Tag Archives: Tasting menus

Tasting Menu prices: which top restaurants are charging what, including wine pairings?

 

Tasting Menus have had a reputation in our country to offer endless numbers of courses (over 20 at The Test Kitchen in pre-Covid Lockdown times), with a price ticket to match!

Seeing the prices charged by Chef Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen at his new Restaurant KLEIN JAN at Tswalu, as well as his Innovation Studio pop-up in Cape Town, I did some research to check what is being charged at some of our top restaurants. I have listed the number of courses and the prices, and then calculated an average price per course with and without wines..

The Test Kitchen and Restaurant KLEIN JAN offer the most expensive Tasting Menus on a total price as well as on a per course basis. It is a shame that the La Colombe Group Menus are almost all designed according to the same formula. Interesting too is that most top Restaurants charge a Premium on their Vegetarian/Vegan Tasting Menus.  Continue reading →

New Exhibit A Fine-Dining restaurant of Chefs Rikku Ó’Donnchü and Warwick King opens on 1 November, Proudly South African focus with international twist!

Last week I enjoyed the special Heritage Day lunch at pop-up SŸN restaurant on Bree Street, and after the lunch I heard the first details of the permanent fine-dining restaurant opening on 1 November, to be called Exhibit A. The restaurant will be located on the 3rd floor of the Villa 47 building at 47 Bree Street. Yesterday I returned to the restaurant to hear more details from the chefs about their new 46-seater restaurant.  Continue reading →

Restaurant Review: Alma Restaurant by Chef Henrique Sa Pessoa one of top two restaurants in Lisbon, disappoints!

I had the luck to get a last minute booking at Alma, the two star Michelin restaurant of Chef Henrique Sa Pessoa in Lisbon last week, one of only two restaurants in Portugal with two stars. It opened four years ago. While one dish was superb, another was served incompletely, and my waitron let the restaurant down. Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 3 December

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Business confidence reached a 7 month high last month, good news for the economy, and reflecting a more stable exchange rate, higher share prices, and reduced impact on production due to strikes.  In November the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (SACCI) Business Confidence Index (BCI) increased to 90.8 in November.  Loadshedding by Eskom, and a retraction of the economies that our country trades with may reverse the positive trend.

*   The second Veritas Young Wine Writers Competition has been won by Sandile Mkhwanazi,  assistant winemaker and acting viticulturist at Elsenburg Agricultural College, and winning R15000.  He enjoys to communicate about wine in a fun way, rather than academically.  His two articles ‘The South African Wine Continue reading →