Dining Out - Bosmans Restaurant (Grande Roche Hotel, Paarl)

So my lovely lady @fempower and I decided to formalise our relationship this past weekend.
So as is customary we went away to ensure the arrangement was well consummated {wide grin}. Our destination was the five star Grande Roche Hotel in Paarl, Western Cape.

This is mainly about our dining experience that evening, a stunning four course meal, fine dining prepared by a three star Michelin trained Austrian chef. The restaurant is named Bosman’s Restaurant and has won culinary awards in the past

View from the patio where we had a light lunch

Cheese Puff filled with mature cheddar cream and mushroom mousse on an oxtail and mushroom reduction. The taste was exquisite

It was really difficult to decide on starters as the choices all sounded sublime, in the end we settled for the two absolute master dishes that follow.

Prawn Carpaccio with pan seared sea water prawn, pickled fennel slices, fennel mousse and a stuffed risotto ball ( cannot remember stuffed with what but by all accounts it was stunning) all on a fennel and prawn reduction. The white puffs are dried cream which becomes normal wet cream when eaten with the other ingredients As can be seen there were other very tasty bits on the plate, and my lady pronounced it absolutely stunning

Steak tartare topped with a poached saldanha bay oyster with an oyster foam, rye bread crackers and a quail egg. Now this was more complex than that as can be told by the photograph, but believe me it was ridiculously tasty

We both settled for the same main, that being a Kingklip dish which was also pretty complex (Damn, i wish I had the menu but that is not to be), so hopefully the photo will tell the story

Kingklip with salted baby sardines, scampi, smoked oysters and other delicious stuff all on a bed of oxtail and mushroom jeu

Now to be honest this did not work as well for me. The dried sardines were amazing and the jeu was great but I felt it was all a bit much for the supposed hero of the dish and the kingklip was a poor relative, having no distinct taste of it’s own.

My dessert was a beautiful chocolate fondant accompanied by a cognac vanilla sorbet and charred citrus and nuts on some really tasty creme base

My bride had an amazing deconstructed Apple and Cinnamon Strudel with her pronouncing that it ‘simply took my breath away’. Once again I wish I could give the dish it’s full credit.

And as we finished our dinner and headed for the room the above plate and a bottle of sparkling wine was given to us to celebrate our marriage…. We both groaned but nonetheless thanked them enthusiastically

Unfortunately the Maitre’d had promised to print off the menu for us to take away with us so I could describe the dishes properly, but had printer problems and assured us we will have it waiting when we arrived for breakfast. This never transpired.

This is a must visit for anyone who really enjoys fine dining and food with different elements combining to give an ‘other worldly’ taste. I was extremely impressed with the kitchen and the head chef

As always, thanks for reading and keep your eye out for my post on the hotel itself.