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Urbanologi in the Joburg CBD is not only a large and trendy hangout, but it has engaged in a new endeavour to source most of its ingredients within a 150km radius. It’s creating a new market for small traders that’s not existed before. Oh – and the food is really good, writes Anna Trapido.
Urbanologi restaurant at the 1 Fox Precinct in the Johannesburg CBD is housed inside a recently renovated, late 19th-century warehouse. The industrial chic interior has exposed pipes, faux graffiti murals and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on to Johannesburg central police station. So stylish is the building conversion that it won best hospitality space in Africa and the Middle East at the 2017 International Restaurant and Bar Design Awards.
Executive Chef Jack Coetzee’s menu matches a food philosophy he calls Project 150 whereby he is attempting to source all ingredients within 150km of the restaurant. His aim is to “engage with conscious living and sustainable practices around food”. Every item on the bill of fare lists the name of the farm from which the core ingredients came and the distances required to put them on to plates.
Urbanologi is, per force, super seasonal. No matter how much customers love a winter vegetable soup it will be unavailable in the summer months. Want strawberries in your pudding? Come in strawberry season. Coetzee also has a zero-waste policy so, wherever possible, scraps and offcuts are transformed into other edible offerings.
In truth not everything served fits the Project 150 guidelines. The restaurant uses sugar, flour, spices, chocolate, tea, coffee, wines and spirits that are not produced locally but it seems mean-spirited to pick on the few things that aren’t hyper-local when almost all its competitors offer meals packed with imported prawns and out-of-season vegetables flown in from far-off lands. This is a sincere, and mostly successful, attempt to reduce the menu’s carbon kilometres.
Portions are small but reasonably priced. The chef’s intention is that diners should order an array of dishes as part of a share-share, mix-and-match across-the-table-type meal. I enjoyed a rich, smooth duck liver parfait (R45) made with the organs of birds which had previously resided in Delmas (62km from Urbanologi). The accompanying brioche bread was made with surplus duck fat (rather than the traditional butter) in line with the zero-waste approach. The slightly bland but skillfully cured trout (R95) was from fish farmed in Midrand. At 82km and 92km respectively the Clydesdale grilled asparagus (R105) and tender Bapsfontein lamb belly (R110) had travelled the furthest to feed me.
All of the above was as pleasant as it was virtuous but it was with the desserts that my meal at Urbanologi moved from good to great. Pastry Chef Mmathari Moagi has a wonderful capacity to understand the core characteristics of her ingredients. She captures the mood of time and space in each mouthful.
The iced, bouffant cloud of guava mimosa with lemongrass sherbet (R60) had a remarkable, soothing clarity of flavour. Her poached fig and ricotta mélange (R60) was an exquisitely articulate elegy to the loveliness of late summer. The accompanying coffee ground tuile biscuit gave textured crunch to the fabulous figs and a second life to what would otherwise have been discarded espresso bi-product. Lemon rinds left over after juicing for other recipes became a glorious, golden glass of limoncello liqueur.
Overall, the chefs at Urbanologi make diners feel, if only for a few hours, that beauty and virtue are not mutually exclusive. And that there is still time to make the world a better place. Which is a nice way to feel.
. urbanologi.co.za
