Cosy Cape Town Restaurants
Shelter from the storm
A country meal in a warm, welcoming restaurant is a great way to spend a winter's day - if you can find one that's open! By Jean-Pierre Rossouw.
It's not the driving rain nor the battering wind; not the creeping chill or the warm couch you've left behind. No, the main challenge to eating in the Cape winelands in winter is finding a place that's both good and open for business.
A search for reasons why so many Cape winelands restaurants are closed in winter leads to the old chicken and egg conundrum - or the coq au vin and hollandaise question. On the one hand, restaurants say they don't get the support they need in winter, so they close for a month or two. This accuses us locals of lack of appetite, or tight wallets. But we also know how cocooned Capetonians can become when the north wind starts blowing.
On the other hand, it could be that restaurants milk the summer tourist trade and, come winter, aren't willing to modulate the menu or prices to draw the locals, so they close. If you ask the restaurateurs, they'll tell you that there just aren't enough bums on seats in winter, and it's more expensive to stay open than to close. Another likely reading is that they just need a holiday. Any road up, there are dreary winter months ahead when many winelands favourites are unfortunately closed.
The good news is that, over the last few years, there's been a trend to offer fantastic winter menus - often set courses including wine at very friendly prices. These present new or impecunious customers a wonderful opportunity to sample the restaurant's cuisine - and because the kitchen can control costs it helps the restaurant to "pull through" winter and keep staff employed. One of the pernicious side-effects of our cyclical restaurant industry is that employees are often compelled to be casual because there's no offer of a year-long job, and this applies equally to service and kitchen staff. It is not difficult to see that this easily translates into amateur service and pedestrian food, as the team are not building on stable foundations or learning from career-minded peers.
Laura and Grant Norton, the owners of Henri's in Somerset West, offer a high-value winter special: R120 for three courses and a bottle of wine per two diners. As Laura explains it, the desire to keep the kitchen busy in the quiet months is a primary motivator - as is their wish to entice diners out on wintery nights. It has to be said that Somerset West is a downright perverse place for restaurants. This is my opinion, but I am not alone in holding it. It's a town with ample capital, but the keepers thereof seem unwilling to spend it in local restaurants, while quite willing to do so under brighter city lights. Again, it may be a chicken and egg situation - they will when there are good restaurants, but the good restaurants evolve when there is evident demand in the market.
REASON FOR HOPE
Well, Henri's is a very hopeful sign of better times ahead for Somerset West. It impresses as a well turnedout space, upmarket but comfortable. It's ample in dimension and features a lovely bar with a proficient barman. Two rooms, one with booth seats, the other with free-standing tables, are done out in neat dark wood, dressed stone and artworks and both are well warmed by toasty fireplaces and underfloor heating. It all sets a modern bistro tone, and could be at home in Cape Town central - except for the prices, which are far friendlier! An excellent steak costs around R100, with sides. The menu, created by Laura Norton, who was part of the opening team at 96 Winery Road, is meat-orientated (her family counts butchers in the ranks), but this is no grill house. It's elegant, modern food with influences from around the globe. Service is a good few notches up from keen-and-friendlythough- clueless, and builds on the sophisticated tone that the space initiates. The wine list is good, and there are a few really well-priced "bin end" gems on the first page. This is an excellent place to round out a day in the winelands (they only open for dinner), and if you are a local, consider yourself fortunate.
OLD FAVOURITES
Of course Laura learnt from a master of the hospitality trade in the person of Ken Forrester who started 96 Winery Road and developed it into the winelands restaurant par excellence. In winter it comes into its own with the large fireplace well-employed, and the casual comfort of wood and earthen textures offset by the many wine bottles, homages to and images of wine. Brother Allan Forrester is a restaurant host in the time honoured sense, and long-serving chef Natasha Wray is back behind the pots and pans after a noticeable absence, when the quality on the plate did dip.
New to their offering is a tasting menu, a "best of" selection from a menu that has evolved through a commendable 13 years of operation. While the seasons are reflected on a dedicated page in the menu, quite a few anchor items are constant. And winter is arguably the ideal season for sampling 96 classics like "the famous Gatrile's Duck and Cherry Pie" and the grills section, which features Hollandse pepper fillet along with the usual cuts, advertised as "well marbled, mature, organic, free range beef, dry aged on the bone" preferably enjoyed with "a big glass of anything red," which has to be the most down-toearth wine pairing for a winelands restaurant. The wine list here is fantastic, so if you haven't been here or feel the need to return, now's the time.
