I have had many a meal at Tashas.   This chain of upper- middle-market restaurants is excellent at providing above-average food, good service and a bustling atmosphere.  And boy do they bustle.  No booking of a table here.  They are often full, and there are often queues for a table.  It is a successful chain, and normally deserves that success.

However……..

My buddy George wanted to meet me for lunch the other day and opted for the Melrose Arch Tashas.    This is a hugely popular, slightly-too-crowded-and-noisy place.

I arrived early and ordered a bottle of wine.  As so often, I gravitated towards Warwick and the delicious First Lady Chardonnay.   But trouble was lurking.

After about 10 minutes (with George installed as well) we asked where the wine was.  The answer was they didn’t have any but were “looking upstairs”.  Time dragged on, and they decided they did have a bottle, but it was too warm.  Would we like anything else?

Now I know that sometimes there is a wine on a wine list which is out of stock or not ready to serve, although this really should not be the case in a place with a very, very small selection of wines.

I ordered a glass of tap water.  Price: zero.

My plight and the smoke coming out of my ears attracted the attention of the lady manager, who was suitably apologetic, and soon found a bottle of my chosen wine, even offering it to me for free.   By then my mood had soured from pleasantly fruity to acidic vinegar, and I declined.   I finished my (very ordinary and not well constructed) toasted sandwich, and we left.   We were not charged for our meal, even though George had demolished a plate of very tasty looking salmon.

What was brilliant is the way in which they cared about a customer, even in a very busy restaurant, and even though the waitress had been terrible in not telling me from the start that my chosen wine was not going to arrive for a long, long, long time.      My sulk continues.

The following day, I was back in a Tashas, this time the one in Morningside, for breakfast with a dear friend – so dear that she picked up the bill.

Nothing really wrong with this meal, apart from one severlye irritating remark from the waiter.

I had ordered my favourite breakfast: two eggs, four slices of bacon and two of toast.  And go easy on the foliage.   There may be a place for rocket, but it ain’t on my plate.

The waiter’s response was a classic, which I will remember to my dying day (pretty soon if I don’t go easy on the bacon).

He said I couldn’t have four rashers of bacon: “We do three or six.”

My response was that I expected four rashers to be brought to the table, or the manager.  They decided I would be happier with the four rashers.  And the breakfast was very good, once we had resolved the rasher ration quandary.

Am I planning a boycott of Tashas?  No.   Although quite pricy for what it is, it has a good formula, OK coffee, and does some food very well.

And I do admire a place which tries to resolve a customer’s complaints, rather than a restaurant which regards the customer as the problem (see previous postings).

Tweet of the Day

Shit Jokes (@ShitJokes): When I was young, I was adopted by a man called Daz. He’s my non-biological father.

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A missed-steak-en quest.

What is a sandwich?    In my experience, it is two pieces of bread with a filling, or if you are into Nordic style, it can be one slice topped with, well, toppings.

I am partial to a good sandwich, and my mate George loves a good steak.  It was a Monday and our first choice of venue was closed for lunch, so we opted for Bellinis, which is just off Oxford Road in Illovo.

We arrived early and it was pretty empty, but soon filled up.   We were welcomed by a lady with a face so grumpy that I wondered if we had stumbled into an above-ground dominatrix place.  As warm welcomes go, this had gone some time ago.

There was an excellent wine choice on 2 chalk boards, with food specials on the 3^rd, and I opted for the ever-reliable, nicely-chilled, Haute Cabriere Chardonnay-Pinot Noir blend.

I wasn’t that hungry, so skipped the starter, while George opted for fish cakes. He claims that these are a good barometer of the quality of a restaurant. They were cold in the middle, and he found a fish bone in one. Not good.

George ordered a steak, and I went for a steak sandwich. It was the strangest sandwich I have ever been served.   On the plate were two slices of hard, dry, tasteless, awful toast.  A Rock of Gibraltar-shaped lump of fillet was placed between the slices.  It was nice meat, but cooked with abstraction and indifference.

I questioned the layout and was told by an even fiercer-faced assistant dominatrix that this is how they do their steak sandwiches.  It went back, and that was the end of the meal for me.

George’s steak was OK but not memorable.

So for our next steak experience we opted for the nearby Turn ‘n Tender steakhouse in the Illovo Centre.

It took a while to place our orders with the mumbling waiter.  I had a blue cheese burger, which was a bit heavy, but was served with a generous jacket potato.  However, the small pack of butter on the side was liquid and I wondered how long (hours, days, weeks?) it had stood at room temperature.

The wine was a safe choice – a bottle of red Warwick 1st Lady.  It was way, way, way, way, way too warm, and one wondered whether they had mistakenly put the wine on the grill instead of the meat.  Ice cubes were required to lower the temperature, but they diluted the wine too much and it was not a great pleasure to drink.

