An age-old rivalry between two picturesque coastal towns is hotting up and will come to the boil on Thursday evening when residents put their taste buds to the test in the Kei Mouth versus Morgan Bay soup challenge.
The soup war, which was started by former Kei Mouth Country Club president Andrew Baisley 12 years ago, but fell off the annual calendar, was revived last year with Morgan Bay winning the hotly contested honour by just one point.
This year Kei Mouth’s best soup makers have been perfecting their top recipes in order to tickle the taste buds of the tasters and be crowned the best soup making town along their stretch of coastline.
“The rivalry is pretty much about Morgan Bay being on the wrong side of the [Gxarha] River,” joked Kei Mouth Country Club chef Jono Lucas, who will be cooking up a top-secret soup that has its origins in a once-landmark restaurant on the East London beachfront.
“I used to be a minion in the Mövenpick kitchen back then and the soup I’m making used to be a top seller there.
“I’m hoping to spark their nostalgia,” said Lucas.
The great soup contest will feature a team of five soup makers from each town.
They will cook five litres of the most impressive creamy concoctions in their closely guarded arsenal of recipes before carefully transporting it to the country club.
“We don’t tell anyone what soup we are making, but I can tell you that my secret ingredient is a special garlic that the others don’t know about.
“It’s my own recipe,” revealed the club’s administrator, Megan Coetzee, who once owned a coffee shop in Khowa [formerly Elliot] and is something of a ‘souperstar’.
At 6pm on Thursday eager tasters from each town will line up to taste each soup and score it between one and five points.
“Each soup has a number because the tasting and scoring is blind and no one knows who made which soup or what team it is from,” explained Lucas.
Once the tastings are done, the scores tallied and the winning team awarded a case of wine, as well as year-long bragging rights, more soup will be ladled up and enjoyed with fresh-baked bread from Lucas.
Tickets cost R20 and everyone is welcome to take part in the tasting and scoring.
The evening begins at 6pm at the Kei Mouth Country Club...