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 →
Tag Archives: Delaire Graff
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 →
JAN the JOURNAL Vol 2 2018: Honours timelessness, feasting, KZN, and Nice, is more commercial than before!
JAN the JOURNAL has published its second volume of 2018, just before the year closed. It has taken me almost two months to look at it after buying a copy at Woolworths, the 297 page manuscript of The Jan Hendrik Group (PTY) Limited being more than intimidating in thickness, and time required to do it justice in reading it. Despite having an editor for the publication, one wonders how Chef Jan-Hendrik manages to find the time to collate such a heavy-weight Journal in his role as Editor-in-Chief, given his commitment as chef to his one Michelin star restaurant JAN in Nice, and his regular trips to Cape Town and SA. Continue reading →
Book Review: ‘Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch’ tells a saucy saga of transformation; fact or fiction?!
I was sent a copy of Eva Mazza’s ‘Sex, Lies & Stellenbosch’ by Jacana Press, to review, my first Book Review. Whilst I waded through the sex, and sex, and sex, I wondered how I would write this review, this being a family-friendly Blog. But it was right at the end that the message of the book was clear: no matter how terrible the life experiences one goes through, there is always growth and an opportunity to transform, and lead a better life, echoing my two ‘SwitchBitch’ books which I published last year. Continue reading →
Restaurant Review: Le Petit Manoir Restaurant just does not gel, despite Chefs’ experience In a Michelin star restaurant!
Last week I invited my friends Clint and Llewellyn Lambert (GM of the Franschhoek Boutique Hotel, and influential blogger at Hospitality Hedonist) to join me for dinner at Le Petit Manoir in Franschhoek, which opened in July. Having had more than enough time to settle in, it was a severely (and costly) experience, of a completely dysfunctional restaurant. I apologise for the longer than average Review, summarizing my experiences with Chef Kevin Grobler’s cooking since 2015. Continue reading →