George opted for the sirloin, which was on special, and which he ordered medium rare.   It arrived way overcooked with a basting sauce which was layered on top.  The problem is that he did not like the basting sauce and had asked for it to be left off.  There seems to be a serious problem of communication between the waiters, who ask you what you would like, and the cooks, who serve you the steaks as they wish to cook them.

We had arrived a bit late, but even so it was disconcerting that the staff installed themselves en-masse at a nearby table for their lunch.   Don’t charge restaurant prices and expect your guests to dine in the staff canteen.

I gather that despite this experience, George returned for dinner with a visiting friend, and the meat was undercooked, cold in the middle.    It was sent back.

No tip was offered at the end, which led to a protest from the waiter.

It was not a successful steak search for George.  He had to send back his meat in the Wanderers Club because it was clearly not fresh at yet another lunch rdv.

The quest continues.

 

Tweets of the Day

Stansaid Airport (@StansaidAirport): Old Benny there was just saying ‘when one door closes, another door opens!’ Lovely man, terrible shuttle bus driver.

Stansaid Airport (@StansaidAirport): BBC: Court convicts Glasgow man of printing counterfeit notes and orders him to pay £100,000. I don’t think they’ve thought this through.

Mark Twain (@TheMarkTwain):  A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

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Are foreign visitors being ripped off after they fly into South Africa?  It has been well reported that some are targeted, followed from the airport, and then robbed when they get to their destination.

However, can there be a scam involving something as everyday as a SIM card?

I am not saying that fraud is happening.  But I have every reason to believe it is possible.

I was recently at ORT to meet a friend who was flying in from Istanbul.   After he finally emerged from the bureaucratic checks, he needed to get a local SIM card.   The MTN shop had sold out, there was a big queue at Vodacom, so he went to Cell C.

Now George is no ordinary international jet setter with an excellent taste in friends.  He runs an IT business, knows a hell of a lot about cyber-security, and can spot a potential scam.

He was concerned that his identity was not recorded, as is required, during the transaction.  The SIM was fitted in his phone but the credit-card sized plastic holder from which it was extracted was kept by the salesman.  It was only after we had navigated several buggered escalators to the car park that he realised this, and insisted on returning.

When he asked for his plastic, which he is adamant contains enough information for an insider to cancel the SIM and grab the data, he was told he didn’t need it.

Once again, I am not saying there was fraud.  I am just very suspicious, and clearly proper procedures were not followed at this shop, and the same may be happening at other outlets both at ORT and at other SA airports.

So what does Cell C have to say for itself?    I asked for their comment and here is an (edited) version of their responses.

“Yes, it is a requirement under the Act (RICA) to obtain the personal information of a customer before a Sim Card can be activated on a mobile network. The same applies to Non South African citizens or individuals who do not permanently reside in South Africa. In order to activate a SIM, a customer must provide his or her full names and surname, identity or passport number and address where the person will reside while in South Africa. If an employee is found to be in breach of this process, the necessary action will be taken. In order to investigate this matter, we require the MSISDN of the affected customer.”

I did put them in touch with the customer.  I also asked why the plastic on which details of the SIM were printed had not been given to the customer, and this is what they replied:

“The customer should be given the choice to keep or discard the Sim card holder, The store employee should therefore have asked the customer if he wanted to keep the card holder. We will investigate this matter further.”

So, Cell C, is there a scam?

“We are not aware of any such scams. The information printed on the card alone cannot give you direct access to information as the cell number is not printed on the card. Nonetheless, we will investigate the matter further.”

It has been a week or two but I have heard nothing further from Cell C.

As I said earlier, I am told that if you are on the inside, and a crook, you can do a lot of things with just the PIN and PUK numbers.

As a footnote, my mate was back at the airport later in the same week, topped up his data, but was again not asked to identify himself.

He had been asked on his initial visit to the shop how long he was staying in the country.  This may have been polite chit chat, but it might have been more sinister.

George and I smell a rat.  If it is just Micky Mouse inefficiency, it is still a worry.

Tweet of the Day:

Mark Twain (@TheMarkTwain):  A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

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Incentives:

A lot of people are suspicious of government officials, so we must raise our hats to senior dti bureaucrat Garth Strachan.   He blew the lid on his department’s justifiable frustrations when it tries to support business and grow jobs, only to see such efforts being demolished by other government departments.

The venue was a discussion on a slightly dodgy World Bank report (is there any other kind?) which gave a lot of attention to tax incentives in SA.

Quite why there was not equal attention to all the grant incentives puzzled most of the audience at the Wits Business School, a place where finding a car parking space is as difficult as tuning in to a white presenter on 702.

Strachan was reacting to the Manufacturing Circle’s boss Philippa Rodseth, who had politely understated that there is “not always alignment” between government departments and officials when it comes to incentives.

Strachan responded, agreeing that a lack of policy coherency in government “is a very big constraint.”

He said that the dti is trying to grow the renewable energy sector, but “another part of government says we will not connect it up to the national grid.”

