful. They can be fun.”
I ask him about corkage — people bringing along their own wines to a restaurant, but being charged a bit for the privilege?
“At Parks, we started charging no corkage, but then realised how much restaurateurs lose with this. Often people would say they had a special bottle, and it wasn’t special at all.”
And it is not just a wine issue. “People would come for a function and instead of going through the menu, they would order no dessert because ‘Tannie Tammy is baking us a cake’. We had to slice it up and serve the cake, and garnish the plates.
“Once when we served the coffee, a woman of a certain age brought out a clutch of miniature airline bottles of liquors from her handbag and expected us to provide the glasses.”
Olivier’s most recent achievement has been a book of recipes, based on SA culinary traditions: Friends. Food. Flavour: Great South African Recipes.
So, after this lifetime of achievement what would he want for his last meal?
“Just a wheel of real Parmesan cheese, with a really nice red wine or a good, wooded chardonnay. The older I get the more I think white wine is better with cheese than red.”
A classy choice for a classy chap.
ZA Confidential 