Nelson’s Eye and Magica Roma, still among the Cape’s best

The same waiter who served us back in the Noughties was at our table again, just weeks ago. The same table we’d been seated at in 2012, or maybe 2013. Stray lines now punctuate his cheeks, but other than that it was as if we’d climbed in a time machine and out again, 14 years later, and he was just as we’d left him.

Nelson’s Eye owner Steven Albert has aged a soupçon more than his prized waiter. Like a prime sirloin that has been allowed the time to reach its peak of ripeness. A twinkle in the eye, a memory like an ox. “You sat there last time you were here,” he said. And we did.

The Nelson’s Eye website claims that it is the best steakhouse in Cape Town. And nobody with any sense is arguing. I must have first come here in the 1970s, though it had already been operating since the early 1960s. Throughout the Eighties we’d pop in now and then, and more often in the 1990s when I was all over town writing about restaurants for Top of the Times in the Cape Times.

Off we went to live in England and when we returned, yes, it was still going. We moved to Sutherland and, two years later, we were booking a table at Steve’s restaurant again. And now, after 11 years in Cradock, we’re back. And Steve and his effortlessly superb steakhouse are still there.

Nobody has had the idiocy of tampering with the decor, with the space, the room. It is as it always was. And why should it change? I fear the day someone else gets their hands on it, looks around and says, “Urgh! This is way too old-school! Everything must go. Gut the place.”

And we know that there are a lot of people who would do that. Often the next generation. There are wonderful exceptions to this – like the next Hussar Grill generation, who fashioned a way to replicate the original Rondebosch steakhouse all over the country while retaining its essence in decor and ethos.

Let us keep something of the old ways, some reminders of kinder, less-venal times. Every corner at Nelson’s Eye, every picture on every wall, suggests older ways of doing things. Must it all go, only to be imagined with doleful eyes by those with long memories? Until they’re all gone, and nobody is left even to describe what once was?

I remember going straight to the counter and eyeing the cuts of beef, so many times. Choosing your preference while asking the chefs for their recommendations. Cut, thickness. I like a thick-cut steak. You get the lovely charred crust and also the soft, sensuous interior. The pinkness that most steak lovers adore.

But if you like your steak slim-cut and flash-fried, that’s your indaba. No one is policing this. You’re the boss of your palate, and your steak.

Our friend Theo loves the bobotie here. He persuaded me to have it. It’s a starter, would you believe. That’s an odd starter, I thought. And it was indeed a tad too much for somebody intending to follow it with a hefty steak. You don’t come to Nelson’s Eye for a genteel little 200g taster. You want a proper “man’s” portion. Which is not to suggest there aren’t women who can get behind a 500g slab of Texan T-bone.

Actually, my top steak size now is 300g. Even 250g. I’m older and, if not wiser, at least more circumspect.

That bobotie was very good. I totally saw Theo’s point. We were his guests anyway. I always listen to the advice of He Who is Paying the Bill. Then again, the starters here aren’t exactly lightweight. Seafood bisque is certain to fill you up, as is escargots with blue cheese sauce. There are bobotie spring rolls, and fried Camembert.

Salads include burrata, smoked salmon or kudu carpaccio. All proper old-school. From there onwards, everything is grills, grills until you reach the sweet endings. Grilled chicken peri-peri or barbecue. Venison or ostrich loin between 280g and 800g. Eight hundred! Is that to share? Apparently not. If you want half an ostrich for supper, be my guest.

In fact, there are no 250g cuts here. The smallest is 280 (that’s a fillet), going up incrementally from 400g to 500g to 600g to 800g. This must mean there are enough takers for those massive cuts. And there are those in the world who assert that the world is slowly coming around to a vegan diet. You carry on believing that. It’s never going to happen. I have seen too much evidence for there to be any doubt.

We all cogitated upon various styles and cuts of steak. Ultimately something of a consensus settled on pepper steak, from the “premium cuts” and “out of the pan” sections of the very extensive menu. This after having seriously considered the sirloin on the bone from the “premium cuts on the bone” section. Sirloin on the bone is deeply flavourful.

No complaints about the supremely tender and hefty fillet, its rich pepper sauce, or even the slim frites piled on top. Steve brought Theo (and consequently us) a little plate of crunchy offcuts of steak fat, that’s them in the steak picture, to the rear.

There’s a veal section too, which was sorely tempting, including limone or masala. And an “off the hook” menu, but honestly, I don’t come to a steakhouse for fish, much as I love it.

And in the unlikely event you have room for dessert, there are sorbets, peppermint crisp, malva pudding, Dom Pedros, ice cream and hot chocolate sauce (to take you slap bang back to 1974) and dark Belgian chocolate tart.

Now fascinated with the places of old in the Mother City, I called up another friend, Ian, and asked him when last he’d been to Magica Roma, the utter gem of an Italian eatery set in the nondescript parking lot of a Pinelands shopping centre. If it was even still there. And it was, and it is.

You’d never guess it was arguably the best Italian restaurant in the country to look at it from outside. You’d expect nothing, and the current assessors of what constitutes a great restaurant at the Eat Out restaurant guide are unlikely to place it in their top echelon; it’s just not chi-chi enough for their ultra-refined tastes. Which is why these lists are generally best avoided unless you’re a billionaire.

And Ezio DeBiaggi is still there, now running the place on his own after partner Franco Zezia retired. Ezio had been at La Perla (for many years), and that veteran of the Sea Point beachfront is on my list to visit soon. He’s a smiling, engaging and sweetly charming man, and his personality is a part of the Magica Roma experience.

Ian is a gourmand of note and comes to Magica Roma every few weeks. And he always has the pasta vongole (clams). Seafood with pasta is not my favourite thing, and restaurant manager Tony Yates in the old Hildebrand days often urged me to try their vongole, which I always resisted. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s only a matter of personal taste.

At Magica Roma, we were at what they said was Ian’s usual table, and I never argue with that, and here, just as at Nelson’s Eye, Ezio later said that I had sat at that same table all those years ago. Maybe they always say that but somehow I seemed to remember that it was true.

But there wasn’t much need to choose here. “I have some lovely porcini,” Ezio announced, and before we could get half way through a glass of a spectacular Sicilian Franchetti red wine that Ian had brought to celebrate my discharge from hospital, a starter portion (if there is such a thing in this kind of generous Italian place) of tagliatelle with porcini arrived, so simple, so delicious, and you needed to toss the pasta to bring up the pool of sauce at the bottom of the dish. The wine, produced in the vicinity of volcanic ash, is extraordinary and somehow made the pasta even better.

While Ian delighted in his vongole pasta, I relished my carbonara with guanciale, the pig’s jowl whose magical properties mean it can adorn a bowl of pasta in crisp bites while thickening the pasta sauce the way that a ladleful of pasta water does.

There was no adornment, and you had the impression that that would be silly, or at least needless and consequently annoying and pretentious.

Magica Roma’s interior is just as I remember it from the Nineties. Friendly, comfortable, superb service, great wines, and the best kind of host for a lovely lunch in winter.

While I rarely return to a restaurant, because my job requires me to get around to as many as possible, I am definitely returning to this pair as soon as I can. And then again, and again. DM