Subtle magic of Chef Romer at the Guinea Fowl
A restaurant on Saxenburg wine estate creates mouthwatering dishes.
Jan 26, 2009
With the oenological spotlight of the world focusing more and more on South Africa, farm restaurants are also beginning to show off their style and culinary flair. On the whole, the fare is down to earth and thankfully, Leon Romer, the chef at the Guinea Fowl restaurant – is not a celebrity chef. Instead he is quietly producing culinary excellence in the restaurant, situated on the Saxenburg wine estate outside Stellenbosch in the Cape Winelands.
The restaurant is aptly named because the farm is teeming with guinea fowl and not surprisingly the menu contains an array of guinea fowl dishes, the taste of which may well continue to haunt you for many months afterwards as it did this writer.
Not Hell's Kitchen
With a diffident manner bordering on shyness, Leon Romer, or just ‘Leo’ as everyone affectionately calls him, is perhaps one of the nicest chefs you will ever get to meet in South Africa and the antithesis of the ‘celebrity chefs you find on television.
After speaking to him for a time, you begin to realize too that he is a man who just loves what he is doing, which is cooking. With the abundance of these game birds on the farm, specializing in guinea fowl dishes would be the obvious route to go for any chef. But Leo’s dishes, which might have turned out to be pedestrian and little more than a marketing ploy, are imbued with his understated enthusiasm and talent and are quite simply delicious.
Not Flashy. Just Understanted Brilliance
His signature guinea fowl dish, Guinnea Fowl Ravioli, costing a mere $US 6, is prepared with home-made pasta pockets, filled with guinea fowl meat, and cooked in a wonderful, truly wonderful mushroom truffle jus with the flavors of each ingredient perfectly integrated.
Simplicity is the key here and it is refreshing and welcome in a culinary world where mediocre dishes often are often camouflaged by overly sculptured artworks on a plate designed to make everyone exclaim, “Oh my! Isn’t that pretty!”
Being German, Leo is of course a perfectionist. But this quality too is understated. And so instead of just buying them, he enjoys going to pick his own porcini mushrooms with his wife in Tokay forest just outside Cape Town.
Hand-picked Porcini in the Forest
The best time for picking porcini mushrooms is usually after some winter showers, followed by heat and sunshine. To get there before the other porcini fanatics means Leo and his wife, who have to travel about 40 minutes by car, have to get up well before the crack of dawn. But it’s all for a good cause.
After that, he says, the stoves are working almost all day, drying out the mushrooms which will then be re-hydrated before enhancing those mouth-watering guinea fowl dishes.
It is this sort of dedication that makes eating at the Guinea Fowl Restaurant a memorable experience – quite aside from the wine list which features exclusively Saxenburg wines, with many award winners among them and which are highly sought-after in Europe.
Leon Romer, born in Germany, came to South Africa in 1983 and is the Executive Chef and manager at The Guinea Fowl Restaurant.
In June 2005 he was inducted as a member of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs. He is the only chef locally to have walked away with the sought-after trophy at the Salon Culinaire.
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