Blairgowrie hasn’t ever held any plinth place in the panoply of great restaurants and food places of Jozi. It’s said that people who don’t like surprises like to be in Blairgowrie because nothing much ever happens there. So what’s with Blairgowrie now, suddenly? 

I’m here because I kept hearing of exceptionally good places like Coalition and Urbanologi opening in… and I thought I heard incorrectly… Blairgowrie. I wondered if the two restaurants were anywhere near each other by chance and came to see for myself. 

It turns out that they’re slap bang next to one another, very neighbourly on the pavement with their tables. The only thing is that Urbanologi, the brilliant restaurant that was always part of the Mad Giant brewery in Newtown, is not quite the same thing here. It’s something new.

Most of the new places are in the recently completed Delta Centre, overlooking the section of Delta Park where the Braamfontein Spruit forges between Craighall Park and Blairgowrie. The centre looks just right for us Covid-mindful ones who seek airy, half-outdoorsy experiences. 

Delta Centre looks just right for us Covid-mindful ones who seek airy, half-outdoorsy experiences. (Photo: Supplied)

I find the centre’s logo adorable. I understand that it is a stylised strelitzia. But I know, deep down, that it is Piglet looking east.

Is this corner of Conrad Drive and Hillcrest Avenue evidence of a soft-lockdown opening frenzy? It does seem that not all of the restaurant industry is as doomed as we thought because, although some of these places are brand new, five and a half of them are branches of existing restaurants and food places, saying something cheering about growth.

Mr Pants (Est 2020) is bandbox-new. It’s a wine bar with a few choice eats and wonderful opportunities for more restaurateurs. Mr Pants is the place where people can buy glasses of wine when there are market days or other events at the centre. It also works as a sit-down spot in its own wine-tasting right. And then it will host great pop-up chefs like the one with the ex-Farro Windebanks, chefs Alex and Eloise creating their especially and famously delicious meals. The Windebanks have been having a lot of fun popping up at interesting spots around Johannesburg lately. 

Something not many people know about Mr Pants’ owner Shayne Holt, who started Coalition and Eatery among other serious-food-but-fun Jozi places, is that he’s also a qualified sommelier and here he can play with wines to his and our hearts’ content and taste informedness.

Paul’s Homemade Ice Creams is next door, though waiting for some countertops before flinging the doors open. I am mentally lining up at a safe social distance to taste the yuzu and white chocolate ice cream. It’s bound to be scrumptious because Paul’s ice creams are those no-skimp, all-in ones of the full and real custard content. 

The biggest place, right on the corner, is an enormous, brighter version of Whole Earth, the ‘health shop’ in Emmarentia beloved of vegetarians, vegans and food lovers in general. And I know owner Matthew Ballenden as one of the nicest people I’ve ever lived next to and a real vegetarian chef. He would bring me packets of black beans from his shop when they were difficult to get. Today he’s pacing back and forth in the kitchen a bit like a Doberman, looking tense. He’s a perfectionist and the new staff are learning the new kitchen on the job. Orders are flying in from the wide-open restaurant and he’s peeling them off the pass and harrying the cooks as he strides back and forth.

“Mexican Omelette! Moroccan Wrap. Sure you’re with the recipe? You’re making it all up as you go along aren’t you?” He glances at an astonishingly calm cook who carries on without answering. “But it needs to be exact. We’re waiting. Waiting. Ready this one! Harissa Burger times two. Those fresh wholewheat buns from the baker there. Sharp knife.” 

The Harissa Guacamole Burger on a home-baked wholewheat bun with  fresh-cut fries. Everything is made from scratch. (Photo: Supplied)

I turn and see a just-as-curious friend just arrived at a table behind me and so we explore the shop, the deli, the fresh vegetable section with some intriguing new potatoes neither of us have seen before, fresh off an organic farm. I dither in delight at the Mooberry part of the dairy section. Probably the best butter in South Africa as agreed by very different chefs. And here is the range of their dairy products. In the dry section are all the beans and grains and anything Ottolenghi could ever require of you for his lengthy ingredients lists.

Matthew has already mentioned how he’s been looking for just such a space for 15 years. “Not flashy but roomy, so that we can support more of our small farmers and get the cash into their pockets. So that they can look after our land. And we wanted a better opportunity for our products to have as light a carbon footprint as possible.” He told me the brilliant tale of his ‘restored’ Happy Water in exactly this context, but it’s a clever, simply clever story for you to hear from him and then to try the water. 

