Courgette fried risotto balls with truffle mayo, miniature Yorkshire puddings, Scotch quail’s eggs, and miniature DIY ice cream cones… Tiny food has never been so appealing.

In Europe and Australia, serving tapas is fast replacing formal tasting menus as a more interactive way for patrons to try a range of flavours. Back in Mzansi, several of our top chefs are following suit. Luke Dale-Roberts opened the Pot Luck Club in late December, and the New Year greeted us with news that another of our award-winning chefs has a new baby.
 
“It’s the sort of thing I like: being able to try a lot of different flavours,” Marthinus Ferreira tells me. The chef at Jozi’s DW-Eleven-13 opened The Grazing Room when the small shop space adjacent to his restaurant became available.
 
“I can experiment more with certain dishes,” enthuses Marthinus. “The menu constantly changes – it might even change during the evening. If a dish runs out, we’ll replace it with something else.”
 
Right now, some of the most popular dishes at the small, 25-seater space include Yorkshire puddings topped with oxtail meat, bone marrow, caramelised onions and horseradish cream; Italian-style spring rolls with smoked mozzarella, rocket, pastry, and cream sauce; and spicy lamb meatballs with tomato sauce and garlic crumbs.
 
It all sounds delicious, and thankfully the dishes range between R20 and R65. “You’re not too scared to order something different because it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg,” he explains.
 
Other scrumptious-sounding dishes include fried duck eggs on Parma ham with pecorino shavings, beer-battered prawns, and Scotch quails eggs. There’s also a host of toast-based dishes: bone marrow on toast; fried bread, tossed in thyme, Parmesan and fresh herbs, served with a spicy tomato sauce; tomato bruschetta with confit tomatoes and Parma ham; and Welsh rarebit made with mature cheddar and beer. Wholegrain mustard popcorn is served on the table as a snack, along with olives, smoked by Marthinus and his team.
 
“When you’re doing something like tapas, because it’s very simple food, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the best ingredients. You can’t compromise, because the simpler the dish the more important the produce,” Marthinus tells me.
While we talk, he reveals he’s currently waiting on a delivery of fresh Saldahna Bay mussels. “Maybe with a smoky tomato sauce and crusty bread,” he muses.
 
Making tapas also offers chefs another challenge, however. “You’ve got to be careful how much you spend on produce,” Marthinus explains, “you can’t sell a tapas dish for R150”. This means vegetables often take pride of place. “There are so many amazing things you can do with vegetables,” Marthinus enthuses. “The cauliflower, for instance. Dry it out and it makes a beautiful chip; purée it and it changes the flavour profile completely; boil it and slice it; fry it; or make a cauliflower powder – all the different flavours come out depending on the way you cook it.”

The new dessert menu has just made its debut, with miniature vanilla, chocolate and cinnamon ice cream cones, homemade Jaffa cakes, salted fudge, marshmallows, friands and petite fours. There’s even a cheese course consisting of gorgonzola ice cream, pear purée and candied fennel, which is thinly sliced and cooked in sugar syrup to make it “sticky and yummy and translucent” according to Marthinus.
 
On the booze side, there’s a selection of sherries, microbrewed beers, and pretty much every cultivar of wine available by the glass. Marthinus also dreams up two to three cocktails every night – from strawberry mojitos to a South African play on sangria made with hanepoot and sparkling wine instead of red wine.
 
While Marthinus notes that tapas restaurants haven’t really worked in Jozi in the past, Joburg diners have taken to The Grazing Room thus far. “We’re fully booked for about three weeks in advance,” Marthinus says happily. “I hate chasing away customers from DW Eleven-13. Now we can invite them to the tapas bar – and if a table opens up we’ll send them through. The problem is that we’ve done that for the last two weeks, and everybody ends up staying in the tapas bar!”
 
By Katharine Jacobs