Spier Eight Restaurant

To Spier and their Farm-toTable Eight Restaurant for lunch. I had made a booking and had received email confirmation but that hadn't reached the restaurant. 

The welcome was muted at best, but we were given a table.

We ordered Farmer Angus pasture-reared beef burger with double smoked bacon, coleslaw, hand cut chips. No cheese, thank goodness.

Offered a choice of still or sparkling water and requested second. Still water was brought and poured. The bottle for this interestingly said it was captured from the air and sterilised by ultra-violet. Seems to be water from a de-humidifer unit in the restaurant.

Wine was offered chilled or room-temperature. We chose chilled (the room temperature was in the high 20s) and the superb 21 Gables Pinotage 2016 was served cool.

The burger meat was excellent, with a good bun covered in a thick mix of seeds.

Coleslaw was mostly mayonnaise and plastered thickly on the lower bun-half making it soggy. The bacon was 99% fat, white, not crisp. Quite horribly uneatable.

Chips were excellent, crispy and fresh potato.

I have never had such execrable black coffee. It was a pale brown as if it had been mixed with milk. They apologised and brought me another which was just the same. They said it was the beans. I said it was undrinkable, and they took it off the bill. 

After we called in at the large tasting room and tasted and bought three interesting Savvies: 

2017 Spier Signature Collection Sauvignon Blanc 
2016 Spier Creative Block 2 (85% Savvie and 15% Semillon)
2017 Spier 21 Gables Sauvignon Blanc