Cape Town Life Style
Where to Eat and Drink in Cape Town’s City Bowl
The City Bowl is small enough to cross on foot and dense enough that you could spend a week on one street. Bree Street will feed you from breakfast through to late. Harrington Street, ten minutes east, runs on a different idea of dinner altogether. Kloof Street climbs towards the mountain and changes character as it goes.
These are thirteen places we would send someone to, grouped by where they are rather than by what kind of food they serve. Some take bookings weeks ahead. Some take none at all. Each entry says which.
Bree Street and the central grid
Five of these sit on Bree Street or a block off it. Between them they cover breakfast, a mid morning coffee, a long lunch and a late dinner, which is more than most single streets in any city manage. Loop Street runs parallel a short walk east.
A seasonal bistro menu at the lower end of Bree Street
Grub & Vine
Grub and Vine is chef Matt Manning’s bistro on Bree Street, and the thing that makes it easy to recommend is that the menu does not stand still. It changes with the season, the cooking is refined without being formal, and the room is contemporary and relaxed rather than hushed.
The wine list leans on respected South African producers with international bottles alongside. Walk-ins are welcome, and if the dining room is full the same group runs a cocktail room, The Blue Room, and a wine bar, Culture, next door, so an unplanned evening on Bree Street rarely ends in nothing.
Cantonese roast meats in a small Bree Street room
Tomson
Tomson is a small Cantonese street food restaurant from the team behind Max Bagels and Leo’s. Third-generation Chinese-South African chef Andrew Kai cooks roast duck, siu yuk and cha siu alongside a run of small plates.
The wine list is South African and natural, which is not the pairing most people expect with Cantonese roast meats and is a large part of why the room works. It is dinner only, the service is short, and there are tables outside.
Japanese and Peruvian cooking, open every day
Nikkei
Nikkei takes its name from the Japanese community in Peru and cooks the food that came out of it. It sits above its sister restaurant Yatai on Bree Street, and it serves both a la carte and set menus, with vegan and vegetarian options and a private balcony for groups.
It is worth knowing about for a practical reason as much as a culinary one. It is open every day, it takes bookings and it welcomes walk-ins, which between them make it one of the more reliable city-centre tables to find on the night.
The earliest kitchen on Bree Street
Clarke’s
Clarke’s has been on Bree Street since 2011 and runs as a diner rather than a dinner restaurant. Fresh juices and all-day breakfasts in the morning, sandwiches and brunch through the middle of the day, then West Coast oysters, wood-fired pizza and cocktails later on.
It opens earlier than almost anything else on the street, which makes it the default when you have landed on a red-eye or simply woken at four and given up. There are tables out on the pavement, and it is pet friendly and wheelchair friendly.
Ethiopian cooking on Loop Street since 2007
Addis in Cape
Addis in Cape has been in its red historic building on upper Loop Street since 2007, which in this part of town counts for something. The kitchen sends out chicken, beef, fish and prawn dishes with ingredients sourced from Ethiopia.
Roughly half the menu is vegan, which makes it one of the easier tables in the City Bowl for a group that does not all eat the same way. The traditional coffee ceremony is part of the visit rather than an add-on, and there are live Afro-jazz evenings and cooking classes.
Harrington Street and District Six
Harrington Street is ten minutes east of Bree and feels like a different city. Two restaurants here are worth the walk, and they share an owner and a conviction: you eat what the kitchen has decided to cook, and you book ahead to do it.
One set menu, and nothing to choose
Belly of the Beast
Belly of the Beast serves a single set menu in a thirty-seat room, at fixed lunch and dinner sittings. There is nothing to order and no number of courses to settle on. You arrive and you eat what has been cooked that day.
The kitchen works with local sustainable producers and uses the whole animal, so some dishes will be less familiar than others, and the balance across the menu is deliberate rather than accidental. The room is small enough that the chefs talk to the tables. Bookings are essential; this is not a walk-in.
A tasting menu built entirely around South African seafood
Galjoen
Galjoen is the sister restaurant a few doors along, and it does for seafood what Belly of the Beast does for everything else. The menu is a tasting menu and every course is built around South African fish.
The kitchen is unusually direct about what sustainability means to it: only what is responsibly caught locally, and if it is not from South Africa it does not go on the menu. Seebamboes sits on the mezzanine above. Lunch and dinner run as separate sittings, and tables are booked ahead.
