At the Paarl Rotary Wine Auction in October - after lunch and a glass or two - I had bid for and successfully bought one of the lots which included quite a lot of wine and a special dinner for two at Nobu. This had to be used before the start of the Christmas holiday so we booked for 15th December - the last available date.
Moving from the cocktail bar to the restaurant, we handed over the voucher for two 'Special Omakase tasting menus' and were guided to our table. Almost immediately, the manager arrived and suggested that he could offer us a much better experience if we were prepared to let him choose a different menu for us. Having suggested that we would like to drink a light Pinot Noir - we left everything to him and in LP's words invited him to 'impress us!'
As we waited for our first course to arrive - and as the evening progressed - we noticed that the restaurant was popular with a variety of 'fashionable' folk including a number of larger ladies whose attire displayed more flesh than I have seen since the strip joint we visited on Rupert's stag night in rural Ontario
While we may have eaten meals of equivalent quality in our time, it is hard to think of anything that was better than the selection of 10 courses which followed. I would love to describe them on a blow-by-blow basis but words and memory fail me.
We managed to finish the bottle of wine, ordered a couple of extra glasses and then enjoyed a dessert with a glass of sweet wine. Slightly apprehensively, I asked for the bill - expecting that we may have spent quite a bit more than the value of our voucher.
To our surprise, our waiter informed us that, even including the wine, we still had credit left and offered us some takeaway food or a bottle of wine to take home with us. We settled for a couple of nightcaps and left with a small credit balance and a decent tip for the staff as we headed for the concierge and a more conventional - but much more expensive - taxi back to out hotel.
