Masterpiece in a masterchef's jacket
2008-05-29
Malané Bosman
BJ VORSTER once asked Ralph for a thick slice of bread with apricot jam. To go with his brandy. Ralph von Pletzen, masterchef, did not take offence. What the man wanted, the man would get. The other diners around the Blue Room’s table in the Cape Castle would enjoy his broccoli soup with blue cheese, smoorsnoek, soetpatats en skaapnekkerrie. That’s how Ralph talks. And that’s what Ralph serves, now at the Orange Mill art studio in Paarl, with guests arriving from afar to sit at the chef’s table. And seated they remain, for five hours and longer. Enjoying the food and enjoying the atmosphere at 28 Mill Street. And that pleases Ralph and gallery owners Liz Kruger and Alla le Roux. Ralph needs little prompting to lift the lid on his great love - food. “I work 20 hours a day. I just want to cook. The menu is supposed to have eight dishes, but it has this way of growing. “What you get is a fresh plate of fish, afval, salad picked from the garden, whatever you want. Food is something that happens, and tastes good. “With prices what they are, you have to get more than food,” says Ralph, with words simmering from his mouth, accompanied by expansive gestures from the hands that have for decades created masterpieces that not only look like works of art, but tastes like dishes made in heaven. A young, blonde girl in chef’s coat nestles against the big man. “This is my stand-by, Mareli van Niekerk, Ralph introduces her fondly. In the world of food you work 18 hours a day, six days a week. In case I get ill, then she is here.” Mareli is one of the top students to recently graduate from Zevenwacht Chef School. Ralph is still talking. “What is a pancake? The end of the line of a crépe. “You have memories of taste. Remember the brandy butter pudding you had at your mother’s table. How you asked for more and more of the sauce until you got sick. Now, at the age of 53, you are again looking for that memory. “With cooking you’re pushing the envelope wide open. I will play and I will experiment. But I’ll remain in classic cooking. For me it is all the same menu, at a different venue.” Ralph’s first experience in the kitchen was in Matric, as a waiter to earn money to buy LP’s and to party. He worked for Kruik in the 70’s, with long hair and tight Levi’s. With three children at the age of 40 he was earning peanuts, he says, so he was still waiting on tables - when he was not selling empty bottles - to put food on the table. “Our shows were all banned on the first night. I enjoyed the restaurant service. Theatre was a dead-end in Cape Town. I would have had to move to Johannesburg and into soapies. “I would never allow myself to sell my soul. I came close to that at the Lanzerac (where he worked for the last two years). “That is the corporate world. There I was told what to cook. I was trained to be a master chef. I worked the world over. But what happened to Ralph? I was so stressed, so tormented. Money does not turn me on. “That’s why I closed down Ralphs (his renowned restaurant in Stellenbosch) in 1997. But after having opened more than 20 restaurants in his culinary life, Ralph is back at it again. “I’m an artist. I don’t want to be confined. And here is the promise of not being confined. With Liz’s art. The book launches she is planning, the live music, drums. The past ten years Ralph hasn’t had a home. He was on the move. One room abodes. A caravan. Sarong. That’s Ralph. Ankle bracelets. Tattooed to the hilt. Recently he shaved off his mop of grey hair that had been growing for nine years, and had reached his buttocks. The grey curls are growing again, though. A quadruple bypass did not fase him. “At the end of a 20 hour day my legs can hardly support me. But I love it. We’re not making money. But I love Paarl. At the Orange Mill it is lovely to be alive. And lovely to share life with people. “I can’t wait to get up in the morning. To have my first cup of tea or hot water. To make bobotie with raisins bouncing against the chilli. With Basmati rice. And always an egg. “The fusion of South African food – Malaisian, English, French, Dutch, Hottentot,” Ralph becomes lyrical. “Afval, ox tongue – everyone under 40 passes out.” The Orange Mill is a huge jump from teaching chefs and empowering them at the Lanzerac. “I needed to teach them about taste, that bobotie must taste like bobotie, not lasagne that tastes like bobotie. “You need to uncork the world. Ice-cream did not originate in Italy. Marco Polo brought it back from China, as he did pasta. You have to get into the story of travel, start unwinding food. “Ek’t gister lekker smoorsnoek gemaak,” he interrupts himself in Afrikaans. The meal he puts into his plate at the end of the day would be a slice of burnt toast. “I love the taste of carbon, with grated ripe Cheddar. The sweetness of burnt onion is a marriage made in heaven.” And then he smiles. “And Cape to Rio’s fish and chips, with lots of vinegar. That’s what I like to eat.” Ralph is on a roll now. “Years ago you wanted to be a policeman or a fireman when you grew up. Today, when you’ve got nothing to do, you become a chef. I’ll never again wear my chef’s jacket,” says the king of chefs. Says Liz: “I have been toying with the idea of a restaurant for a long time now, but I was looking for the right person, one who would fit into the Orange Mill. He had to be a masterpiece in his own right.” And then Ralph arrived, and within two weeks the tables were laid and the kitchen was open to guests. A century ago 28 Orange Street was also the hub of Paarl. Earliest edition of Di Patriot was printed on a press in the white-washed shed that still sits at the top of the property. That was in 1878, when Orange Street was the main street in Paarl. The street was lined with some of the finest homesteads in town, eight wagon making industries, a tannery and houses, 16 black smiths, three saddle-makers, a carpenter and four painters. The main throughfare later moved downhill to Mill Street, and even later, to Main Street of today. Many years the home of Alfie and Gina Voigt, Liz bought the home four years ago. She discovered the remains of a furnace in the backyard, where wagon wheels were forged. “Will I ever be thin and desirable again?” Ralph muses. Who cares. The 53 year-old Ralph is as sexy as his most decadent dish –and everything he creates in his kitchen between Orange and Mill Street will put you on another planet – Ralph’s delicious, delectable planesphere.
More
News
|