Kloof Street and Gardens
Kloof Street climbs out of the city towards the mountain, and the rooms change character as it rises. Four here, including a Victorian house at the bottom, a restaurant that takes no bookings at all, and the one bar in this guide that a neighbourhood actually drinks in.
A Victorian house and a garden strung with lights
Kloof Street House
Kloof Street House occupies a Victorian house at the foot of Kloof Street, behind a garden hung with lights. It is less one restaurant than a collection of rooms: dining rooms under pressed ceilings, a bar stacked with old suitcases, and tables under the trees outside.
It is the City Bowl’s reliable answer to somewhere that should feel like an occasion without being stiff about it. Live jazz over Sunday lunch, candlelit dinners, cocktails in the garden, and a kitchen that runs late. Reservations are handled as requests rather than instant confirmations, so give it more lead time than you would elsewhere.
A set menu, and no reservations at all
Thali
Thali is the Chefs Warehouse group’s Indian-inspired restaurant on Park Road, just off Kloof, serving a three-course set menu in the tapas-for-two format the group built its name on.
It takes no reservations. The kitchen is open to everyone on a first come, first served basis, which means the only plan available is to arrive early. The cocktail bar opens an hour before the kitchen does, which is either an inconvenience or the entire point, depending on your evening.
Seafood sourcing that goes well past sushi
Kyoto Garden Sushi
Kyoto Garden Sushi is at the top of Gardens on Kloof Nek Road, and the kitchen goes a long way past sushi and sashimi. Seafood is the speciality and the sourcing is deliberately unusual: farmed abalone, Mozambican conch, eel, sea urchin.
It is a dinner restaurant, Tuesday to Saturday, and it takes both walk-ins and online bookings. Of the Japanese rooms in the City Bowl this is the one to choose when the sourcing is the reason you are going rather than an afterthought.
A rooftop terrace on upper Kloof Street
The Dark Horse Bar
The Dark Horse has been on upper Kloof Street since 2019 and is a neighbourhood bar rather than a destination one. There is a lounge downstairs and a rooftop terrace that looks at Table Mountain on one side and the city on the other.
Classic cocktails, local beers on tap, shared plates if you want to stay longer than one drink. There are live music nights and sport on the screens. No bookings; you walk in and find a seat.
A drink rather than a meal
Two addresses in the middle of the city where the drink is the reason and the food is the accompaniment. Neither asks you for a whole evening, and both are useful in the gap between an afternoon and a dinner booking somewhere else.
A wine bar inside a working urban winery
Bouchon Wine Bar and Bistro
Bouchon is a wine bar and bistro set inside a working urban winery on Hout Street, from winemaker Christophe Durand and restaurateur Faisal Khakoo. The list is South African only, which reads as a decision rather than a limitation once you are looking at it.
The food is a short menu of tapas and desserts built to go with what is being poured rather than to compete with it. It opens in the late afternoon, Monday to Saturday, which makes it a first stop rather than a last one.
A chocolate cafe and a sunny courtyard
Honest Chocolate Cafe
Honest Chocolate’s cafe sits in an old building between Loop and Bree, with a sunny courtyard and a smaller room inside. Coffees, teas and hot chocolates come with truffles, tarts and cakes made by the operator, much of it vegan friendly.
The house specialities are the dairy-free milkshakes and the banana bread bunny chow, which is the sort of thing you only order because somebody told you to. The Gin Bar opens behind the cafe in the evenings, so the address works twice in one day.
Choosing one
If you have one dinner and you want to remember it, Harrington Street: Belly of the Beast or Galjoen, booked well ahead. If you are deciding on the night, Nikkei and Clarke’s are the most forgiving doors on Bree. If you want an evening rather than a meal, Kloof Street House. And if you want to eat well without committing to anything, start at Bouchon and see where the light goes.
This is a selection rather than a directory. Thirteen places will not settle an argument about the City Bowl, but they will get you through a week in it without a bad meal. If you are heading out to the Winelands to eat instead, Stellenbosch is covered separately.
This guide is about meals and evenings. Mornings in the same streets, the roasteries, the counters and the rooms that shut by four, are covered on their own.
Read our guide to where to spend a morning in the City Bowl