After a quiet August as far as restaurant openings in Cape Town and the Winelands are concerned, September is seeing a number of new restaurants opening between now and the end of the month.
We update information about newly opened and closed restaurants continuously, and welcome such news.
Restaurant Openings
# Roast & Co has opened alongside HQ, in the former Bizerca Bistro space, in Heritage Square (photograph) Continue reading →
Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* American wine economist Mike Veseth writes that South Africa has a large production of wine, and should therefore be better known in the USA, given that our country’s wine production is 10% less than that of Chile, and 4 times larger than that of New Zealand. Part of the reason is that Americans do not know about our country and where it is, and therefore he describes our wines as ‘the invisible wine’! Lack of awareness of our country plus the re-emergence of our country’s wines at the same that the New World countries launched their wines internationally made it more difficult for South African wines to be noticed in the USA. Initially, our wine exporters suffered logistical problems, in a market ‘which is structurally difficult to penetrate‘ and faces strong competition, which added to the lower visibility in the USA.
* The MyCiTi Bus service has increased passenger numbers by 89% in the past four months, the City of Cape Town claims. More than 400000 ‘passenger journeys‘ in November 2013 increased to over 700000 by February this year, when the Hout Bay, Oranjezicht, Sea Point, Camps Bay, Dunoon, Melkbosstrand, and Century City routes were added. However, the growth in passenger numbers has not been without its problems, with applications to have the service stopped by the Golden Arrow bus company having been dismissed in court; and complaints have been received about overcrowding, timetable inaccuracy in the afternoons especially, and the MyConnect card. The timetable problems may have led to the City firing Lumen Technologies, the company which was contracted to control scheduling. The Atlantis, Khayelitsha, and Mitchell’s Plain routes will open this year in the next four months. The City has spent close to R5 billion on the service to date.
* South Africa has become a backdrop for music videos shot for some very well-known music stars. The most famous Continue reading →
Last night the largest German TV station ZDF re-flighted ‘Ein Sommer in Kapstadt’ (A Summer in Cape Town), a beautiful movie reflecting the beauty of Cape Town, which was shot in 2009, and was first released in 2010. It couldn’t have come at a better time, when Germans are planning their holidays for the coming European winter.
‘Ein Sommer in Kapstadt’ tells the story of a scorned wife, whose husband comes to Cape Town on a business trip. She follows her husband to Cape Town when she finds him having an affair with a young Capetonian. While the drama evolves, the characters drive across the city, and its magnificent beauty is captured through the filming: an opening shot from Bakoven in Camps Bay, onto the Twelve Apostles mountain range; Lion’s Head; some cute penguins running from the beach into the ocean; two lunches from a Blouberg restaurant right alongside the sea with the waves crashing while they eat; lots of driving in an exotic blue sports car along what could be Scarborough and Kommetjie; in Bo-Kaap on Rose Street opposite Haas; the promenade in Bantry Bay; lovely shots over the city 
from Signal Hill; lunch at the V&A Waterfront with Den Anker and the Clocktower in the background; Greenmarket Square; a Cape Dutch wine estate; Long Street; the winelands; and going up Table Mountain with the cableway. An AIDS angle is introduced too, penguins being used to teach children the symbol of loyal love by one of the characters in the movie.
The movie is dated only by the main character staying in the Hotel Le Vendome in Sea Point when she first arrives in Cape Town (the hotel closed down last year), and the storyline including the magazine Cape Style, which no longer exists.
One hopes that the movie will encourage German TV viewers to book their next holiday in Cape Town, given the beautiful impression which the city must have made on them. One of the characters in the movie refers to ‘Kapstadt: Das Paradis der Erde’ (Cape Town, the paradise of the world), a wonderful accolade for the city. Given some more damaging German movies shot in Cape Town and shown on ZDF earlier this year, ‘Ein Sommer in Kapstadt’ is a welcome positive showcase of Cape Town.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
On the day after Madonna’s Superbowl performance last week, American talkshow host David Letterman denigrated her and instead praised the Cape Town zef rap band Die Antwoord, which he had invited to perform in his Late Show with David Letterman, Twitter was abuzz with disbelief. Soon the YouTube video of their performance was doing the rounds. It is an unbelievable accolade to a band that already has a strong local and international following, and may have the power of Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’ in marketing Cape Town and South Africa.
On the eve of the release of their album ‘Ten$ion’ a week ago, husband and wife team Yo-Landi Vi$$er and Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones), with DJ Hi-Tek, performed ‘I Fink U Freeky’, with a mix of English and Afrikaans lyrics, being a rap song that contains mainly the lyrics “I fink you are freeky and I like you a lot”! For the studio performance Vi$$er was dressed in an outfit which may have been by designer Alexander Wang, with dark black lines painted under her eyes, and wearing black contact lenses. Compared to their own official video of this song, featuring rats crawling over Vi$$er, the studio performance was mild. Interesting is that Letterman, who introduced the group as coming from Cape Town, did not interview them after their performance.
Die Antwoord is not unknown to international audiences, having performed throughout the USA in 2010, as well as in many European countries, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. 
Just over a year ago they won the Myspace ‘Best Music Video of 2010′ award for ‘Enter the Ninja’, their first music video they self-produced. The traffic to Die Antwoord’s website, with millions of hits due to the music video, caused a near crash of local server Hetzner, and Die Antwoord had to move its hosting to an American website as a result, records Wikipedia. The group has formed its own record company Zef Recordz, after a dispute with its American record company Interscope Records, producing for pop stars such as Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg. The band had a ‘million-dollar deal’ with Interscope Records, reports the New York Times, and the ‘nastier lyrics’ on the new album were not acceptable to the record company. Singer Katy Perry raved when she first heard them. The group tour Australia in March.
Whilst in the USA for the show, Die Antwoord were featured on billboards in New York for designer Alexander Wang’s ‘guerilla-style Spring 2012 collection’, report Times LIVE and Channel24, as well as in a video for the designer, based on their song ‘Fatty Boom Boom’.
The performance on the Late Show with David Letterman was described by the Huffington Post as milder than usual for the group: ‘Die Antwoord took their consciously unnerving act to a mainstream audience Monday night — the late-night television crowd. For those who’d never been exposed to the South African rappers before, their appearance on David Letterman may have been slightly terrifying, a sentiment shared by some South Africans who are uneasy with the trio representing their nation abroad. For the rest of us, this was a tamer version of the shock rappers we’ve come to know: Yo-Landi looked as bug-eyed as always in a pair of black contacts and long white t-shirt (Alexander Wang?), DJ Hi-Tek wore a deformed face mask, and Ninja danced frantically in a orange jumpsuit to their clubby single, “I Fink U Freeky,” off their just-released album Ten$ion’.
The performance by Die Antwoord on the Late Show with David Letterman will be re-broadcast on DStv’s Sony Entertainment Television channel at 23h15 tonight.
POSTSCRIPT 14/2: A teaser video for the new Die Antwoord ‘Ten$ion’ album has been withdrawn for copyright reasons, as it refers to a sculpture called ‘The Butcher Boys’, reports the Cape Times today.
POSTSCRIPT 8/7: The radical music video for the latest Die Antwoord song ‘Baby’s on Fire’ has become an absolute hit due to a single Tweet by Katy Perry, sent to her 22,7 million followers last month: ‘The new Die Antwoord video for Baby’s On Fire is so incredible I can’t even tweet about it’.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage
