Tag Archives: Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa

Why do hotel restaurants not have better patron support and win awards?

March 22, 2015

It was a recent article by Nick Lander, husband of renowned wine critic Jancis Robinson and restaurant critic in the UK, about restaurants in hotels he had visited in Dubai that made me consider once again why hotel restaurants fare so poorly in patron support and in the Eat Out Top 10 restaurant awards in our country.

Lander writes that specific rules about restaurants and liquor licences force restaurants to be linked to hotels in Dubai. In our country no such rules apply, and as a service to guests, hotels have over the years added dining facilities, in early days being the only restaurants offering tea and cake, and lunch and dunner. My parents drove us with overseas visitors to Franschhoek’s Swiss Farm Excelsior (now the Le Franschhoek Hotel), the benchmark of restaurants in those years.

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UK restaurant reviewer Nick Lander praises Cape Town cuisine and its view!

February 8, 2015

When UK wine judge and writer Jancis Robinson visited Cape Town last month, she brought her restaurant critic and former restaurateur husband Nick Lander along. He visited a handful of Cape Town restaurants, focusing mainly on Cape Town’s favourite foodie Bree Street, and wrote a brief overview about them.

Lander wrote that he found it hard to concentrate on Chef Christo Pretorius’ dishes of a lamb terrine, kingklip, and a milk and honey dessert, whilst eating at Azure at the Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa, given the breathtaking view onto the Atlantic Ocean: ‘Cape Town’s natural beauty is so striking that it is impossible for any chef to compete‘. He blamed the lightweight Cape Town restaurant overview on the view! Continue reading →

SAA wine selection scandal, perfect SA bribery and corruption soapie!

January 29, 2015

City Press reported over the weekend that SAA sommelier and Global Food and Beverage Manager, Bongi Sodladla, was feted with bribes and incentives to offer wine purchase contracts to those wineries which greased her palms. Had Bribery Bongi not been going through a divorce, and had her still-current husband Wonga Sodladla not been so generous with information sent to SAA last month about his wife’s misdemeanours, SAA, the wine industry, and the South African public would never have known what was going on behind the scenes of SAA’s wine buying!

We first heard of Bribery Bongi in October last year, when she appeared in an episode of Season 3 of MasterChef Continue reading →

Four of ten S. Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 Africa/Middle East finalists from Cape Town/Winelands!

January 27, 2015

Not only talented Young Chefs from South Africa, but also some of our top celebrity chefs will be involved in judging the best S. Pellegrino Young Chef in the Middle East and Africa, taking place in Milan from 25 – 27 June. Cape Town and the Winelands have four of ten Young Chef nominations for the judging region, and one celebrity Chef international judge. A total of 3000 Young Chefs entered the Young Chef competition globally.