Brent Meersman : A master of text and play

By : Samane Jnr Marks

The guru behind text meeting play in review writing : credits Cape Town Press Club http// www.capetownpc.org.za

Brent Meersman is a South African, author, writer, journalist, and an incredible reviewer based in (the Mother City) Cape Town. He has written various reviews of theoretic shows, restaurants, and unique events. He is mostly known as a political novelist who draft reports. Brent has been writing for Mail & Guardian which is a news publication with quality editorial independence and excellence.

Brent Meersman has been putting pen to paper since 2003 about exhilarating things in life such as long serving art events in Grahamstown, restaurants reviews such as the commonly known Bitten by food bug and Confused but content.

He is currently a book writer co-editor of ground up news with an official author’s website containing his latest reviews and latest books. The sunset claws being one of the books followed by Five lives at noon, Homo odyssey and rattling the cage (2021).

Brent Meersman in the 3 articles addressed numerous factors which are racial predicament being a catalyst to high rate of unemployment, African cuisine’s slow induction in our restaurants, and insight on menu variation in South Africa and Italy.

He briefly elaborated how South Africans restaurants started to embrace its new democracy by re-establishing and redefining ways, by simply stopping to copy European. The act of steer clearing away from the mindset of Indigenous and African as inferior. He has shown a very balanced and a concrete opinion there as our history proves and supports his opiniated statement.

Local chefs began emulating the Californian and Australians trying to invent new cuisine for South Africa as the other countries has done for themselves, by embodying local ingredients with a little touch of the world trends. Chefs are now freely cherishing the abundance available by playing the free role of trying new dishes of their own conceptuality and slowly reintroducing Morogo back on the menu (Brent Meersman, 2013).

I personally assumed this piece is purposeful aiming to display the growth within the restaurant sector of South Africa by prioritising and niching the craft of embodying Indigenous and African cuisines in their menus.

He raised one of the most ignored racial predicaments South African restaurants had before the radical revolution in the 1980s. So, the assumption of being an incredible cook if you are not a South African was prominent and feed onto for a prolonged while.

Brent covers all the aspects of the subject on how South African restaurants were held down before. He further details how they have managed to establish themselves with evident changes lately within local or suburban menus. The approach of the topic of bitten by the food bug is orderly broken down in a balanced fashion.

Confused but content review written on the 16th of Nov 2012, insightfully praises and displays the importance of the Italian cuisine being Pizza and Pasta. He emphasises details by mentioning “even restaurants that is not Italian serve Italian.” The Italian cuisine scope is broadened up here and I am well convinced these two dishes from Italian kitchen are the first regional to truly global as nations incorporating local ingredients to the cuisine.

Brent’s analytical approach is very educational as it bestows the proof of how breakfast in Milan and Turin differs, respectively. An in-depth elaboration I find as a highlight is on how solo per il pranzo varies in Rome meaning (only for lunch) but in Vienza which is an Italian province too varying in definition known as (open for dinner).

Pizza or Pasta is mostly in everyone’s liking and the part of pasta having a bewildering variety is factual and believable based on observations on almost all restaurants. Brent information is aligned with the information I’ve read from Laura Santini’s Perfect pasta.

The rethinking of the national arts festival written on July the 4th 2015. His topical approach on how it is right to draw attention to the poverty in Grahams town and reiterate that because of our apartheid legacy owns the wealthy means of production others dwell in informal settlements. where there is poor sanitation, water predicaments and beggars in the street.

It rises (highlights to me how the point racism being a complex system that is far from conscious hate it is a very insidious cultural disease. It remains to resurface that it is a system of social and political levers set up generations ago to be perpetual on white people’s behalf at other people’s expense.

Brent Meersman’s stylistic writing of conveying the message on these three instances included a very well-balanced criticism with points raised and well-detailed. It is what we living it was impactful making one conscious about racial predicaments in our daily occupation. All food lovers and historians alike should read Meersman’s reviews, it cracks psychological extrication and broadens up the scope on local issues.