Tag Archives: The Showroom

New restaurant openings defy credit crunch

Good news for Cape Town food lovers is that the restaurant closures trend seems to have stopped, and is being reversed by new restaurants opening up.

The most interesting of the new restaurant openings is The Quarter, a gourmet bunny-chow restaurant owned by Bruce Robertson, previously of The Showroom.. Located at 44 Long Street, underneath The New Space Theatre, The Quarter is more of a take-out than sit-down restaurant, due to its small size, but is not for the faint-hearted. Robertson has glass jars quirkily “decorating” his restaurant, containing various food types preserved in glass jars, including octopus, crayfish, and the most off-putting of all, a de-skinned rabbit.

The New Space Theatre building also has the popular Italian style Anytime, Boo Radleys and Union at St Stephens Church connected to it.

The Eastern Food Bazaar has opened in the old Wellington Fruitgrower’s building, on the corner of Darling and Adderley Streets, and serves value-for-money Indian foods.    It is taking Cape Town by storm.

Sadly, the latest restaurant to close is Nova, off New Church Street in Cape Town.  Chef Richard Carstens has been a Top 10 restaurant chef.   Nova tried to appeal to guest houses to visit the restaurant, offering them a special discount, instead of inviting these owners to experience the restaurant with their compliments.    In Hermanus too, the excellent Joubert closed on 3 July.   The chef and owner says he is just not able to keep the restaurant alive financially, and is looking for a job.

Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com.

Restaurants bounce back

FEDHASA Cape, the hospitality association, appears to focus on the restaurants closing down on Cape Town, as opposed to saluting the new restaurants opening in these most difficult times.   One of the new restaurants to open is The Quarter, the gourmet bunny-chow restaurant of Bruce Robertson, the previous owner of The Showroom, which closed in April.
 
FEDHASA has publicly listed restaurants that have not closed down when they went into liquidation, over-dramatising the severity of the effect of the recession on restaurants – Summerville in Camps Bay is one such example, which is alive and well and living!  
 
Despite the recession, the hospitality industry has a lot to be grateful for – bookings are still rolling in for the summer months ahead, for World Cup 2010, and for the two British and Irish Lions’ rugby matches to be played in Cape Town on 13 and 23 June, ensuring that Cape Town will be full around these dates.
 
The restaurant industry has had it good for many years, and the number of new restaurants opening up is testimony to the fact that they have received good support from Capetonians.   Those restaurants that are arrogant, that do not deliver good service, and that do not understand that value for money is key for customers, will feel the economic pinch.   Cape Town has a seasonality problem, and guest houses led the way many years ago in reducing their rates by up to 50 % in the winter months.   For the first time ever, restaurants are offering excellent winter specials.   An e-mail doing the rounds lists 30 restaurants with winter specials.   These include specials at Aubergine, Beluga, Bungalow, Cafe Caprice, Catharina’s, Five Flies, Myoga, Sinns, Pepenero, Tank, The Food Barn, The Kove, Tuscany Beach, Buitenverwachting, Constantia Uitsig, Cuvee, La Colombe, Terroir, Cape Colony and Salt.
 
Statements made by Rey Franco of FEDHASA are publicity opportunities for the four restaurants that he is the commercial manager of, rather than in providing a balanced view of the whole hospitality industry.  They also do not offer advice as to how businesses in the hospitality industry can stay alive in this recession.

Bruce Robertson hops back with “gourmet bunny-chow”

Bruce Robertson, owner of The Showroom which closed down in Cape Town just over a month ago, has hopped back onto the restaurant scene with the opening of The Quarter, a tiny take-out bunny-chow restaurant located underneath the New Space Theatre at 44 Long Street, just two doors away from his The Showroom Cafe. 

Robertson has his roots in Durban, and made a trip to his homeground to learn more about bunny chow from the locals, it having originated from there.   Bunny chow is usually a street food which is cheap and easy to eat, being half a loaf of bread, hollowed out and filled with a curry food.  Robertson calls it the “quintessential South African dish”.

Robertson’s restaurant’s name refers to the quarter size of bread he serves his bunny chow in.  The restaurant has the ordering lingo and eating style written onto the wall, so that one can order and eat bunny chow correctly!

After suffering the closure of his award-winning restaurant The Showroom due to the bleak winter lying ahead, Robertson decided to open a “gourmet bunny chow shop”, with a  “more hands-on restaurant feeding a bigger client base”.  His bunny chow fillings include Crayfish potjie, waterblommetjie bredie, mussel and garlic pot, ‘welsh rabbit’, oxtail, gemsbok, and the standard mutton, chicken, beef mince, venison and goat.   None of these cost more than R 65, and some dishes cost as little as R 20.   Extra toppings, sauces and side dishes can also be ordered.

Robertson will also rent the premises to private functions of up to 16 persons, at R 860 per head, including wine, for which he will cook.   The bunny-chow menu is set aside for such functions, and Robertson will cook a gourmet meal, washed down with wines from his collection .

Hospitality industry should be grateful

The Cape Times article “Restaurants, hotels ‘need innovation to survive slump'” (28 May) appears to exaggerate the effect of the credit crunch on the hospitality industry.
 
The hospitality players interviewed are not reflecting the seasonality problem, which affects the hospitality business badly in winter in Cape Town, compared to many other cities in South Africa.
 
Misleading reports heralding closures of restaurants in Cape Town, neglect to correct these when a restaurant like Summerville in Camps Bay never stopped trading – the liquidators handed over the running of the restaurant to new owners on 1 May, just a week after the news that the restaurant had “closed down”.    Bruce Robertson, of The Showroom, which closed down at the same time, has already opened a new but smaller “gourmet bunny-chow restaurant” called The Quarter.   Ian Halfon has also denied that his coffee shop Donatella’s in the V & A Waterfront closed due to the credit crunch.  He says that his lease expired. 
 
The hospitality industry has a lot to be grateful for, and does not need to ride on World Cup 2010 to say that all will be well.   The British and Irish Lions rugby matches in Cape Town on 13 and 23 June will lead to many hotels and guest houses being fully booked around those dates, and these rugby fans are staying for four days or more, which is unusual for winter bookings.  Sadly, the IPL did not benefit the mainstream guesthouse and hotel industry in our city at all.
 
The five successive interest rate cuts are fantastic news for all with bonds on their guest houses and B & B’s  –  the Whale Cottage bond costs for four guest houses are now down by R 50 000 per month compared to December 2008, when the first rate cut was announced.   This means that Whale Cottage can afford to drop its winter rates by 50 % relative to the summer rate, and it helps to cushion the reduced occupancy.