Eateries blow fresh life into two old Durban clubs

Golf. Clubs. Pubs. Together and separately, there are people who are fans – and then there are the rest of us. To insert a couple of qualifiers before the golf bogey man putts me out of play. On the “golf” score I’m talking social, damnit, not professional. Different ballpark. Different league. And, having played a few rounds of social golf over the years, so long as it doesn’t involve a club or pub afterwards, or the stereotypes who seem to frequent clubs and pubs, I can kind-of see the appeal. Given a good-weather day, a scenic course and an opponent who is not tripping over his ego and misogyny.

These thoughts arose this past week when I found myself at new eateries now open at two Durban clubs known for their golf courses and their pubs. In both cases, curiosity around the food was the lure. The discovery? In the hot seat at both Goo’s on Beachwood and Grimaldi’s Durban Country Club is a seasoned, skilled, been-around creative chef doing fab things with food. Thai is on the menu at one. “Amalfi coast” at the other. Both venues have scenic appeal. Both are open to the public at large, no membership required. And a biggie. At both there is safe parking and security. What a thing to have to prioritise. But like Covid, it’s what we find ourselves having to live with.

Given my tunnel vision, explained above, I could easily have missed these two new sweet spots. Which would have been too bad, given that at least our tastebuds can travel when we can’t.

Goo’s came on my radar via Sebastian Nico, food photographer, knife-maker and a man with a food legacy of note, being the son of legendary restaurateur and mensch, Marco Nico, who Covid took from us in 2020. It happens when Sebastian, who we featured in TGIFood here, posts on Facebook: “Had such a rad dinner last night at Goo Imthawin’s new spot at Beachwood Country Club. Go there, eat! Thank me later.”

This second Grimaldi’s (the first opened last year in Umhlanga) I knew about but hadn’t thought to visit until a friend waxed lyrical about her lunch. “The food was faultless and there’s no membership requirement. But you get the country club members’ security, so no being hassled and you know your car will still be there when you’re ready to go home.”

After seeing Sebastian’s words and photo evidence on Facebook, I “friend” Imthawin and “like” Goo’s on Beachwood. I see there (and later hear from Goo himself) that his “resume”, since he arrived from Thailand at age 16 to join his mom here, includes Bangkok Wok (many of them, first learning from their head Thai chef and later becoming their head Thai-South African chef), the Hilton Hotel (and their school of culinary arts, of which he is a graduate), the Onomo Hotel and, all in all, 22 years of intrepidness and adventuring around food, with at one point a trip back to Thailand to be a monk, as is customary for young Thai men.

Following him, I get curiouser and curiouser, like Alice, the longer I delay in going to check out his place. Wondering about the “country club” location. Whether, being neither a golfer nor a member, I can just go there. Which, finally, I do. So yes, you can.

I get there the first time, lightly hungry, to discover that Goo’s has no restaurant frontage, but there is a big sign leading into a shared kitchen. Loads of space to sit. A feel-good environment. Christmas parties going on; people at long tables. It’s sort of like a food court, in that you can order from one of three independent outlets. It has an oasis-like feel if you choose to be away from the parties, sitting quietly overlooking the greens and the tropical bush that separates the golf course from the beach.

On my first visit I order the crispy spinach and grilled chicken salad. Get this ample mini-mountain on my plate peaked with cilantro. The spinach in crispy chunks, battered, deep fried, tempura-style but Thai. The distinctive fresh chilli sauce aroma wafts. There are chunks of well-textured chicken. Chilli biting through. Desiccated coconut sprinkled in. A hint of chilli jam. Fresh on a warm afternoon.

Having eaten and paid, I ask the server if Goo is around, thinking the man devouring a late lunch of noodles over in a corner on his own could be him. A minute later he’s with me. Telling me with passion about his food, his journey.

He’s been open five months, invited here by Carissa Kotzee, who has Beach Aloe Cafe, with whom he shares the kitchen; also Bleu Berri Concept (Goo met Kotzee when he and his wife, Sheri Meth, asked her to cater their wedding) and other food-focused initiatives. He tells me how much he was enjoying his head chef gig at Onomo Hotel at Durban’s North Beach when Covid hit. That he later, salary having been cut as befell many during the lockdowns, took a retrenchment package as his most viable option. And, encouraged by friends, set up at home (Glenwood) cooking Thai food and doing deliveries. Not surprisingly he survived and thrived, given how and what he cooks, his spice alchemy and the fact that he has turned his garden into something of a nursery, growing holy basil, Thai basil, lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal (Thai ginger) and other essentials that you will find on your plate and in the flavours when you go to eat his food. 

So now, the Durban Country Club. And before you roll your eyes (ah yes, my prejudice once more revealed), it is a grand, imposing, beautiful Cape Dutch-style building. And the good news is, it is being preserved, renovations are underway, and it looks like it will be well used. That the Durban Chamber of Commerce has moved in upstairs I took as a positive sign.

