Lupa Osteria: Westville

For the past few months, Westville has been buzzing in anticipation of the opening of Lupa Westville. Situated in a prime position on Jan Hofmeyer Road (Westville’s restaurant strip) the chip off the Hillcrest block has quickly taken shape on the site that until recently held old favourite La Storia. Looks like there’s a new Italian in town.

In place of La Storia’s laid back décor of mismatched chairs and tables, Lupa has mimicked the more upmarket feel of its Hillcrest venue, with large black and white tiles; pillars clad in rough timber; raw brick and slate grey walls. Many of the best aspects of Lupa Hillcrest have been replicated here – including the cocktail menu - which was where we started - enjoying a Romulus and a Remus, named for the twins of Rome’s founding myth (Lupa was the wolf that raised them after they were thrown into the river Tiber by their evil uncle). Sadly the glasses of breadsticks which we enjoyed on our last visit to Hillcrest were not on offer here, hopefully they will still make an appearance.

The clientele are probably a little older, a little less hip than the Hillcrest crowd, but they certainly seem to appreciate the food, the restaurant has been open for a month already, and this was the first time that we had managed to secure a table. By 7 o’clock on a Saturday night the place was already bustling – it seems that in Westville as in most of Durban, people like to be in bed by 9.

We ordered zucchini fries with basil mayonnaise and pretzel dusted calamari for starters. Both were fresh, hot and tasty: the zucchini - thin strips of lightly battered, melt-in-your-mouth delights, sprinkled with parmesan - the calamari, tender and moreish. Others at the table ordered the beef carpaccio and the Parma ham with melon. My only quibble: a slight over reliance on mayonnaise, which featured in three of the four starters – I would have skipped it on the carpaccio at least, which was crying out for a good balsamico.

Presumably due to the newness of the kitchen, there were no specials on offer for the night, so we stuck to the menu, which in its defence is full of good choices, from the traditional pizza and pasta, to some interesting sounding veal, lamb, fillet and line fish dishes. I opted for the fillet escalope, where the meat is thinned out slightly with a tenderising mallet of sorts, making for a super moist and perfectly medium rare cut that fell apart as I attacked it. The fillet was topped with perfectly ripe avocado and oven roasted tomato, and served on a mushroom risotto (slightly underdone, as seems to always be the case at restaurants). All in all, a very nicely put together meal.

The gnocchi salsicce with fennel sausage, bacon, cream and Chianti was also good – a hearty dish with a rich, red sauce, although slightly over salted, which seemed to be true for the pastas at the table too. I had a taste of a friend’s chicken marsala, which was excellent.

Dessert offerings include tiramisu, crème brûlée, and dark chocolate tart, but we settled for scoops of the creamy and chocolate-filled home-made ice-cream, strong espressos and an affogato. I saw other tables enjoying the ice-cream in a sugar cone, which looks like a fun way to end the evening.

Westville is certainly better off for the arrival of Lupa, which together with the Olive and Oil Café adds some much needed variety to the local dining scene. While the Hillcrest Lupa is probably a little more flash – Westville is a lot closer if you’re visiting from Durban. For inhabitants of Westville, it’s our new local.

Tasty Thai

Thai is a difficult language, with a pretty incomprehensible script that makes for cool tattoos, but does not facilitate easy understanding. Having said that, apparently the word 'aroy' (phonetic spelling, obviously) means 'tasty', which is why you see it mentioned often around Thai restaurants.

Aroy Thai in Westville, is definitely living up to its name. It's a small, fairly nondescript restaurant tucked into the Engen Centre, a strip mall on Rodger Sishi Road which also houses a Food Lover's Market and the A Tasca restaurant.

When visiting Thailand, I found that the ornateness of the decor was inversely correlated with the quality of the food, and the same holds true here. Inside Aroy Thai, simple plastic tables and chairs, tiled floors and office-like ceilings are the perfect complement to fantastically tasty Thai food.

As it was our first visit, I wanted to try the Tom Yum soup, which to me is the acid test of a Thai restaurant's quality. Too often in local establishments the hot and sour flavours of a good Tom Yum are dumbed down to an over salty broth housing a few sad prawns. Happily, this was not the case here. The soup, when it arrived, was a beautiful sight with a bright red-orange slick covering the broth and islands of dried chilli, spring onion and mushroom peeping above the surface. Diving deeper there were plump prawns to be found and flavours of lemongrass and lime leaves.

