Eat Out released its Top 30 shortlist for the 2019 Top 10 Restaurant Awards minutes ago. The biggest shock is that Chef Liam Tomlin’s Chefs Warehouse & Canteen has not been nominated! Just two years ago Eat Out awarded Tomlin the Chef of the Year Award! 

When I first wrote that Chef Liam’s restaurant on Bree Street did not belong on the Eat Out Top 20 shortlist, when it was nominated for the first time four of five years ago, not conforming to the criteria for fine dining, Chef Liam denigrated me in Facebook and banned me from his restaurants! It seems that the new judging team at Eat Out has seen the light, and feels the same about it!

Further shock exclusions are Foliage, DW Eleven13, Indochine, Terroir, Chef’s Table, The Pot Luck Club, and Marble!  Wow! So many dented chef egos and headaches today, after their highs of winning awards earlier this week! I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall when the Eat Out team finalised the Top 30 shortlist recently, to exclude such heavy weights, much like it rattled the cage of the restaurant industry by demoting The Test Kitchen from its long-held number one perch! 

To the South African and international diner it must be utterly confusing as to which restaurants are worth eating at and which are our top chefs, having such widely diversive results in three restaurant award announcements this week alone. 

It has been raining Restaurant Awards this week. The chefs at the following restaurants will be ecstatic to have made it this far. But only ten of these restaurants, some never heard of before (could they not fill a list of 30 restaurants?) can be named an Eat Out Top 10 restaurant for 2019! 

 

The nominees, in alphabetical order, are:

Camphors at Vergelegen
Chefs Warehouse at Beau Constantia
Chefs Warehouse at Maison
Eike
FABER
Fermier Restaurant
Foxcroft
FYN Restaurant
Grei
Greenhouse at The Cellars-Hohenort
Janse & Co
Jardine Restaurant
Jordan Restaurant
La Colombe
La Petite Colombe
La Tête
Le Coin Français
LivingRoom at Summerhill Estate
Overture
Pierneef à La Motte
Protégé
Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient
Rust en Vrede
Salsify
The Restaurant at Waterkloof
The Shortmarket Club
The Test Kitchen
Tjing Tjing Momiji
The Werf Restaurant at Boschendal
Wolfgat

 

The following Awards will be presented at the Award event as well: 

Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.chrisvonulmenstein.com/blog Tel +27 082 55 11 323 Twitter:@Ulmenstein Facebook: Chris von Ulmenstein Instagram: @Chrissy_Ulmenstein