Taste of Joburg Festival Part One - tasty, but pricey

The Taste of Joburg Festival is a foodie event that has been held here for the past seven years. Exhibitors include local restaurants, wineries, beer makers and food producers. The main purpose of the festival is to introduce Johannesburg restaurants to the public by offering them a sampling from their menus, thus the 'taste' in the name. And if you like what you taste, you follow it up with a meal at the restaurant. You get the idea.

We attended the very first Taste of Joburg Festival years ago at Wanderers. At the time we found it to be crowded and expensive, and more importantly, didn't find a single restaurant that grabbed our attention. But we did see one of those classic Stella Artois advertisement videos that convinced us to taste it - our first time ever - and today it's still our preferred beer. 

So, unimpressed at the time, we gave Taste of Joburg a miss for the next six years. But last Sunday we decided to give the Taste of Joburg another chance.

There were  a good selection of restaurants represented at the festival, varying from hotel restaurants, bistros, tapas bars, Indian, Thai and gourmet burgers. Each restaurant had three taste options - a starter, a main course and a dessert. Each portion is the size of about two to three bites, really small. 

We worked out that at the prices the tasters were going for - anything between R15 and R40 - there were enough tasting choices to set us back just under a R1000! That was way above our budget, so we decided that the tasters that we'd try must be from restaurants we haven't eaten at before, it must be a food combination that was new to us, and it should all fit into oursmall R100 tasting budget. 

On top of that we still wanted to go visit the Joburg Art Fair at Sandton in the afternoon, we set off to explore right away.

Lacuna

Our first taster was from Lacuna, a bistro at the new Maslow hotel in Sandton. It was a starter of roasted baby beetroot, ash goat's cheese brûlée and walnut pesto served with micro herbs. Sure, beetroot and goat's cheese is old news but combined with the walnut pesto it was a taste sensation that worked, it was well balanced and refreshing. I didn't quite understand the 'brulee' part of the goat's cheese though. It was delicious enough to make a date to eat at Lacuna in the near future and try more of Chef Dallas Orr's creations. 

Roasted baby beetroot,
ash goat's cheese brûlée and walnut pesto

The Grazing Room

Our next tasting was at The Grazing Room, a tapas bar located at the DW eleven-13 restaurant in Dunkeld West. And it won the day for us! We tasted the prawn risotto balls served with a lemon aioli, a combination that was a tastebud treat. The risotto was black, coloured by squid ink and just the right consistency. It almost melts away in your mouth. 

I'm a big tapas fan. I love the small portions packed with flavour. I struggle to make choices when it comes to restaurant menus, so tapas work for me - I can have a little bit of this and a little bit of that all in one sitting. So the Grazing Room was a winner - In fact I think that this is the restaurant we'll go eat at weekend.

Prawn risotto balls

Vivace

Our taster from Vivace, the restaurant at the Raddison Blu in Sandton was a dessert. Chef Jaques Venter created a Hugenot baked cheese tart with jasmine syrup, micro herbs and a passion fruit gel on the side. According to him Hugenot is a South African award winning cheese and taste like a strong cheddar. 

The tart was surprisingly not too sweet,  I didn't taste any jasmine syrup but the passion fruit gel worked well. 

Hugenot baked cheese tart 

Would we visit Vivace for a meal? Hmm… not sure. The dessert was good, but not outstanding.

Next time: our Taste of Joburg adventure continues!