Tag Archives: Delaire Graff

Cape Restaurant Covid-19 Closures exceed 40, Restaurants for Sit-Down reopen in Lockdown Level 3 but most retain Delivery/Collection Service: July 2020!

 

The Restaurant industry is one of the hardest hit due to the Corina Virus in South Africa, having had to endure five weeks of complete closure, then restricted to Food Deliveries in May, allowed to offer Alcohol Sales and Food Collections during June, and now allowed to offer Sit-Down Service without on-site alcohol consumption since Monday 29 June.  As an industry employing an estimated 800000 employees, the UIF and TERS problems it has had to endure in receiving (or not) staff payment has exacerbated the state of the restaurant industry, described by Chefs Warehouse Chef Liam Tomlin earlier this week as being reduced to nothing more than one of Coffee shops!

Many restaurants have decided to not open for Sit-Down Service currently, until they can offer on-site consumption of alcoholic beverages, and will continue to offer the Delivery and Collection of Food and Alcohol. Continue reading →

40th edition of Platter’s by Diners Club International 2020 South African Wine Guide launched, with a record of 125 5-star wines!

On Friday evening I attended the launch of the 40th edition of the Diners Club International 2020 South African Wine Guide, at the Table Bay Hotel in the Waterfront, an event that is pretty much the same in format every year, yet was different this year, in the interest of making the event shorter.   

More than 8000 wines from more than 900 producers were rated for the 2020 Platter’s Wine Guide edition. Of the 125 5-star wines awarded, 26 went to Chenin Blanc brands, 18 to Shiraz/Syrah, and 11 to Chardonnay brands. 

Continue reading →

JHP Gourmet Guide announces 2020 top restaurants, but does not release the list until January 2020! Read it here first!

The publishers of the Gourmet Guide 2020 have made it really difficult to write this post, in that it is not revealing its full list of 36 restaurants that received its one, two, or three plate awards on Monday, until January 2020, its website states. One can surmise that it wants the Gourmet Guide 2020 to be bought so that it can generate income. By January these Awards will have long been forgotten! Continue reading →

American Express announces Top 2020 Dining Award winners, with a Johannesburg bias!

It was a multi-Award day on Monday this week, with both American Express (for the Western and Southern Cape), as well as the Gourmet Guide (National) announcing their 2020 Restaurant Award winners. A week earlier American Express had announced its Gauteng, Free State, and KwaZulu-Natal Awards. There were many similarities in the winners, yet some strange winners in the American Express Dining  awards documented in this post. Continue reading →

South African wineries rub shoulders with other international wine estates, in inaugural 2019 Best Vineyard in the World Awards!

It was a Google search on Mendoza Winery Zuccardi through which I discovered a brand new Winery Award, the World’s Best Vineyards 2019, presented by the same publisher William Reed Business Media as the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List, which I have been using to eat my way through South American countries. The Zuccardi winery in Uco Valley in Mendoza in Argentina was named the Best Vineyard in the World in the inaugural ranking of a Top 50 List.  I was delighted to see that a number of our country’s Wineries feature on the list too. Continue reading →

Fun fine dining SŸN at 47 popping up on top of 47 Bree Street from 16 July, a teaser before the main event!

The news is brief, and no doubt more will be revealed as 16 July gets closer. Dynamic Chefs Rikku O’Donnchü and Warwick King are opening a somewhat more permanent pop-up restaurant for a three month period before they are ready to open their exciting experimental fine dining restaurant, the location and name of which is still a big secret. Continue reading →

Alex von Ulmenstein Acorn awarded as one of 30 best under 30 in the UK Hospitality industry!

I have never written about a family member on my Blog before, but today I salute my son Alex von Ulmenstein in his success in receiving a The Caterer Acorn Award 2019, as one of the 30 best in the UK Hospitality industry under the age of 30. Continue reading →

Chewton Glen offers a variety of cuisine for its guests, made with ingredients from its Kitchen Gardens!

I have visited Chewton Glen in the New Forest annually since my son Alex started working there five years ago, moving over from Delaire Graff Estate to the fellow Relais & Chateaux property. Over time I have tried out the various eating options at the hotel, and tried them all out again on my most recent visit last week. Continue reading →

Gorgeous George Hotel and its GiGi Rooftop Restaurant & Bar simply…Gorgeous, bowled over by the design, differentness!

How does one summarise Cape Town’s newest trendy hotspot that is a 32 bedroom Hotel, a rooftop bar with a resident mixologist, and a restaurant with Chef Guy Bennett at the helm, located in an area in which such an offering is not expected, that is simply gorgeous? The Gorgeous George Hotel, and with it the GiGi Rooftop Restaurant and Bar, will bring the Cape Town city centre alive again, an area that has not seen any innovation in quite a while. Continue reading →

Chef Kevin Grobler does full career circle, returns to Delaire Graff!

In 2015 I met Chef Kevin Grobler at JAN Restaurant in Nice, the now one Michelin star restaurant, a week after he had started working in South Afrca’s Best South African cuisine restaurant. He had left Delaire Graff Restaurant to join dynamic and creative Chef Jan-Hendrik at JAN, and last week he went full circle, in starting at Delaire Graff as Head Chef again.  Continue reading →