Chef James Diack’s luxurious Indian winter tasting menu at Basalt

Known for his commitment to sustainable dining and the provenance and seasonality that come with it, chef James Diack has brought his farm-to-table ethos to Basalt since taking up residency at the award-winning hotel restaurant in 2023.

Coming back post-Covid having lost Joburg favourites Coobs and Douglas + Hale, with only Il Contadino standing, the Basalt residency proved to be an opportunity the chef needed. The restaurant at The Peech boutique hotel — 2024 winner of the Best Hotel Restaurant in SA in the Haute Granduer global awards — is consistent in its distinguished fine dining offering.

And it’s a reputation it has maintained throughout its residencies that have featured great chefs such as Freddie Diaz and Candice Philip before Diack. It’s an opportunity to stretch his culinary style and signature.

“With farm-to-table, I have come to find over the past 12 years that you definitely need two outlets to make it work. I was already looking when The Peech approached me and we are aligned in our sustainable approach. I haven’t done fine dining for a very long time and I saw this as a great opportunity to champion sustainable fine dining,” Diack said.

“But my view on sustainability has changed massively where it now incorporates the human side of it. Having a fine dining project the size of Basalt (a maximum of 40 seats), 80-90% of our land-grown ingredients are from our farm in the Magaliesburg, with small-scale producers. It was about going extremely regional, using what we had within a 5km radius of the farm. It’s always been my theory that you cook what you get and not what you want. To be able to do it on a fine-dining scale is really cool. And that was the excitement behind it.”

Intrinsic to the thrill of Basalt’s fine dining experience is the consistently changing and seasonal tasting menus. A menu doesn’t run longer than six or seven weeks. For winter Diack is playing around with an Indian culinary theme, putting a luxurious spin to Indian food that is often slotted in the fast-food category or presented in a monotonous way. Here he’s experimented with flavours, spices and texture for a menu that brims with colour, technique, aroma and warmth in the chilly season.

“The dishes I have enjoyed doing include the beautiful Brightside duck. It’s a masala-rubbed duck breast in a sugar and salt cure infused with Indian flavours such as coriander seeds, dried bay leaf and dried chillies. It comes with a beautiful tamarin jus. For me that’s taking my fine dining technique which is based on French cooking and adding a depth of flavour with Indian spices. My main drive over the menu is none of the dishes are overly hot. They’re beautifully layered with flavour and champion food that we know and love from Indian cuisine with a refined take. We have an amazing chilli bite amuse-bouche, for example,” said Diack.

The six-course tasting menu also boasts a makai shorba spiced charred corn soup; lamb rogan josh with masala farce, fragrant rice puff, spiced green atchar (A fish rogan josh is available as an alternative) and crispy fried prawn with garam masala and tomato. For dessert Diack presents spiced white chocolate mousse, saffron and honey panna cotta, cinnamon and brown butter sponge and cardamom ice cream. A vegan menu is available.

It’s an Indian winter of refined quality at Basalt.