Tag Archives: Kokkedoor

Cape Town and Winelands restaurant and chef changes continue!

Borage Bistro Interior 2 Whale CottageAn unusually high number of new restaurants has opened or will do so in the next month or two.  There have never been so many chefs leaving their employers to start their own restaurants, or to join other employers!  This list of restaurant openings and closings and restaurant staff movements is updated continuously, as we receive new information:

Restaurant Openings

*    Borage Bistro has opened in Portside, with Chef Frank Marks, previously of The Fat Duck, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, La Colombe, The Test Kitchen, and The Pot Luck Club

*   Chef Chris Erasmus has opened his own restaurant Foliage in Franschhoek, having previously been at Pierneef à La Motte.

*   Idiom Wines is said to be opening a restaurant.

*   The Butcher Shop & Grill has opened next to Sotano in Mouille Point.

*   Michael Townsend (La Parada, Lucky Fish, Harbour House emporium) is opening a steak restaurant in Muizenberg in November.

*   Neil Grant and his business partner Barry Engelbrecht (of Burrata) are opening a new restaurant Bocca on the corner of Bree Continue reading →

bistro 13 lucky number for Chef Nic van Wyk at Stellenbosch Vineyards!

Bistro13 Logo Whale CottageChef Nic van Wyk needs no introduction, having been the judge for two seasons of Kokkedoor, and having made a name for himself as a sauce man of note whilst he was at Terroir with Michael Broughton, and more recently having served honest food at Diemersdal Farm Eatery.  Now he has opened bistro 13 at Stellenbosch Vineyards, in the same building as the new tasting room for the wine estate, also known as Welmoed.

Chef Nic’s partner Roxy Laker has been excellent at documenting theBistro 13 Stellenbosch Vineyards tasting desk Whale Cottage journey of the transformation from a construction site into the restaurant, showing us on Facebook how Chef Nic and she were hands-on in erecting shelving and adding the decor. Yesterday a new journey commenced, it being the official opening day.  I was inquisitive to see the new restaurant and tasting room, and a chat between Roxy and I on Facebook led to an invitation from Stellenbosch Vineyards’ Business Development Manager Guy Kedian to visit yesterday, whilst I was in Stellenbosch anyway. Continue reading →

‘Hayden Quinn: South Africa’ episode 8: The heart of the Karoo, with leopards, lamb potjie, and sunflowers!

 

Hayden Quinn 8 Potjie and mini-pizzaHayden Quinn covered a large distance in last night’s episode, travelling from Oudtshoorn to Prieska via Prince Albert, and ending off in Hertzogville in the Free State. Farmer Hennie de Bod tried to teach Hayden some Afrikaans sayings, which Hayden wasn’t too bad at repeating.

The 500 km trip in a lovely red new Mercedes-Benz GLA began outside Oudtshoorn, at the Gamkaberg Reserve, where Dr Quinton Martins, the founder and Director of the Cape Leopard Trust, showed Hayden the research camera capturing the movement of leopards, as well as of other wildlife, demonstrating the Biodiversity in the area.  Hayden was made to do a leopard crawl, to get a feel of a leopard’s movement.  Dr Martins has more than 1000 photographs of leopards,Hayden Quinn 8 Leopard Crawl and his research shows that there is an average of one leopard per 100 km².  Then it was onto the gravel road of the Swartberg Pass, which separates the Little and Great Karoo and was built in 1888 by Thomas Bain, which took Hayden to Prince Albert.  Here he only spent the night at the only hotel in town, the Swartberg Hotel and its Victoria Room Restaurant ‘from a bygone era’, Hayden said.  Hayden did not see anything else in the village, which has become famous in serving as the location for Kokkedoor Seasons 1 and 2. Continue reading →

FedEx Sweet Service and Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa Sour Service Awards

FedEx logoThe Sweet Service Award goes to FedEx and its manager Peter, who assisted in getting the Kokkedoor cookbook delivered, after various attempts to receive it failed.  Despite an instruction to call and make a delivery appointment, the delivery staff just arrived, when we were not at the delivery address.  We were then sent an sms, detailing how many times they had attempted the delivery, requesting that we call FedEx!  I did call them, although I felt that they should have called me. The duty manager could not divulge what was in the parcel – 2 weeks prior the same delivery company had put me through Continue reading →