QUESTION: When is a braai not a barbecue?
ANSWER: See below.
After one of our Sunday lunchtime sessions at the Grand Prix, the chef, a young Greek Cypriot guy named BABU, offered to roast a whole sheep for
us and our friends on the beach across the road from the club. With great
ceremony the sheep was impaled on a metal rod – the skinned carcass of the sheep I
hasten to add – then slotted into two
metal struts set either side of the fire… to which a metal turning handle was
attached.
Babu stretched out on a sun-lounger, lit a cigarette, opened a bottle of wine and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping, puffing and occasionally turning the handle to rotate the sheep…when I say the rest of the afternoon…I mean until a large wave surged up the beach and took out the fire, the chef and the half cooked sheep.
Babu stretched out on a sun-lounger, lit a cigarette, opened a bottle of wine and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping, puffing and occasionally turning the handle to rotate the sheep…when I say the rest of the afternoon…I mean until a large wave surged up the beach and took out the fire, the chef and the half cooked sheep.
QUESTION: When is Champagne not Champagne?
ANSWER: See below.
Champagne at the Grand Prix Night Club was not sold in bottles but
in jugs…that’s right, in jugs. Gullible customers who enquired after Champagne were
told under Cape law the club had to sell Champagne decanted.
It may sound harsh but I truly believe that anyone prepared to buy Champagne in a jug, at a ludicrously inflated price, deserves everything they got. And what they got when they ordered ‘jugged’ Champagne at the Grand Prix Night Club was in no shape or form Champagne…it didn't originate in Europe let alone in the Champagne region of France. It was pure 100% South African concocted from mainly “Leiberstein” a low cost white table wine, which if I remember correctly worked out at about 2/6d a gallon – that’s roughly 15 pence in today’s Sterling currency, so if price is any indication to the quality I need say no more – and the remainder was lemonade. Yes, humble, common garden, lemonade. Lemonade was an important, if not the most imortant ingredient when making of bogus Champagne as it added the essential element, effervescent bubbles. The sorry excuse for Champagne was served ice cold – a 'gnat's...' off freezing.
The weird thing is no-one every questioned the validity of the ‘Champagne’,
least not while we were there. I should add in passing that most, if not all, who ordered a jug of Champagne were legless.
QUESTION: When is grilled fish not grilled fish?
ANSWER: See below.
Another of the Grand Prix scams was their grilled fish. At the
Grand Prix grilled fish came at a premium…a third more than the same fish fried. But when an order came in for - say grilled sole - what the customer was served with was fried sole, plus the criss-cross marks added by Babu with a red hot poker.
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