Tag Archives: Mount Nelson

Many new restaurants open in Cape Town and Winelands! How long will they last?

Umi Interior Pink blossoms Whale Cottage PortfolioMany restaurants are opening and have opened this summer, with only three months of the summer season left in which they can create awareness and make an impact before the dreaded winter arrives after the Easter weekend.  New restaurants are far more casual, with informal dining.

This list of restaurant openings and closings is updated continuously, as we receive new information:

Restaurant Openings

*    Umi Asian restaurant  opened in December with The Marly hotel in the Camps Bay Promenade, owned by The Cove (Kovensky) Group  (photograph above).

*   Equus restaurant on the Cavalli stud and wine farm on the R44 has opened. Carl Habel left the Mount Nelson Hotel as Restaurant Manager and Sommelier to join the restaurant, but left before it opened. Chef Henrico Grobbelaar from the Twelve Apostles heads up the kitchen.

*   Shake your Honey is to open in the original Madame Zingara building on Loop Street this year, according to an iolTravel report.  The ‘vibrant spirit of India’ is to be reflected in the 5-storey building, with a theatre, markets, restaurants, and shops.

*   A new restaurant and micro brewery is to open next door to The Bromwell in Woodstock (name not yet known).

*   TriBakery has opened on Bree Street.

*   Vida e Caffe is opening coffee shops at Shell petrol stations, 40 initially and 300in total.  It has also opened in Garden’s Centre, and in St John’s Piazza in Sea Point.

*   The Black Sheep Restaurant has opened on Kloof Street. Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 9 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   ‘Cape Town’s most stylish hotels’ feature in the Telegraph Travel article, which focuses on more than just the Mother City’s hotels.  Given Cape Town’s status of World Design Capital 2014, Woodstock, Bree Street, and Long Street are recommended for arts, sculptures, jewellery, and crafts.  Hemelhuijs and The Pot Luck Club are recommended restaurants.  The Mount Nelson, One&Only Cape Town, Cape View, The Clarendon, and Ellerman House are recommended as accommodation establishments.

*   Six of Africa’s twelve top music festivals are hosted in South Africa, and include Oppikoppi (in Limpopo province, the largest local music festival); Up the Creek (in Swellendam); Cape Town International Jazz Festival; Splashy Fen (at Underberg); AfrikaBurn (in North Cape province); and Rocking the Daisies (in Darling).

*   National soccer team Bafana Bafana arrived in Cape Townlast weekend, in preparation for the African Nations Championship, which kicks off at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday.

*   James Romanow, writing in the New Mexico Leader Post, says that drinking a House of Mandela wine is a fitting tribute to the late Nelson Mandela.

*   A manual of information published by (£30 million a year budget) Visit Britain, which was targeted at accommodation establishments and tourism players in the UK to guide them in dealing with tourists from around the world, has been criticised for ‘racial stereotyping‘!   For example, the manual describes: Continue reading →

‘Chefs who Share’ chefs Sweet and Pick ‘n Pay Sour Service Awards!

Chefs who share logoThe Sweet Service Award goes to the 14 top chefs, with their sommeliers and restaurant right hands, who made the ‘Chefs who Share’ gala dinner such a fantastic success last Thursday evening, preparing a top class dinner for 250 guests in pairs of two chefs in a temporary tented kitchen set up between the City Hall and the Woolworths head office.  We salute Chef Rudi Liebenberg (Planet Restaurant at the Mount Nelson) who worked with a leg in plaster, as well as Chefs Margot Janse (The Tasting Room), David Higgs (five hundred), Christiaan Campbell (Delaire Graff), Bertus Basson Overture), Harald Bresselschmidt (Aubergine), Chantel Dartnall (Mosaic at The Orient), George Jardine (Jordan Restaurant), Jackie Cameron (Hartford House), Marthinus Ferreira (DW 11-13),  Darren Badenhorst (Grande Provence), Chris Erasmus (Pierneef à La Motte), Peter Tempelhoff (The Greenhouse), and Reuben Riffel (Riffel Restaurants). A  number of chefs traveled from afar, and all Continue reading →

MasterChef SA Season 2 episode 23: Leandri van der Wat praised by Chef Prue Leith, Tiron Eloff sauced out!

MasterChef 2 23 Tea table Whale Cottage PortfolioLast night Leandri van der Wat was the star of episode 23, highly praised by Chef Prue Leith, an icon of South African cooking and a Michelin star and multi-award winning chef in the United Kingdom.

Having returned to the MasterChef SA kitchen at Nederburg after three episodes were based in Ethiopia and one in Johannesburg, the six Finalists were invited to join ‘culinary royalty‘ and ‘living legend’ Prue Leith and the three judges Benny Masekwameng, Pete Goffe-Wood, and Andrew Atkinson to enjoy a South African ‘tee en koek’, which included melktert, koeksisters, and vetkoek with mince.  Chef Prue was introduced as having two cooking academies, one of them being the Prue Leith Academy MasterChef 2 23 Prue Leith Whale Cottage Portfolioin Pretoria; a catering company; a Michelin star restaurant; cooking shows on television; cookbook writer, of which one is a ‘cookery bible‘;  and recipient of the Member and later Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was born and bred in South Africa, but has lived in the UK for over 60 years. She said that she serves on the Board of Safeway, Whitbread, and the Orient Express hotel group (which owns the Mount Continue reading →