Review: Green and Gold

With my daughter away at my mom’s house, the fiancé and I were keen n a great night out. Now, we’re not that old but we’re over our clubbing days so the next best thing is finding an amazing pub to go to that’s close to the house so Uber costs are not too high. We settled on Green and Gold, a proudly South African bar in Weltevreden Park in Johannesburg West rand.

I have passed this place at many times and always wondered what it would be like. When I first asked my fiancé about it, he stated that a very long time ago when he went there, it was a semi-racist place which kind of deterred me from going. I called ahead to make a booking so we could get in front of the screen.

On the night was the FA Cup Final and a South African rugby derby. This place has like a million TV screens each showing the different games. Excited to see people from all walks of life, my excitement quickly turned into anger when I was told my booking was given away and that there are no tables for us. So my question was “what is the point of calling in to book, taking down my requirements, time and phone number, only to not take any of it into consideration and give my table away?” The manager was just apologetic and her excuse was that the patrons just remove the booking slips from the table and just sit down. That’s a terrible excuse and you should have measures for excuses like that because you turned a really excited patron into an angry one. Anyways, we eventually found seating inside the restaurant, not facing the TV screen but still stayed because the match had already started.

To calm ourselves down and fully cure the mini hangover we had, we started our drinks with a cocktail each. I do realise they were busy but boy, did they take their time when it came to delivering our cocktails. I had bottled water in my handbag which came to my rescue when my mouth was as dry as the Sahara desert.

So onto the next phase which we opted for starters. I went with the deep fried halloumi and my fiancé had the garlic snails. I know the wait between meals is not meant to be long but because they were busy, I expected the waiter to take the main orders straight after serving the starter. Distracted by the game, we didn’t even notice that our table had not been cleaned, minutes after finishing our meals. But, because they were busy, I chose not to focus on that but on my rather larger cider.

The next was the mains. Before I tell you what I ate, I need to commend this place for having the most comprehensive menu I have ever seen. Most places want to specialise in a certain type of food like pizza or pasta, but so rarely do I see a place that just wants to specialise in FOOD, full stop.

I had their rump steak with chips on the side and my fiancé had their mussels. Again he had garlic in his meal. I see he was not in the mood for make outs later, hehehe. Creating a creamy and delicious garlic sauce is quite easy which they managed to do well, but this is where my problem lies: I had the rump, which is steak, which is South African, which we all know how to create. Although it was cooked medium rare, it was tasteless. I spent again more time trying to create flavours using my salt and pepper condiments.

This restaurant/pub spends all this time trying to specialise in all the foods of the world that they fail to perfect what they already have.

Their slow service and throwing away our booking really brought down my review of this place but their delicious cocktails and great atmosphere saved this place from receiving a dismal review.

For what it’s worth, this place scored an average 5/10 Ladyvera points.