Tag Archives: Jardine

Restaurants offering Food Delivery/Collection during 2021 Level 4 Lockdown: Cape Town and Winelands.

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Cape Town and Winelands Restaurants have been quick to set up a Delivery and/or Collection Service, since President Ramaphosa announced the Level 4 Lockdown on Sunday,  closing down all restaurants for Sit-Down Service in the country.

Whilst surviving two restaurant closures in Lockdown last year, this restaurant Level 4 closure appears to have caught many by surprise. Many restaurateurs have become wiser through last year’s experience, and have calculated the break even point in terms of minimum income to be made. Combined with the rain all week to date and freezing cold, and the fear of the fast-spreading Delta Covid variant, many restaurants are making losses by being open for Take-Aways. Continue reading →

23 SA Restaurants make it onto the 50BEST Discovery restaurant and bar list, but does it really mean anything?

 

It is the season of Restaurant Awards and accolades, and the newest one is 50 BEST Discovery, launched just two weeks ago by the World’s 50 Best, a credible ranked list of the best restaurants in the world. In total, 27 South African establishments appear on this new list, of which 23 are restaurants, ten in Cape Town, and with some strange inclusions. I had to ask myself what this is all about, reading the motivation for and description of this newest accolade. 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 →

Eat Out Awards 2018: a refreshing change, knocks old-guard chefs off their multi-restaurant perches!

I could not think it possible that the Eat Out Awards 2018 could be so refreshingly different, but it appears that new Head Judge Margot Janse has created a fresh new look at the restaurant judging criteria. Many of our top old-guard chefs took a severe beating at the Awards last night!  Continue reading →

Eat Out announces the Top 30 Restaurant list for 2018: some surprise inclusions and exclusions!

This afternoon Eat Out announced its list of the Top 30 restaurants in our country for this year. The Top 20 restaurants will be revealed at the Awards ceremony on 18 November at GrandWest, and the Top 10 list within that ranking. There are some surprise inclusions and exclusions in this list.  Continue reading →

Does CNN’s ‘7 stunning Cape Town vineyards’ list have any credibility when they are not in Cape Town?!

haute-cabriere-restaurant-views-2-exlarge-169In my book CNN is a credible news agency, but this image has been severely dented by an article entitled ‘7 stunning Cape Town vineyards with food as good as the wine’, written last week by one Griffin Shea. Not one of the seven wine estates featured are in Cape Town!

The article introduction is short and sweet: ‘It’s no secret that in Cape Town, good wine abounds. But wine farms also host some of South Africa’s best restaurants, which pride themselves on serving up meals from ingredients often grown just steps away from the tables. These restaurants have won enough awards to fill walls, but like so many of South Africa’s best places to eat, they’re generally relaxed, unpretentious affairs where the prices won’t break the bank. Many of the menus are deceptively simple, heavy on local ingredients and farm fare, but prepared with passion and care’.

It does not state on which basis the wine estates were selected, but obviously they had to have a ‘great‘ restaurant, Continue reading →