Cape Town Life Style
Our Top 10 Restaurants in Cape Town
Ten restaurants across five parts of Cape Town. This is a selection rather than a survey. There is no attempt to cover every neighbourhood, every price point or every kind of cooking, and several very good rooms are not on it because something else was doing the same thing better.
What it does try to do is spread. Two are in the Constantia valley, three in the City Bowl and Woodstock, three at the Waterfront, one out on Kalk Bay harbour and one over the Helshoogte pass. Four of them serve a menu you do not choose from. One is a bistro you can walk into. The first four fill weeks ahead, so start there.
The set-menu rooms
Four kitchens that decide for you. Two run full tasting menus, one runs a fixed sequence of plates for two, and one simply cooks what it bought that morning and does not print a menu at all. These are the four to book first.
01
La Colombe
If there is a consensus first name for Cape Town dining, this is it. La Colombe sits on the Silvermist estate at the top of Constantia Nek, in forest rather than vineyard, and runs a tasting menu under executive chef James Gaag with a separate cellar experience alongside the dining room. It is the benchmark the rest of this list gets measured against, and it is the one to book first because it is the one that fills first.
02
PIER
PIER is the La Colombe group ocean room, out at the Pierhead next to the NSRI station, and the menu is built almost entirely around what comes out of the water. Head chef John Norris-Rogers runs a multi-course tasting menu with a full vegetarian version alongside it rather than as an afterthought, which is rarer here than it ought to be. A discretionary service charge is added to the bill.
03
Belly of the Beast
Harrington Street, no menu, no ordering. Lunch at half past twelve from Tuesday to Saturday and dinner at a quarter to seven from Monday to Saturday, and you eat what the kitchen decided to cook that morning. It is the most confident proposition in the city and the one that rewards trust. Bookings are essential. The same people run Galjoen, a seafood room, further down the same street.
04
Chefs Warehouse at Beau Constantia
The Chefs Warehouse format is a set sequence of small plates for two, and at Beau Constantia it arrives with the valley falling away below the deck. Lunch runs seven days a week and dinner Monday to Saturday, reservations are advised, and children under ten are not admitted, which tells you what kind of afternoon it is.
Where the city eats out
Four rooms you go to for the evening rather than the occasion. Small plates above the Old Biscuit Mill, Greek and Cypriot cooking on Wale Street, fire at the Waterfront and a bistro with a jazz trio in it.
05
The Pot Luck Club
Globally inspired small plates from the top floor of the Silo at the Old Biscuit Mill, running since 2012 and still the room people take visitors to. Lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday, brunch on Sunday. Tables go through Dineplan and a deposit per guest holds the booking, which is the clearest signal there is of how hard it is to get into.
06
Ouzeri
Wale Street, and the reason it is on this list is that nothing else in the city is doing what it does. Ouzeri cooks a contemporary version of the regional food of Cyprus and Greece, dinner Tuesday to Saturday and lunch on Saturdays, on hours the kitchen publishes seasonally rather than fixing. It is the least formal room in this ten and one of the best.
07
Marble Cape Town
David Higgs built Marble around fire, and the Cape Town room puts a wood-fired grill imported from Michigan at the centre of it. South African cooking over flame, a separate seafood menu, and a rooftop bar above for anyone who wants the room without committing to the table. Lunch and dinner seven days a week, with the kitchen closed for an hour in between.
08
Le Bistrot de JAN
Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen bistro, the younger sibling of his Riviera room, now at the InterContinental Table Bay on the Waterfront. It runs a short a la carte menu rather than a tasting menu, with live jazz in the early evening, which makes it the entry on this list you can walk into with an appetite and no particular plan.
Worth the drive
Two that are not in the city at all. One is at the top of a mountain pass in the Winelands and one is built out over a working fishing harbour, and they are at opposite ends of the formality scale.
09
Delaire Graff Restaurant
The one entry that asks you to leave the city, and it earns it on the view: the Banhoek valley from the top of Helshoogte, with refined cooking under head chef Clinton Jacobs and a wine list to match the address. Lunch every day with a last seating at two, dinner Wednesday to Saturday with a last seating at half past eight. Book the terrace, and book it early.
10
Live Bait Kalk Bay
Built out on the breakwater at Kalk Bay harbour, below Harbour House, with False Bay on one side and the fishing boats on the other. The cooking is deliberately simple, wood-fired flatbreads and mezze-style plates with sushi alongside, and the sun deck is the point. Open every day from half past eleven until eleven at night. It is the least ambitious kitchen on this list and the best lunch on it.
Getting a table
The four set-menu rooms are the hard ones. La Colombe, PIER, Belly of the Beast and Chefs Warehouse at Beau Constantia all fill weeks out, and Belly of the Beast in particular seats at fixed times rather than across a service, so there is no late table to hope for. The Pot Luck Club takes a deposit per guest through Dineplan, which should tell you how far ahead to be thinking.
If you want the city rather than the list, Where to Eat and Drink in Cape Town's City Bowl goes street by street. Where to Eat in Stellenbosch does the same for the Winelands. For something cheaper and earlier in the day, The Best Markets in Cape Town is where most of the good eating happens before noon.