We also tried the wonton soup (the restaurant does several Chinese influenced dishes) and found it equally good, with delicious, fat dumplings.

We washed down out starters with Singha beers - Aroy is licensed and has a reasonable selection of beers as well as a small wine list.

Continuing with the classics, I wanted to taste the Pad Thai for my main course. We selected calamari as the protein, but were somewhat disappointed, as the dish was rather bland, with not enough fish sauce or shrimp paste to impart a good umami. We requested additional chilli, which arrived in a dried, powdered form, and improved matters somewhat.

Luckily we also ordered the creatively named 'Duck in a Jacket' which consists of a half duck, deboned and wrapped in a pancake. The owner (a Thai lady) clearly thought that this was a good choice, and seemed pleased that we had ordered it - perhaps next time we visit I will ask her to choose a selection of dishes for us.

The duck was crisp and dark skinned, wrapped in an egg-rich pancake and drenched in a sticky and sweet sauce that went well with the salty duck. Definitely a dish that I would order again.

Like most Thai restaurants, there were limited desert options, and we opted to buy a bag of White Rabbit candies on our way out instead.

With an extensive menu still waiting to be explored and three out of four excellent dishes on first attempt, Aroy Thai holds a lot of potential. Sushi is also served, and several patrons were eating it - it looked pretty good. They also do takeaways.

'Gin khao reu yeung?' is another useful Thai phrase. It's used as a greeting, similar in meaning to 'are you well?', but literally means 'have you eaten rice yet?'. I like the priorities the Thai have.

La Storia - hit and miss Italian Restaurant

It often seems to me that every other restaurant that one visits is Italian - there apparently exists a large portion of the South African restaurant going population that would be personally offended to arrive at a restaurant and discover that it offers neither pizza nor pasta. In popular imagination, Italy must be a magical place, draped in red and white checks where the penne arrabiata is bottomless, and the margherita pizza is free for kids every Tuesday.

So, when I read the menu at La Storia in Westville, I got a little excited. Yes there were the inevitable pages devoted to pizza and pasta, but alongside these stalwarts, some less obvious dishes made their appearance, including a whole section on risottos, and some locally inspired meals like the prawns Mozambique.

On our first visit to La Storia, we dropped in late after work and so settled for a simple order of pizzas and beer. I had the Tandoori chicken. The first thing I noticed, was that the pizzas are not round, but shaped into a rough oblong and sliced into rustic triangles. The crust is heftier than most wood fired artisanal pizzas, and bready, but in a good way, with a hint of yeast and with charred and blackened spots straight out of the oven. The topping of fantastic, fragrant tandoori chicken, interspersed with dhania yoghurt and scattered with mint leaves was a welcome change from chain restaurant standards, and overall, I was impressed.

On a second visit we took a little time and ventured further into the menu. The tomato salad was fresh and tasty. Simple ingredients, elegantly brought together, it made for a good starter, together with the antipasti board with home cured meats, pickles and bruschetta.

Next, with nervous anticipation, I ordered a risotto main course. Risotto, I believe, is not a difficult dish to make. It is, however, a slow dish to create. There are no shortcuts over the stove to achieve the perfect, oozing, glutinous and magical mouth feel of a good risotto. Which is probably why, every time I've ordered it at restaurants I have been disappointed. Almost without fail, restaurant risotto is undercooked, with a raw center of hard starch lurking in every grain.

My selection was prepared with calamari, chorizo, black olive and chili. The portion was reasonably large, without being generous, but a large proportion of the volume went to the toppings. I struggled to pull together a full forkful of rice to test, but when I did, was dismayed to discover that true to type it was under cooked, and over salted. The calamari and chorizo were tasty, but anyone would be hard pressed to make chorizo taste bad. Overall, the dish was a let down.

Happily, the desert went some way to rectifying the situation - a delicious affogato, three scoops of home made icecream, with a shot of hot, bitter esspresso.

With its laid back decor of mismatched chairs and tables, its friendly, noisy interior and its impressive pizza oven, La Storia feels like the kind of place that you could hang out at on a fairly regular basis. The old faithfuls are well rendered, and the more inventive options, even if they aren't quite there, are at least on the menu. Inconsistent, but you're more likely to leave pleased than peeved.

Not the same old Storia.