Last night Eat Out awarded its Best Everyday Eateries awards 2017 for the Western Cape, with the Gauteng Awards due to be presented next week. The Western Cape Awards were interesting, impacting on the Top 30 Restaurant shortlist, which Eat Out has not yet announced. The inclusion of Chef’s Warehouse & Canteen on Bree Street vindicates our contention over the past two years that this restaurant did not ever deserve to be included in the Top 20 shortlist!
Last week we wrote a Blogpost about the criteria for the Eat Out Top 30 Restaurant shortlist, as well as for the Best Everyday Eateries 2017, which Eat Out now defines as ‘Casual Restaurants’:
Eat Out Restaurant Awards 2017 change yet again, as does its Awards ceremony!
This year 14 Best Everyday Eateries were to be awarded. Only eight category winners were announced out of the list of fourteen in the Western Cape:
# Best Asian : Shio in De Waterkant, owned by Chef Cheyne Morrisby, one of the hardest working chefs in Cape Town, successfully juggling the Hout Bay-based Cheyne’s, Shio, and more planned restaurants, with a venue move for Cheyne’s! Three Wise Monkeys in Sea Point was announced as the runner-up.
# Best Bistro: The Stack in Gardens, the most colourful restaurant, bar, and event venue in Cape 
Town in terms of its bold decor. There has been a chef change, with Chef Warwick King having moved to Delaire Graff, and the Kitchen now headed by Chef Jason Kosmas, previously of Chef’s Warehouse & Canteen. The Best Everyday Eateries rule allows chef changes.
# Savanna Best Burger Eatery: Royale Eatery. Hudson’s in Claremont was named the runner-up.
# Best Coffee Shop: Meraki in Stellenbosch, the second year running that it has won this Award. Betty Blue Bistro was named the runner-up ‘coffee shop’, an insult to place it into this category, when it is far more than a coffee shop, operating as a very popular Bistro in Hermanus!
# Best Indian Eatery: The Chapter with Prim Reddy, in Bloubergstrand. I have not eaten here, but have seen numerous positive reviews about it on the Cape Town Restaurants: Good, Bad, and Nasty Facebook page.
# Best Mexican Eatery: Fuego in Sea Point. This is a new Award category, awarded for the first 
time.
#. Tramontina Best Steakhouse: Primal Eatery, a ‘Meatery’ in the former Chef’s Warehouse building, which has been transformed into a quality meat Eatery and cocktail bar, with tight control over its operation by owner Brynn Felix. Sponsor of this Award is Tramontina, a Brazilian company manufacturing cookware, cutlery, and home appliances.
Rare Grill is the runner-up Steakhouse in this category, having recently been named the best Steakhouse in the country.
Primal Eatery flaming good new contemporary open-fire cooking restaurant in Cape Town!
# Best Tapas Eatery: Chefs Warehouse & Canteen on Bree Street, in a brand new category, dare I say created for Chefs Warehouse, as it would be beating a dead horse to include the restaurant on the Top 30 Restaurant shortlist for a third year running, and it embarrassingly not making Top 10 for a third year! I doubt that Chef Liam Tomlin will apologise for his Facebook rant last year against my prediction that the restaurant is not a fine dining one, and therefore did not deserve to be in the 2016 Top 20 Restaurant shortlist! I am proud to have stuck to my guns in expressing last year what Eat Out has confirmed in this Award this year, which cost me being banned from Chef Liam’s Chefs Warehouses on Bree Street and at Beau Constantia, and Thali Restaurants! Chef Liam, if you have 
integrity, you will reply to my email of April this year, and you will unban me! This is what we wrote about the ‘Tapas Restaurant’ last year, and now confirmed by Eat Out:
‘Chef’s Warehouse: Bully Chef Liam Tomlin lashed out when I motivated why Chefs Warehouse does not justify a Top 20/10 award. We repeat our 2015 (and 2016) motivation again: ‘does not belong on this list at all, in my opinion, and we repeat our (very unpopular) motivation from last year after it made Eat Out‘s Top 20 list: ‘this is the biggest surprise, the same restaurant having won Eat Out Best Everyday Eatery in 2014, a category which one can say was created for Chef Liam Tomlin. In the year since winning that recognition, Chef Liam has become more pedantic in only offering eight tapas dishes (a Tapas restaurant as a Top 10 fine dining establishment is a shock in itself), which has a dog in the establishment, and a chef/owner who regularly leaves his restaurant in the care of his colleagues while he jets off to Singita, for whom he works as a consultant! There is no improvement in the restaurant since last year, so the Best Everyday Eatery of 2014 cannot (logically) become an Eat Out Top 10 restaurant in 2015, but then anything is possible as far as Eat Out is concerned! There is no menu choice as far as the main course is concerned, most dessert and starter choices are pre-made in glass jars, one receives one serving spoon only for eight tapas dishes, and the restaurant closes at 20h00! Topping that is the arrogance of some of the serving staff, the uncomfortable and limited seating inside, that little effort is made to accommodate one when it is busy, and that one cannot make a reservation to eat there. Many mutter about how expensive the Tapas has become, at R450 for eight dishes for two!’. Chef Liam has announced the opening of another Chef’s Warehouse in Beau Constantia, an Indian restaurant in Gardens, and I have heard about a third restaurant’.