And, of course, now there is also Grimaldi’s, which has the delightful Claire Potgieter as the operating partner, running things with, in the kitchen, Chef TK Mpanza, formerly head chef at the erstwhile (it has closed) Jack Salmon, Hillcrest.

To backtrack a bit. A year ago, after a lot of restaurants had succumbed to Covid grief, Steve Christodoulou, in the food business in KZN for 30-odd years and one of the founding partners of the seafood-focused Jack Salmon restaurant brand, opened (with his partners) the first Grimaldi’s. Italian-themed. At The Pearls, Umhlanga. The scope and size of the place seemed brave, impressive, ambitious. “Everyone thought us crazy,” he laughs when we talk this past week.

When he heard the Durban Country Club was putting the bistro they’d been running, not too successfully, out to tender, “we put in a bid and were successful”.

“We saw this incredibly beautiful venue with ocean views, full of intrigue and nostalgia,” says Christodoulou. “Everyone had thought the club was on its way out but a new team is turning it around. It has that iconic globally known golf course. And now, there is outsourcing going on, to professionals. The place is being made more relevant.”

In physically transforming the restaurant, which is spacious, light-filled, well-ventilated, good for distancing, he says they consciously tried to strike a balance between retaining tradition and “toning things down and making it more welcoming, informal, accessible…”

The main menu anyone who has eaten at Umhlanga Rocks Grimaldi’s will know. Added is a sushi menu. “And the chalkboard has the specials. This is where a chef can get creative.”

In this case, Claire Potgieter, who met Christodoulou when she was running Doppio Zero in Umhlanga and he was a customer. Like Goo, Claire has impressive culinary credentials. She has worked in restaurants since she left school. Soon as an opportunity presented itself, she did the Institute of Culinary Arts two-year diploma in Stellenbosch. After that she trained for six months with Chef Margot Janse at Le Quartier Français in Franschhoek. Then for another six months under Chef Richard Carstens at Lynton Hall on the KZN South Coast. She also spent 18 months as chef at Getty House at Phinda private game reserve. All before Doppio Zero, where Christodoulou – aware she was hankering to run her own restaurant – approached her when tendering for the Durban Country Club space.

“I like to use my chalkboard to get creative with specials, thinking in terms of the market, the seasons and demand. People love our seafood, our fresh fish and also our steaks,” she says when we chat as the restaurant, in full holiday party swing on this early December day, gets jollier and noisier.

Her chalked up “loaded S+T” is “my take on surf and turf. I take a rump steak and stuff it, like a carpetbagger, with fresh mussels prepared in white wine and garlic. Top it off with three queen prawns. I make up a lemon, garlic and herb dressing using nine different herbs. A dash of Dijon mustard. I’m very much for using ingredients I have but using them in different ways”.

The sesame-crusted tuna is served as a starter or a main. It works, she says, as a chalkboard expression of their sushi menu. White and black sesame seeds are used. The tuna is thinly sliced. Dressed in a citrus-based and ginger ponzu dressing with sticky soy sauce.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to run a business of my own.” And running she is, back to the kitchen, to meetings, to make sure the large group that unexpectedly cancelled, asked for everything to rather be delivered as take-out, get what they want.

Back at Goo. It was while living with his gran and four cousins, all older, in Thailand that his love affair with food began. “We each had chores. Washing, ironing, cleaning. Being the youngest, mine was to help my gran with kitchen duties. Not cooking because I was too young for that. But picking the chillies and the basil. Grinding the curry paste. Peeling the garlic. I was the kitchen helper.”

His pork belly, on the menu as a special, is crispy, served on a bed of stir-fried fresh veggies with a red sun-dried chilli sauce, the chillies from Thailand, toasted and ground in the kitchen. He offers it for me to taste after I’ve taken my pics. Oh yes. Says it all. 

His Goo Goo squid is a signature. Wok fried baby squid in a sriracha, coriander and spring onion sauce. His potstickers he recommends and says they are what he eats at home when he and his wife are watching football and drinking beer.

The drunken noodles on his menu I have long wondered about. The name. Wok-fried rice noodles with Thai basil, bell pepper, chilli, soy and oyster sauce. “People in Thailand will go out drinking and at the end of the evening they will eat drunken noodles, so spicy-hot, it makes you sober up before you get home.”

Thailand is close to China and to India so the food is influenced by both countries, he says. And the flavours vary in different parts of Thailand and near the Lao border.

It was Thomas Keller, legendary American chef, who – talking about a chef’s life – said: “When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.”

This past week I met two chefs (most likely three, had I got to speak with Chef TK Mpanza who had time to leave the kitchen for more than a picture) who would answer to this description. Longevity. Energy. Passion. Which I do believe has also infused the clubs they are cooking at with a new kind of happiness served up with flavour. DM/TGIFood

Visit Goo’s on Facebook and on Instagram and Grimaldi’s on Facebook and on Instagram. 

The author supports Food Forward SA, committed to a South Africa without hunger. Please support them here.