Mamma Luciana’s
Where: Kloof Country Club, 26 Victory Road, Kloof, South Africa
Open: Daily noon to 10pm
Call: 078 064 6822
I follow a chef on Instagram who goes under the user name @chefreactions. Chef Reactions is a trained chef who learnt as a boy how to make and cook pasta at Nonna Reactions’ knee. What he does is take some of the cooking videos that flood Instagram and then comments on them. His phlegmatic, almost deadpan style is often outrageously funny, plus it’s informative because he’s passing on correct technique and good food insights.
He then goes on to rate the food out of 10, and says whether he would try it, eat it, go for seconds or avoid altogether. He’s remarkably open minded on this front. Even things he knows are going to be utterly awful, he’s prepared to try. Exceptions include obviously uncooked chicken and eggs fried in oil so old he called it motor oil.
There are a lot of scores of 0.1 and 0.35 but Chef Reactions can also be exceptionally generous like the 150 000 out of 10 for the French chocolatier who constructed a fully wearable Dearth Vader helmet out of chocolate.
And then there are his pet peeves. One of which is jarlic - that’s garlic that comes out of a jar. Or worse, squarlic that comes out of a squeezy tube. It tastes a million times better and is just as quick to use the real stuff.
He would have had a field day with our recent experience at Mamma Luciana’s.
Our little lunch club met at the newly opened branch inside the Kloof Country Club. We’re joined by food writer Ingrid Shevlin’s brother Pierre who is down from Joburg. It’s a warmer day, ideal for a restaurant that spills out onto a deck that looks out over the course. It’s a noisy space though, but people are enjoying themselves.
Downstairs is a bar and pub lunch area which spills onto the green serving light lunches coming out of the same kitchen.
The menu has changed little from the Durban North branch. There’s an antipasto, and tomato and basil bruschetta. Arancini balls, carpaccio and melanzane parmigiana feature. There’s also snails cooked in garlic in the pizza oven, and a strange dish that mixes chicken livers with calamari (none of us fancied it), and a range of salads.
The picture on the menu - these turn out to be dangerous - shows a traditional focaccia. This is actually a bread that’s baked in the pizza oven topped with herbs and olive oil and salt pressed into the bread with the fingers. It’s not a pizza base brushed with herbs, garlic and olive oil as is often served in Durban restaurants. The Glenwood bakery does a magnificent one - although it’s only available on weekends. So I had to order this (R62). It was of the pizza base type. Nice and crisp but certainly not what was on display. We teamed it with grilled calamari (R110) and coda di langoustines (R115). These were langoustine tails (small) cooked in garlic butter and gratinated with Parmesan in the pizza oven. What they lacked in that crunchy, cheesy topping they made up for with the pungent flavours of jarlic. The calamari too, which came with savoury rice, needed the rice to mop up the too intense flavours of the sauce. More Jarlic.
We hoped mains would be better.
There’s a selection of pizzas and pastas, and a few options with gnocchi as well as some grills - fish, chicken and steaks. A lamb shank comes in at a hefty R350 (I don’t understand this), but there’s also fillet and rump steaks.
The Glass Guy was happy with his oxtail gnocchi (R195). This was an enjoyable slow cooked red wine braised oxtail on top of good light gnocchi. But he was the only one.
Pierre ordered the line fish which was kingklip (R245, but marked SQ on the menu) which was the minutest portion of fish I have ever seen served in a restaurant. It came with chips which were undercooked. The fish was dry. Obviously someone realised there was a problem because the waiter said there was another piece of fish in the oven coming out shortly. Odd.
Ingrid’s Capelli di Angelo (R195) was horrible. This sounded lovely as angel hair pasta with calamari and prawns with garlic, chilli, fresh lemon and a splash of wine. The prawns were shrimps and rock hard. They had probably been thrown into the pan frozen. I recall Chef Reactions’ response when a woman threw two big bags of frozen prawns straight into the pan. “I can taste the freezer burn.” Then there was so much jarlic that it was bitter. I had one mouthful and grimaced. She nibbled some calamari and left most of it.
And then there was the veal which was greyge - the food equivalent of beige. The Fat Frog Lady ordered the veal limone (R220) which actually looked grey and was dumped on the plate with more undercooked chips. She said she could taste the uncooked flour on the escalope of veal so they obviously hadn’t been cooked in a pan that was hot enough. My veal was the same but fared a little better because I went for the Venetian style veal (R237) topped with a rosa tomato, basil and white wine sauce which added some flavour and the colour to it. There was no improvement on the chips. But at least it wasn’t just a plate of boiled meat.
We had done with our mains when the second plate of fish arrived, this time one of the larger portions I’ve seen. At least it gave Ingrid something to eat. This was better cooking, and came with veg - spinach which was pleasant and butternut. Although why, I ask, with the Italians making so many lovely and fresh and exciting veg recipes, do we have to stick with the ubiquitous and boring spinach and butternut. The answer is it’s cheap.
We finished by sharing a couple of plates of tiramisu (R70) which were pleasant. A brownie, cheesecake and lemon meringue were options.
Food: 1
Service: 2 ½
Ambience: 2 ½
The Bill: R1 867 for five