Review: Salad at Quintessence in Melville – yuk
Women’s day called for a late lunch and with the beautiful Joburg sun creating a late afternoon glow through the air, we decided a pavement restaurant was the only option.
“Put it this way, if we had thrown the old lettuce left in the fridge drawer for two weeks onto a plate and eaten it, it would probably have had more flavour”
In Joburg there are several ‘villagey’ suburbs w…
here groovy restaurants and terraces spill onto the road, each with their own vibe and spirit. Parkhurst is probably the most bleached and squeaky clean of the bunch, sometimes bordering on sterile. If you like Biggie Best meets Granny’s attic with a dark naughty side at night, it’s for you. As a friend said on a recent lunch in Parkhurst “where are all the darkies?”
Greenside has a more upmarket and visionary culinary feel to it, with top end restaurants, a very relaxed and mixed after-work crowd. Many of the restaurants have ‘sittings’, which means that you can only eat during certain ‘meal’ times.
Then of course there’s Melville, land of hippy’s, the media crowd and pavements sellers… you just can’t beat Melville for it’s laid back, integrated, multi-cultural buzz… Celebs, shlebs, locals, tourists all mashed together in one of the many tempting cafes and restaurants. It changes all the time with restaurants closing and being replaced with lofty names like ‘Serendipity’ (watch out you’re next for a review!) that you can tell the owner got straight from dictionary.com. We vote Melville as number one for the sheer People Viewing Factor – it’s hard to beat and you will be thoroughly entertained.
Anyway, back to the Review, we needed something healthy and had had our eye on the classy QUINTESSENCE which in essence (hee hee) is a deli with mouth-watering food on offer. So we ordered our ‘Quintessence salad’, which was supposed to consist of strips of chicken and bacon on a salad with croutons. It was R32 and at that price it was an utter dissapointment.
Maybe the problem is that we compare all salads to those adventures served at Primi Piatti in Rosebank – but come on people! The salad(s) consisted of a scant base of tired and threadbare iceberg lettuce (ugh) lightly sprinkled with a few shards of Bacon and Chicken with a few soggy croutons thrown in. The salad was tiny, badly presented and BLAND BLAND BLAND.
Put it this way, if we had thrown the old lettuce left in the fridge drawer for two weeks onto a plate and eaten it, it would probably have had more flavour.
We don’t mean to be nasty but Melville is a major tourist destination and QUINTESSENCE did not live up to it’s reputation. A little bit more effort on style, bulking up the ingredients and a smile from the distracted staff would have made a huge difference.
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