In the 1940s this phrase was a euphemism for condoms but I just mean delicious outings that are too far for a Thursday night but a do’able weekend distance from Joburg and/or Pretoria.

SUGGESTION 1: You Really Don’t Need a Passport to go to the East Rand…
• Hot off the press yummy with a capital Y.
• Philippe Wagenfurer (formerly of the multi-award winning Roots Restaurant in the Cradle of Humankind) has just, just opened Gray in Boksburg.
• I know it’s a funny name but the chef says he means to imply that all the perfection in life is to be in the nuances and subtleties. Nothing worth having is too obvious. Black and white is over. Shades of grey is where it’s at.

What’s in it for foodies –
• It’s posh but it’s not –there are more and more ‘bistronomy’ restaurants around and this is in that genre.
• This is a friendly neighbourhood restaurant with top quality ingredients, technical skill and knowledge to prepare them properly but a determination to keep the style simple.
• Think excellent steak (Beef is grass fed, hormone free, correctly aged etc), sour dough breads made on site. Handcrafted cheeses.

The wiz bang wonderful factor:
• Best of all is the beer. Handcrafted by local microbrewery The Dog and Fig (from Parys), it’s excellent stuff. There are several to chose from (buchu, weiss, ale and stout) and its all on tap. The chef runs beer and food pairing evenings.
• Beer pairings on his current menu including a pine smoked chocolate fondant with burned sugar froth paired with Dog & Fig Stewige Stout AND Weiss beer with pork fillet and homemade dried banana skin salt.
38 North Rand Road, Hughes, Boksburg, Gauteng; 011 823-4184; info@grayrestaurant.com; www.gray-restaurant.com

SUGGESTION 2:
Pancakes and Jam Taste Better on the Other Side of the Orange River...
• This is one for you to plan for. The Kestell Spring Fair is on the 3rd of September from 9-2pm.
• Kestell is in the Eastern Free State, right up against the Golden Gate National Park. It is about 50km from Clarens.
• It is like the way Clarens was before people like us destroyed it and made it too poncy shmonsy. And filled it up with rubbishy Burmese furniture. Argh.
• I’m not going to lie the attraction is in the small town quaintness - who wouldn’t want to go where the Kestell Vroue Landbou Unie are making proper tannie pannekoek and the ladies of the Karma Jams Company are selling pear and pinotage jelly, brandy, apricot and bitter almond jam.NB. If you can’t get to Kestell those jams are available at La Marina.
• There are miniature horses for rides, tractor rides for whining children and a 9 hole golf course for whining husbands who are less excited than you by jam.
The Kestell hotel is offering a weekend special - R280 per person sharing (per night) for dinner, bed and breakfast. The hotel is deliciously daft – it is a 102 years old and has a nice Fawlty towers feel about it. The brilliant new owner will tell you all about its scandalous history – which includes the fact that it burnt down on its opening night because a patron knocked over a candle while bonking the mayors daughter in the laundry cupboard.
More info contact Elaine 082 573 2780 or e-mail info@kestell.co.za

SUGGESTION 3:
Go to Albizia Restaurant in Cullinan this Week Because by Next Month People Like Us Will Have Turned it into Clarens, Dullstroom, Poshville Horror Town…
• Cullinan is about an hour from Pretoria.
• Before you go be sure to book a table at Albizia restaurant.
• Chef Lientjie Wessels is the bravest, most exciting chef working in Gauteng today.
• She offers up avant-garde artistic statements with every plate that she sends out.
• Her menus are madly eclectic, idiosyncratic journey in and out of the Middle East, through Asia and on into the kitchens of Southern France but wherever else the tastes travel, every flavour begins and ends in the Afrikaner fusion cuisine of her ancestors.
• Her work is sometimes crazy but always beautiful and delicious.
• Last Friday night I had a liquorice root and caramelised cherry tomato set custard dessert which she had paired with a Chateau Naude white port that I had to fight my family.
• I went back the next day and had a lunch of lime leaf, vanilla dressed chicken and radish salad that I will be dreaming of for months to come.
• My husband had an apricot and lamb broth from heaven.
• Menus change daily and sometimes in the middle of service so don’t expect what I had to be there but something equally fabulous will be.
Albizia; 74 Oak Avenue, Cullinan. 082 531 6141 (Wed – Sunday)