Another winelands evergreen that is more often visited as a summer destination but rewards a winter lunch is the restaurant at Delheim. The gemütlichkeit of this winery can't be mistaken as you walk into the winery "village" with its layers of family history and womb-like wine tasting cellar.
On a rainy winter's day, the restaurant is similarly enveloping - all the more as its "conservatory" windows allow a view of the inclement weather. The wood-burning pot-belly oven, chunky furniture, wicker chairs, brick floor and walls are wonderfully rustic and unpretentious, and to drive the point home family dogs lie about or sit on their hind legs, expectant but not overly demanding.
A couple of larger tables invite communal groups to linger (and there are sharing platters of meat and cheese on the menu), while the fact that German specialities like zweibelkuchen and bratwurst are on offer should comfort the winter hunger; also their famed lamb shank and Cape chicken curry or bobotie. The food is home-style, no foams or frills or flights of fancy, so there should be something for anyone. For families there's a kids menu, but I would suggest bringing the little ones in summer when they can merrily chase the farm ducks. The winelist is estate-own at estate prices, and I finally discovered the reason for Late Harvest Spatzendreck's existence, post-lunch, dreamily staring out of the window and waiting for the rain to ease.
A "rediscovery" for me is the renovated restaurant at Avontuur Estate. It is now feels like a restaurant with a cozy lounge on entry and rooms filled with old wood and white table-cloths, ranged close enough to give the whole a very comforting, intimate feeling. Its innate charm is complemented by the personable service of the waitresses and the hospitable chef-owners, Zunia Boucher-Myers and Melanie Paltoglou. I'm also happy to report that the food is very satisfying indeed: uncontrived yet elegantly plated country cuisine with an eye to modern trends. The traditional is evident in prawn cocktail with "marie-rose" sauce and a brandy snap basket for dessert , while there are a good few options for lighter eaters (a salad and sandwich section) and for groups (in the form of a platter selection).
But solid winter appetites are satisfied by roast duckling with orange and Van der Hum sauce or ostrich medallions with a wild mushroom and rosemary Pinotage gravy. The wines are again estate-own with most by the glass, but be sure also to try their 10 year old brandy.
Gordon Manuel used to cook at Villa Belmonte in Cape Town but is now to be found in the countryside, at South Hill winery in the Elgin valley - better known for its wedding spaces and Sauvignon Blanc. "The Venue" is the rather anodyne name that his restaurant trades under - actually the full name is Gordon Manuel @ The Venue - but things do get more exciting from here: the space takes the form of an open modern-rustic barn with huge wooden doors framing postcard-quality vineyard views, while inside bold rich artworks prominently decorate the high walls and a very large fireplace roars its welcome.
The wine list is proudly local, sourced from around the Groenberg, which incorporates Elgin, Bot River and Villiersdorp. Wine lovers will know that many quality wines are emerging from new enterprises in the region, making this the ideal lunch stop on a tasting recce. The farm's own wines are also available at tiny mark-ups, so don't bring your own. The menu changes weekly, and the selection is tight, three or so starters and a similar number of mains (there's also a kids menu). Pricing is set at two courses for R150 per person or three for R180 and the style of the cuisine is modern and eclectic with Manuel not shy of a few theatrical swirls or a stack or two, but he keeps his focus on the primary flavours. Quality is generally good and service attentive.
THE WINTER LIST:
Henri's. Dinner Mon-Sat. Corner
Lourensford and Main Road,
Somerset West. 021 852 6442
96 Winery Road. Lunch daily, dinner
Mon-Sat. Winery Road off R44,
Stellenbosch. 021 842 2020
Delheim. Lunch Mon-Sat. Delheim
Wine Estate, Knorhoek Road, Stellenbosch.
021 888 4607
Avontuur. Breakfast and lunch
daily. On R44 at Avontuur Wine
Estate, between Somerset West and
Stellenbosch. 021 855 4296
Southhill. Lunch Wednesday to
Sunday, Saturday dinner by
arrangement. The Valley Road, off
N2, Elgin. 021 844 0033.
