Tag Archives: Hendricks Gin

An African Odyssey: Dog’s Bollocks and Bitch’s Tits

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I had recently arrived from America and was tasked with interviewing some UK customers by my employer.  One such customer accused the company of being arrogant.  Leaning forward, he angrily stuck a finger in my face and asked, “why do you guys think that you are the dog’s bollocks”? I had no idea.  In fact I had no idea what “dog’s bollocks” meant.  I remember carefully writing down the words “dog’s bollocks” in my notebook and promising the customer that I will get back to him on the bollocks issue…

Dog’s bollocks means dog’s testicles, but in British slang usage it means very good, or the top of the pile.  Really.  Think bee’s knees or cat’s pyjamas. On the other hand when the word bollocks is used by itself, it means rubbish.  Or nuts.

A Lotus Eclat guards the entrance to Dog’s Bollocks

Dog’s can famously lick their own testicles.  Through the ages men have been fascinated and/or jealous of this canine capability.  I never did get around to getting Nigel Wood’s personal perspective on testicles as we chatted inside his restaurant, The Dog’s Bollocks in Cape Town, South Africa.  This is currently the hottest ticket in Cape Town, a burger restaurant in a garage/drive way.  The October 2012 UK edition of Esquire magazine lists it as one of the top ten attractions in Cape Town. They take no reservations and open from “5 to 50″.  Nigel starts serving at 5PM and stops when he’s served 50 burgers. After that he pushes the tables back to make room in the garage for his one-eyed 1970′s Lotus Eclat.  (The Eclat has a vacuum seal that keeps the pop-up headlamps shut.  If the car is left parked for a while, the vacuum leaks and one headlight pops open. Cute.)

The entrance to the restaurant is literally the garage door.  The tin roof has a few translucent plastic panels to let in light.  The long narrow space is broken up by a grill where the famous burgers are cooked.  Tucked away to a side is a branch of Deluxe Coffee Works, the artisanal coffee roasters in Cape Town.  A tiny motorbike repair shop also shares the space.  Customers of the coffee shop regularly ride their scooters and motorbikes into the store.  Its all uber trendy and slightly nuts.

Bikes and coffee next door at Deluxe Coffee Works

The garage roof leaks when it rains.  It was raining hard when I visited with Capetonian friends including the Cupcake (she’s sweet and she bakes well) and the Princess Monkey (she’s titled and she’s nuts).  The sloping garage floor was soon awash with rain water.  Nigel kindly showed us to a “good table” where we’d get less wet.  A waitress hurriedly unplugged a floor lamp.  Eventually someone donned galoshes and splashed across to fire up the grill.  The restaurant is BYOB except for wine.  Nigel bottles his own red and white in tubes and sells them under the U-Tube label (by Ukuva iAfrica).  It’s big in Poland, apparently. At Dog’s Bollocks the wine is served in conventional bottles at R55 (GB£4 or US$6 ).  I ordered a bottle of red.  Nigel gave me a bottle and said “here’s the wine, there are some glasses, here’s a corkscrew.”   The service is delightfully quirky, as is everything else about the place.   The restaurant serves different menus through the day – and is called different names at different times.  At breakfast the restaurant is called Mucky Mary’s Hubcap.  At lunch time it’s called The Bitch’s Tits.  Hubcaps, tits and testicles –  only in Africa!

Nigel preps his burgers

The burgers are amazing.  They are served on enormous, light as air rolls with what must be half a head of lettuce, onions, tomato and pickle.  The secret is in the home made sauces.  Mexican chocolate mole, pepperberry and blue cheese, and prego (a spicy Portuguese sauce) are standouts.  The table went quiet as we greedily tucked in.  I had the prego sauce and felt the spice gradually build up on my taste buds as beads of sweat broke out on my forehead.  The burgers are so large that once you man-handle them into your mouth you don’t want the hassle of putting them back down and figuring out how to pick them up again.  We inhaled our food.

Dog’s Bollocks is a symbol of how South Africa would like to see itself; multicultural, irreverent and re-inventing itself as it goes along.  Yet roofs and more leak all over the country.  I can’t tell whether we are seeing the birthing pains of a great African state or witnessing the last days of empire.  Either way it’s a fascinating place to visit.  Go! It’s the dog’s bollocks.

Further Reading and Drinking

The hot cocktail bar of the moment in Cape Town is The Orphanage.  An unfortunate choice of name perhaps but it is on Orphan Street and a share of profits do go to the orphanage up the road.  My favourite place for a post prandial drink however, is the bar at the Mount Nelson hotel where old world colonial glamour meets some of the most hospitable bar staff I’ve met.  The Old Fashioned’s and the Hendrick’s Cucumber Martinis they make are particularly good.