The Mess in Green Point is the runner-up Tapas Eatery.
Four categories were not awarded in the Western Cape this year:
# Best Seafood: This category also had no winner in 2016
# Best African: This category also had no winner in 2016.
# Best Foodtruck: This is a new category but had no winner!
# Best Italian : This is a huge surprise, as there are so many deserving Italian restaurants. Villa 47’s Locanda would have been a first consideration, but I have predicted the restaurant for the Top 30 Restaurant shortlist!
# Best Country-Style: While there was no winner in this category, De Grendel in Durbanville surprisingly was named as a runner-up, therefore excluding it from an Eat Out Top 30 Restaurant shortlist! In the past this slot has been dominated by Karoux in McGregor, making us predict that Karoux could make the Eat Out Top 30 Restaurant shortlist this year.
What is confusing is the time period of eligibility for the Best Everyday Eateries awards, Eat Out stating the following:
‘The top names in each category were determined by a two-step process. Star ratings given by the public on eatout.co.za from 1 October 2016 to 30 August 2017 were tallied’.
In my opinion, this meant that the restaurants eligible for the Best Everyday Eateries Awards had to be open from 1 October 2016 onwards, but clearly this cannot be, as Shio, Primal Eatery, and Fuego have operated for less than a year. I will request Eat Out to clarify.
The results of the Eat Out Everyday Eateries Western Cape 2017 will be a talking point for some time to come, with many controversial Awards made, and worthy recipients excluded!
I will add the Gauteng and KZN award winners next week.
POSTSCRIPT 18/10: I have posted the following on my Facebook page, a message addressed to Chef Liam Tomlin of Chef’s Warehouse & Canteen:
‘Dear Liam Tomlin
For the past two years you have been too arrogant to accept feedback from me that your Chef’s Warehouse Bree Street is nothing more than a Tapas restaurant.
In 2015 you unfriended me from Facebook, when I wrote my Eat Out Top 20 prediction. When I copy and pasted exactly the same motivation for the restaurant not being eligible in 2016, you lashed out at me on your Facebook page, disparaging me in what was a public whipping by you as only a bully can do! You publicly announced that I was now banned from that branch and also your two new restaurants to open late last year!
Last night’s Eat Out Best Everyday Eateries awards have vindicated my writing about this Tapas Eatery, and will hopefully have given you a mirror that it is not the best in town, and never was. You see Liam, karma is the proverbial bitch!
On 29 April this year I wrote an email of apology to you, as part of my spiritual journey, even though in my heart of hearts I knew that I had written with honesty at the time. You have chosen to ignore my email, and not reply to it, demonstrating what little spirituality you have, and how you are dominated by your ego and your well documented anger.
It has been ironic to me that I have become good friends with your Beau Constantia chefs, dancing with them at La Parada Constantia Nek. They do not see the Chris you have bullied and disparaged. I would love to see you let go your anger and hatred, and address being kinder to your staff and industry critics.
I want to write #MeToo here, because I have had enough of the verbal abuse by chefs like you and Bertus Basson, as bad as gender sexual abuse and discrimination!
Chris von Ulmenstein ❤️‘
Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.chrisvonulmenstein.com Twitter: @Ulmenstein Facebook: Chris von Ulmenstein Instagram:@chris_ulmenstein
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