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Turn over a new leaf
Mostly raw, partly cooked, and simply heavenly delicious
Jan 18, 2011 11:44 PM | By The Bandit at Large
The Bandit at Large: "We're going on a Sunday lunch raid," the Bandit announces, and it doesn't take close listening for the pricking of junior ears to be audible. Even their thumbs lift momentarily from the cellphone keypads to which they are invisibly tied.
BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS: Vegan strawberry and vanilla cheesecake
"Vegan at Leafy Greens Cafe & Shop in Muldersdrift - 80% raw, 20% cooked. Organic. Solar-powered dehydrator."
Shoulders slump, fingers fly into action.
Sorted. Quality time with the beautiful Distraction. And there's always Total's N17 Petroport that looks after giant African bullfrogs - and stocks such excellent biltong - on the route home. All eventualities covered.
Shards of an insistent sun break through the thick clouds just as the crew rolls into Casalinga's understandably crowded parking area.
Assailed by the intoxicating smell emanating from Casalinga's bustling kitchen, which stands between the car park and the lifestyle change - Eat Well, Do Right - offered by Leafy Greens, the Bandit falls at the first hurdle. Face down at the bar. Into a bowl of Casalinga's steamed mussels draped with a slightly creamy, superbly balanced, tart yet sun-sweet tomato sauce that rivals even those relished in a white wine and leek sauce at the same venue late last year.
"Vine ripened tomatoes ... incomparable," the Bandit murmurs in ecstasy to a blissed- out Distraction as he sucks another plump bivalve from its newly opened shell.
Owner Peter de Luca bursts out of the kitchen bearing a platter of vegetables for guests celebrating a birthday - lightly char-grilled baby carrots, beans, zucchini slices in a light batter, glistening aubergine, spinach croquettes.
"From the garden . even the tomatoes," he says, pointing at the crew's mussels, beaming as he swoops past. "Picked this morning."
The crew mops up every last bit of sauce with the restaurant's trademark bread, settles the bill and heads, slightly shame-faced, to join the quite clearly striving-to-be-healthier patrons of Leafy Greens, who are being attended to by the altogether rudely-aglow-with-good-health Antonia de Luca.
Her face lights up at the prospect of guiding the crew through the raw buffet - zucchini boats laden with a sprout salad dressed with orange juice, dehydrated nut loaf topped with a cayenne pepper-laced red pepper marinade, coleslaw with vegan mayo, green salad featuring zucchini spaghetti, and a minted tomato, onion and watermelon salad in which the self-same heritage tomatoes that make the mussel sauce sing, are the uncontested superstars.
On the hot buffet: organic brown rice, vegetable curry in a light coconut milk and turmeric sauce, cabbage rolls braised in a tomato sauce, spinach croquettes ...
Every dish is attractively presented; without exception appetising.
The Bandit and the Distraction return to the table, plates laden with moral and nutritional health.
"Bok se kos", as boxer Kallie Knoetze once described vegetables, never tasted so good. The tomato and watermelon salad is a triumph, the curry a subtle celebration of freshness, the contrast in texture between the outer leaves of cabbage and the tender filling remarkable.
Proud pater familia Peter pops in to check that his graceful daughter is coping with the Sunday onslaught.
"Tell them about the vegan cheesecake," he says, rolling his eyes heavenward.
The crew is silent as it makes a daunting wedge of the strawberry and vanilla version, sweetened with agave syrup because veganism proscribes the involvement of any animal, and set on a nut base, disappear. Enough said.
A second wedge, this one spirulina and mint, magically disappears. Who would have thought the Bandit would one day punt the culinary delights of powdered pond scum?
A superbly fed crew heads directly home. Biltong? Who said anything about biltong?
THE HIT LIST:
Watermelon, tomato salad: *****
Zucchini boats: ****
Curried vegetables: ****
Cabbage rolls ****
Vegan cheesecake: *****
Damage: None whatever
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