As published in The Cape Times. July 24, 2007

Not satisfied with the quality of lamb and beef available from local butchers, 95 Keerom Street chef patron Giorgio Nava farms his own. As if that weren’t taking quality control a bit far, he also catches his own tuna and only has it available on his menu when it is just landed off his, or a friend’s boat. 

Nava has strong opinions about many things; of Italian cuisine he is most forthright: “risotto must never be al dente (bite) and must be sufficiently liquid to have a wave or “onde” he says in lilting Italian. “Pasta mustn’t be over sauced as”, he says, “it is at most restaurants the majority of which, in his opinion, are trattoria rather than ristorante.  He’d know. Nava owned a string of successful Milanese restaurants and has had some of Italy’s best known chefs in his employ. He may be well known at the owner of Rhodes’ House nightclub and 95 Keerom Street, his Italian restaurant in the heart of Cape Town’s legal district, but few people will know that he is a passionate fisherman and hunter setting his sights on game birds, or that he made his first fortune in cut flowers.

We’re drinking Fattoria di Basciano’s I Pini – a luscious red wine blend. Even though we’re in the farm kitchen of Towerwater, (so named for the magic way the wind blows the river water into an arc) his Karoo farm about an hour-and-a-half outside of Graaff Reinet, it is bitterly cold. Although it is May, there is snow on the aptly named Sneeuberg that forms the centre beacon of his 12,000 hectare farm. Despite a roaring fire in the adjoining lounge, I’m gulping down the wine just to keep warm.

Moments before sunset, as the cold nibbled at our nostrils and ears, we viewed his dorper sheep whose flesh is sweet and fragrant from eating a karoo fynbos known as santolina, a silver green bush with little yellow flowers. Although the farm is vast, it is run just by half a dozen men and their families. Farm manager Heinrich Delport is joining us for dinner. Giorgio is cooking, he and Heinrich are talking about the farm and the black jackal that kills their sheep but which the government is considering listing as an endangered species. They have alpacas that protect the sheep but need to hunt the jackal rather than poison them which impacts the entire ecosystem and the organic certification of the lamb and beef he farms. We’re having risotto with saffron to start and lamb cutlets as a main course with a simple salad of rocket or ruchetta as the Italian’s call it.

Start with three liters of water and then add the “soffritto” of chopped leeks, carrots and onions. A whole chicken is bobbing away in the pot. He likes to cook a stock for two to three hours but as it is already 6.30, he’s cranked up the heat to speed it along.

On our way to the farm we stopped at Venter Butchery in Graaff-Reinet to which Giorgio supplies about 200 lambs a month. “Venter is one of the best hunters in the area” he says while carving the marrow from beef shin bones to be used in the risotto. Fishing brought him to South Africa in 1989 and in 1999 he decided to live here.  

He was born in Milan in 1964 to what he describes as a “fortunate” family who have Italy’s oldest crockery factory producing Richard Ginori china since AD 760 and employs over 2000 people. His grandfather was an important vegetable seed farmer and brought sweet melon – now ubiquitous with Parma Ham – to Italy: “He had a farm outside Milano where I spent my childhood and where I learnt to ride horses. The farm was very famous.” Rather than go into the factory as his father wished, he completed an agricultural degree and worked for the Amsterdam Flower Market before eventually purchasing that company and expanding it into an international empire.

I asked if his family money had helped him in business. He won’t even hint at a rift in the family, but says that he and his father are too alike to work together and his decision to go into a business on his own meant he would have to do so with his own money.

Giorgio is stripping the leaves off the rocket he just picked from the kitchen’s herb garden. The air is now heavy with the boiling chicken stock and the vapours from the sweating onions make my eyes water.  It begins to dawn on me. I’ve spent the day with the chef patron of 95 Keerom Street, undoubtedly my favourite Italian restaurant and now, in his karoo kitchen about eight hours away from Cape Town, he’s cooking just for me and another. He’s pulling rosemary from their stalks and preparing a perfume carpet together with olive oil and an entire head of garlic. He cuts the fat from the chops, leaving just the thinnest layer of white before tucking them into the herb mix. The karoo lamb fat tastes lighter than it aught to and, once the chops have been cooked on the braai outside, the remaining fat will impart sweetness to the meat.

As Giorgio and Heinrich talk – I drink and munch on biltong from kudu shot by Venter himself. “We lost a very beautiful bull in the mountain last month – we think from poison grass.” Giorgio tells me it was one of the special Italian breed. It had been dead for three days which meant he couldn’t do an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.” It takes about three days to go around his farm which means the 1650 ewes and 2500 lambs have free rein but also that it takes time to find missing sheep or cattle.

Giorgio is one of only a handful of farmers who is breeding a cross between the Italian prize romangola bull and the hardy African Nguni. The result is a beast that is big and virile and fetches a high price on auction (sometimes as much as one hundred thousand Rand). 

So far the risotto has had 100g of butter together with 30 mls of olive oil and one large onion finely chopped. The marrow from three shin bones has been melted with the onions and he has added 500g of Italian rice which is now slicked with the fat. The hot chicken stock is being added one ladle at a time and stirred over gentle heat until all the liquid has been absorbed for adding another.

He is grating 150g of Parmigiano Reggiano which is aged for two years although he says Grana padano will also do.  At least 15 minutes has passed since he began stirring in the stock and only now does he add one gram of saffron as the extended cooking can destroy the refined saffron flavour. The rocket is soaking in cold water and will soon be served up as a simple salad, dressed with salt, pepper and olive oil. Another 15 minutes pass and the risotto is ready to eat – soft and creamy with a wave in the dish when shaken.

The cutlets are the highlight and although there are about 16 on the plate for three of us I want to nibble at the bone – hard and close where the meat is the sweetest.

95 Keerom Street. 021- 422-0765.

Brian Berkman was Giorgio Nava’s guest at Towerwater.