Blogger My Love Affair with Cape Town wishes to keep Dog’s Bollocks a secret so it wouldn’t get too crowded.  A common lament.  Sheila Allen talks about her love affair with burgers in Cape Town Alive.

Sacred Cows and Bartering for Sex

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Rarely do I eat twice at the same  restaurant in one week. I was happy to make an exception recently for Roast, the superb British food emporium in London’s Borough Market.  I ate there one Sunday evening with family and then spent a  louche Friday afternoon lunching with my friend, the Irish Media Svengali.

The restaurant boasts a cool urban view. The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral looms large, bisected by a railway bridge. Nearby are statues of larger than life sized cows mounted on a roof.  One red painted bovine has a sign on its flank which reads “love me”. This is not a new age Hindu temple, however.  To prevent any confusion another cow has the word STEAK boldly emblazoned on its side; it’s all a tableau for the neighboring Black and Blue steak house.

A perspective on bovine love as seen through the windows at Roast

At night the art work at Roast is thrown into sharp relief  (currently a rather disturbing photo exhibit of castrated men by Shekhar Bhatia ). During daylight hours one is overwhelmed by the hubbub of Borough Market.  A market has stood here since the 11th century although the current buildings date from the 1850s. It remains Britain’s pre-eminent wholesale food market and it’s retail market has become a huge draw for foodies.

Roast specializes in carefully sourced British meats and game – and some exceptional British intoxicants. We started one meal with British bubbly from Chapel Down in Kent. Together with Nyetimber (in Sussex),  Chapel Down has been creating some rather exceptional sparkling wines.  Both brands are based in Southern England where the chalky soil and weather is very similar to the Champagne region in France.  Nyetimber’s British bubbly is favoured by the current German representatives of the House of Windsor, although Kate and William quaffed from the rival Chapel Down  Estate at their wedding. The wine makers at Chapel Down make a special blend of bubbly for Roast.  The Roast Chapter II NV we drank had a complex array of fruit flavours and a nice smooth finish. Pity the pricing puts it in the same league as the better French champagnes – one suspects that it gets consumed more for curiosity value than for flavour.

I stayed with a British drinking theme for the next meal and ordered a Hendrick’s cucumber martini. Hendrick’s is a venerable British gin; one of the pot stills they use famously dates from the 1860s. Hendricks is infused with cucumber and rose petal, making it particularly tasty in a  cucumber martini.  It comes in a marvelous black flagon for those who like to drink at home.

Cucumber martinis gained popularity in the early years of the  21st century, possibly as an antidote to the increasingly sweet and fruity martini concoctions hitting the bars. A cucumber martini is a  halfway house between the savory tanginess of a traditional martini (particularly if drunk with olives) and the sweetness of say, an espresso martini. The gin is typically muddled with some fresh cucumber and sugar.  Some steep the cucumber in the gin overnight and filter it.  Personally,  I like to see a little cloudiness in the gin from the muddled cucumber and inhale the scent of the fresh gourd.  It is usually served with a slice of cucumber.

I first tasted a cucumber martini at Beach Blanket Babylon with my most glamorous friend, the Notting Hill PR.  The dot com boom had gone spectacularly bust and my Notting Hill based media business was struggling.  We had a decent mailing list and good traffic to our website so we frequently bartered advertising space for goods and services. One of my more enterprising sales lads struck a barter deal which provided us with free drinks every Friday afternoon at Beach Blanket Babylon. It turned out he also managed to get it on with our rather comely waitress, although I am not sure whether she was part of the original barter transaction! She made generous tips.

The rococo interior at Beach Blanket Babylon in Shoreditch

The original BBB in Notting Hill suffered through a period of neglect and the building began to  literally fall apart.  When bus loads of Eastern European tourists started arriving on a regular basis, the writing was on the wall for a bar once frequented by the likes of Madonna.  Latterly its fortunes have revived.  The space has been dressed up again in its inimitable dungeon meets Gaudi decor. It’s attracting a cool crowd once more. Its east end extension in Shoreditch is a gathering place for hipsters and fashionistas. The Shoreditch location in particular has been garnering favourable reviews from bloggers like VTravelled and Click Tonight.  Both bars continue to serve decent cocktails although the waiting staff appear to have been hired for their looks and not their competence – your drink is likely to be served with a dollop of attitude.  I don’t know what happened to our comely waitress.  My enterprising sales lad has become very successful and continues to make creative deals.