Diners Club Rossouw's Restaurant Guide | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

* Newton Johnson Cellarmaster Gordon Newton Johnson has been admitted to the Cape Winemakers’ Guild as its 46th member. It recognises his achievements as winemaker of Pinot Noir in particular, and winning this year’s Platter’s Red Wine of The Year. Membership is by invitation only. (received via media release from GC Communications)

* ‘Festive Franschhoek’ runs until Tuesday, and is intended to attract Capetonians and tourists to come and do their Christmas shopping in Franschhoek rather than in manic Cape Town. Shops such as Peacock Blue, Indian Summer, Masquerade Antiques & Things, and Troll Beads will stay open until 20h00, misleadingly marketed as ‘late night shopping’! Misleading too is the invitation to ‘Enjoy a five-star meal at Reuben’s...’, the restaurant only having made a 4-star rating in the Diners Club Rossouw’s Restaurant Guide this year, irresponsible overmarketing by Mariette du Toit-Helmbold of Destinate, running the promotion! One suspects that all participants had to pay her company for the promotion!

* Miss South Africa, Rolene Strauss, has won Miss World 2014, a wonderful marketing opportunity for our country!

* Wesgro and Happy Snappy are jointly developing a mobile campaign to inform visitors to Cape Town and the Western Cape Continue reading →

From having been low key for eight years since opening, 2014 has been kind to Kyoto Garden Sushi, in it winning a 5* Smart Casual accolade in the 2015 Diners Club Rossouw’s Restaurant Guide, as well as Best Asian Restaurant in the 2015 Mercedes-Benz Eat Out Awards last month. As a result friend Whitney Wentzel and I had extremely high expectations when we had dinner there last Wednesday evening, which sadly were not met at all!

I was surprised that I could book a table for the following day when I called, being the week after the Eat Out Awards, the Japanese chef taking the booking. I had seen a parking sign with an arrow to the left outside the entrance, and had thought that parking was available behind the building, but was told that it was for upstairs tenants and that we should park at the school down the road, not great on a rainy night. The waiter I asked had no clue about the parking sign outside. Luckily a parking bay became available across the road. At the entrance to the restaurant a candle is lit, and two Noren cloth dividers hang in the doorway. We were shown to a table, sitting next to another couple, so close to each other that we could hear each other’s conversations. There seemed to be some uncertainty about our booking, Continue reading →