“This madness in the world,” Matthew mused. “If we ate better food, wouldn’t it quell some of the craziness?” 

All Whole Earth’s pay points are busy, the tables taken and the place ringing with approval, so we cross the road to a place called The Junction in the park surrounded by pictures on easels. We settle down to drink good coffee, to watch the cyclists, dogs, and a guy at work printing the pictures around that we thought were paintings.

The owner is the chairman of the local residents’ association and his wife runs the restaurant. They set up here, knowing about the centre. They’ll soon be selling peaked casquettes for all these cyclists and opening a vegan and a flower section on the grounds. 

Around the Fresh Earth corner is Coalition, a new smaller branch of the one on Park Corner in Parkwood, where Bolton Road reaches Jan Smuts. It is the home of the ultimate two-day-risen sourdough pizzas that I would dream about in severe lockdown days until I could order them. But that still wasn’t the same as being there. Or here, it seems. Because the menu is the same, thank heavens. Coalition’s menu doesn’t change much except for a seasonal salad or a seasonal topping. It’s Neapolitan-short and you won’t find bacon and pineapple or avos on these pizzas. They are also not laden with cheeses the American way.

The next bit of pavement is refreshingly cool, in this Jozi summer heat, from a water spray and it’s that of the Mad Giant’s Brewery’s new Taproom. It seems bizarre on this scale because the actual brewery in Newtown is almost hangar-sized. Part of the Newtown place was, of course, the very exciting restaurant Urbanologi. Famed for such super-chefs as Angelo Scirocco and then Jack Coetzee, it closed for lockdown and hasn’t opened again. Jack is at home, fishing in Zimbabwe, waiting to go, when safer, to Australia to take up a position there.

The food at the Taproom has some items still from Urbanologi, I see on the wall. That’s why I think of it as one and a half places, the Mad Giant and part of Urbanologi. The chef, Brendan Fouché, once worked with the top Urbanologi chefs. More of the menu now features beer elements like shimeji mushrooms pickled in it or even some incredible cheesy potato chips that have sticky beer-burned ends. 

There’s also a good degree of slow-fired and smoked cooking so good for the cuts and pieces that are at further ends of the animals than the old, less sustainable classics, like the delicious spider steak with its web of fat, from inside the hip.

Taco of slow-smoked pork neck, with homemade coleslaw and anchovy mayonnaise. (Photo: Supplied)

Moving on up the road where the new Delta Centre ends and where the developers are expanding into another building they’ve acquired, I see three young teens, trotting up the road, not wearing masks, one carrying a hookah and the one further from him a roll of what looks more like a three-metre length of heavy yellow hose pipe around his neck and torso. They’re not going into Namak, as might have seemed more likely, but making their way up the middle of the street.

Namak is also a branch of the other Namak in Craighall not too far away, that serves good general Indian food. It is the only empty restaurant we’ve seen round here but apparently they do many deliveries.

Not empty is the new Vinyl Junkie next door. I didn’t recognise Benjy Mudie from the days when I was very young and also worked for music companies, doing a host of ‘Ps’ – publishing, promotions and public relations. This light and airy place with a comfy sofa is the opposite in looks to most vinyl stores. It’s neat and easy to navigate. Benjy’s obviously having fun playing records as he calls them. “Records are my thing and I love my little harem here.” At the back is his “I bet you don’t have this!” section, whereto he directs any of the tiresome.

I love it that he’s posited adjoining the interesting food places, if the Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake album doesn’t count or one with Amyl and the Sniffers on the cover. Anyway, I remember that Benjy introduced me to Marc Guebert’s probably first ÎIe de France restaurant, then in Rosebank. 

We return to Coalition for lunch, sitting in the sun, drinking Aperol Spritz, me eating the utterly perfect Margherita of just good summer tomatoes cooked down for my perfect pizza of the most edible crust, with molten blobs of Coalition’s own Fior di Latte and fresh basil. It’s still one of my favourites of Jozi, even here. 

Maybe it will become ‘especially here’ because the developers say they’ve broken ground “in what is going to be the only hot spot in Blairgowrie”. DM/TGIFood