But why drive home when you can stay over?
You really do not want to be driving home late at night after supper at Lientjies. The thing to do is to stay over at Jan Harmsgat Guest house. 012-734-1111/ 074-322-5225; info@gastehys.co.za

SUGGESTION 4:
IF YOU REALLY CAN’T GET AWAY. PRETEND TO GO TO DURBAN BY EATING Bunny with a Cane and Coke on the bonnet of your car:
• What tastes more like Durban than a bunny chow?
• Bunny Chows are meant to be searingly hot. If you have them any other way you are not doing it right.
• As the masala-laden gravy soaks into the plump white bread walls, the sizzle is somewhat rounded and modified.
• But those in the know say that the soothing effect of the bread must be followed down the hatch with a tooth-meltingly sweet gulp of cane spirit and Coke.
• And don’t knock it until you have tried it. Heaven, heaven, heaven.
• You can sit inside the restaurant but it is traditional to eat your bunny off the hood of your car while blasting doef doef music out of your stereo and savouring the cane and coke pairing perfection…

Best Bunny in Gauteng
Lugz (Braam Fischer Drive, Canterbury Crossing, Randburg, JHB. 011 781 6244) where the owners Pat and Jacinta Naidu and all their staff are relatively recent imports from Durban.

SUGGESTION 5:
Casablanca for Grownups, Heavenly Playground for Littlies…

Villa San Giovanni: Wonderboom National Airport (main terminal building), Linvelt Street, Wonderboom, Pretoria. Tel 012 543 0501

• Airports are traditionally associated with food on the fly not fine dining but Villa San Giovanni at the Wonderboom airport is deliciously different.
• There is sage-laden saltimbocca, pizzas from heaven and a wonderful winelist.
• The inside section of the eatery is elegant enough but skip it because if you sit outside at the terrace tables you look out onto the runway.
• Little kids love watching planes go up. Big kids like Cassablanca style fantasies - Stay with Rick or go with Victor Lazlo, the choice is yours and the antipasto taste good either way.
• There is the best kiddies playground in Gauteng. Plane for them to get inside, race track, jumping castle.

ONE TO LOOK FORWARD TO:
Andrea’s Back Yay.
• Andrea Burgener who has previously run Deluxe and Super Bon Bon has opened The Leopard.
• No it’s not a game lodge or a night-club specialising in eating warm sushi off hot girls.
• The name is actually from that book, Il Gattopardo / the Leopard. It’s the story of fading Italian aristocracy, and Andrea says she has always loved it for the Lampedusa Pie description – a macaroni timbale –Rest assured the pie is on the menu.
• The décor feel is obliquely retro; 50s chairs and tables mixed with trashy 60s and 70s lights.
• It is a daytime eatery, but open on Friday evenings and another evening if someone wants to book whole place or function.
• So new that there is no telephone number yet. So you will just have to go in. Address: 4th avenue, cnr 12th street, Parkhurst.
• Here are some tasty treats from the opening menu …

Breakast & brunchy things (served till 5pm)
*sweet labneh with poached pears & pistachios
*fresh fruit with chile, lime & honey
*duck-neck sausage with chakalaka
*herrings, sour cream, pickled red onions on pumpernickel
*poached egg , lots of spinach, hollandaise on mash

Lunch things:
*straciatella with alphabet noodles (if you ask nicely she will do it with Dora the Explorer noodles)
*white beans, robiolia and thyme
*Quail cooked like lourenco marques chicken
*oxtail in milkstout
*Lampedusa pie - pigeon or chicken (depending), with macaroni, veloute and pastry crust

Pudding-ish:
*toffee-apple pie
*espresso custard
*steamed naartjie pudding
*cider & bay-leaf poached pears
*salted-macadamia chocolate fudge