The Place: When Giorgio Nava closed Caffé Milano bakery and replaced it with another branch of meat-focused Carne SA this July, I joked to a colleague that perhaps Cape Town’s low-carb-high-fat phase was steering diners away from breads and sweet pastries towards protein-rich steaks sporting fat. The Milanese chef-restaurateur opened the original Carne SA in Cape Town’s Keerom Street legal district in 2009. His point of difference has always been to supply his restaurants with meat from his own Karoo farms.
The new Kloof Street venue has distressed brick walls bearing the same decorative wooden pods found in Carne Keerom Street. Dim lighting makes night dining more enticing but the smaller café interior space easily feels crowded. Street-facing tables are another option. This is more than a steakhouse, and many of Nava’s jet-setting regulars have already congregated. Quite a few are on the upper side of forty, wearing heels and evidence of botox.
The Drinks: Bottled wine value is better value; by the glass starts at R33 for white or R40 for red. You’ll find a fair list of Cap Classique and whites, plus sufficient steak-friendly current and older-vintage reds. We drank Felicité Pinot Noir 2012 (R165).
The Food: The smaller menu looked similar to the original Carne in Keerom. To start, signature ravioli (R80) filled with slow-braised lamb offered savoury simplicity in four perfectly silky pockets, meat juices melding with burnt butter and salty Parmesan. A caprese salad (R80) combined diced tomato, the odd caper and creamy-rich, bouncy burrata mozzarella.
Some of Carne’s game, plus the Dorper lamb and pork, is from Nava’s Karoo farms. But it was grassfed beef from Italian Romagnola crossed with South African Nguni and Afrikaner cows that appealed at our table. Switched on waiters showed off a platter of raw meat specimens; for carnivores there’s no better advertisement. The fat 1.2kg la fiorentina T-bone for two (R400) was sorely tempting. Or for novelty value from the specials, the boneless spider steak from the back of the knee, earning its name from web-like marbled fat streaks (R140 for 250g).
The tender prime rib cut (rib-eye on the bone) didn’t disappoint. Priced from R140 upwards, no sticky bastes diluted meaty flavour on this plump, tender 500g slab (R175) of beef. All Carne grills include sides in the price: mash, spinach, broccoli or salad, otherwise charged at R25 to R30. My thin-cut fries were overcooked, and the mushroom and brandy butter side sauce was small for R20, but that’s where the criticism ends. Cooked to order, a 600g tomahawk (R195) of flavoursome sirloin on a front rib had its bone extended dinosaur-like off an oversized plate.
The Verdict? The obvious question as a diner: were the steaks at Carne on Kloof still hitting the mark? Carne SA’s Keerom HQ dry-ages their prime rib, but other steak cuts are typically wet-aged for 28 days. Carne on Kloof wet-ages all its meat currently, but is introducing dry-ageing space in a couple of months. Although meat’s ageing technicalities are usually relevant, the free-range beef quality was so good here that it wasn’t. Carne on Kloof’s steaks rate with South Africa’s best.
CARNE ON KLOOF, 153 Kloof Street, Tamboerskloof. Tel 021-426-5566. Open Mon to Sat for lunch and dinner. Another Carne SA branch is opening in Constantia in September.
This article appeared in The Times on 20 August 2014.