He appeared to be referring to the foot-dragging by Eskom in signing up agreements to take power from new greener independent producers, something which government and the regulators seem powerless (every pun intended) to over-rule.

The casualties of this?  Strachan said there are five component manufacturers in the renewable energy sector, who have been supported by the dti which “are closing their doors” because of uncertain demand.   Wow.

As we head for the budget on the 22^nd of February, it would be wise to look carefully at the government’s buffet of incentives, to ensure that when they are offered to uplift a company, there is not some grubby civil servant lurking under the table to knee the recipients in the dangly department.

After all, it is not the State’s money which is being squandered.  It came from taxpayers.

 

Timing:

Your man on the streets of Sandton stormed out of a breakfast meeting today.   It was at the office obelisk of law giant Webber Wentzel, and involved a round table discussion on women in power.   Not the dominatrix stuff, but the oil and gas stuff.

There were three problems:  The draw card was one of Africa’s richest women Isabel dos Santos, whose spectacular success we assume has nothing to do with her parentage.    On arrival, we were told she was a no-show.   Then the breakfast turned out to be muffins, sandwiches and skewers of fruit.  All were great, but they weren’t bacon and egg.   Just as Brexit means Brexit, so breakfast should mean breakfast.  Misleading advertising of the cruellest kind.

However, I would have struggled on had I not arrived before 8am for an 8.30 event which had still not kicked off at 9am.

The rudeness of the organisers is unforgiveable, and my only regret is that I didn’t snatch a pile of muffins on the way out, for a mid-morning top-up.

 

Tweet of the Day:

Fin24 (@Fin24):   Trump has called on his countrymen to “buy American and hire American.” – tinyurl.com/zjsr8b8 #Trade pic.twitter.com/vyJZUwok6W

 

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Brexit:

It has been encouraging to see that our trade and industry (dti) minister Rob Davies has finally popped up in London to discuss Brexit.    The European Union is this country’s main trading partner, but once the British blow their final raspberry at Brussels, we will need a new, bilateral, trade deal with the UK.    It may be that what we have already with the rest of the EU will be preserved with the countries which stay in the bloc, removing the need for another few decades of wrangling over, say, what we call our port and sherry.

Britain itself is a valuable and traditional trading partner of South Africa, and our current trade relations with the country were soured to some extent by the fact that they were negotiated under the (fiercely protectionist) forces of Europe’s Club Med – the EU countries around the Mediterranean which are direct competitors for our wines, fruit and veg.

So what does Red Rob need to achieve?    First of all, he needs to hang on to what we have got.   The UK market is going to continue to be an important one and we need to preserve our current access for exports, and then to improve this.   Going back to Port and Sherry – will a post-Brexit Britain need to abide by EU rules on the naming of agricultural products, under the Geographical Indicators framework?  If not, our marketing efforts will receive a boost, as our ports and sherries (along with our other armoury of brilliant booze) can compete fiercely in terms of quality against the plonk from Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, and may well also be highly price competitive.

So Red Rob has a lot to gain.

It would be wonderful if he can return from London with a schedule for trade negotiations with the Brits, if necessary barging aside upstarts like Trump.

Of course, it won’t be plain sailing against the nation which won back the Falklands and defeated the Armada.   There will be lobbies from sectors of the UK economy which will want a tougher deal with SA – I can think, for instance, of the automotive industry.

South Africa has a good track record in trade negotiations, a good set of skilled officials, and a minister who may not be widely admired at home, but who has shown integrity and grit on the world stage.

Let’s just get a bloody move on!

 

Some Rosebank Restaurant moans:

One of life’s real pleasures is to eat, drink and be merry.    However, for me the merriment is dependent on the eating and drinking.     If either is sub-standard, merry becomes misery.

That is why I have been so angry at two very expensive restaurants in Johannesburg which failed to deliver to standard.

I went with a client to the Rosebank Grillhouse, and our meal was horrid.  The food was well prepared, the service friendly and efficient, but there was something small and living on my friend’s plate.

This was whisked away, his meal was replaced, but the magic was gone.   Neither of us had much of an appetite after that, and this rather expensive meal is one I will be happy to forget.

There is a Koi restaurant in the nearby courtyard, and some chums from the media division of one of the big banks were foolish enough to offer me lunch there.

They even more foolishly let me choose the wine, which was wonderful, but the prices were very high.

For a starter I had two (oversized) skewers of meat, seasoned in a Japanese style.  Fortunately, there was wine on hand, because they did not taste nice.

I then had some duck and pancakes.  The duck was very dry, making the dish less than enjoyable.

All in all, the food was sub-standard and the prices charged for it were excessive.  Another eat, drink, and be miserable experience.

I will soon be going to one of Rosebank’s newest and most fashionable restaurants.  Watch this space. …..

Tweet of the Day: Sarah Britten Pillay (@Anatinus):   Remind me never to rush to get to a doctor’s appointment on time

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