A tale of two cities as told by food
• While Joburgers increasingly eat in, with online sites delivering, Cape Town is rated highest for fine dining
While Cape Town’s well-to-do wine and dine in critically acclaimed restaurants, chompers in the City of Gold are opting to eat in and to create their own magical fine dining experiences.
This trend has emerged at a time of rising cost of living and generally low consumer confidence. But it is also driven by the millennial gourmands demanding convenience and excellence in their grub.
Millennials are the generation born between 1982 and 2004. The word gourmand or foodie used to be reserved for people with knowledge about Michelin Star chefs and who ate at expensive restaurants. Today, the term is used for anyone who enjoys and has an interest in and appreciation of food.
Sydne Japtha, 29, says being a “foodie” is less about dropping cash at the trendiest restaurants and more about where the food is sourced.
“Markets and food trucks are great. You get fantastic, seasonal food, made with high-quality ingredients at a fraction of the cost of eating out elsewhere.
“Fine dining at home may seem intimidating, but it’s really all about finding the right recipe, cooking seasonally and taking the time at the end of the cooking process to adjust your seasoning. Fresh herbs and butter make all the difference.
“The supermarket brand food magazines are a great place to start for inspiration as the ingredients will always be in season and readily available.”
With few top chefs in Johannesburg, fine dining hasn’t been a trend for decades in the city. Sue Morris, trend translator at Flux Trends, says in the affluent segment, Joburgers do flock to new fashionable places and don’t seem to mind the price.
“But many of these concepts have a short life cycle and when the novelty has worn off and the Instagram pic has been posted, if they’re not providing consistent value, the market moves on.”
Morris says the millennials have driven growth in ondemand food delivery from individual brands and third-party aggregated apps.
“Locally, we have seen fastfood brands introducing online ordering and delivery as well as the launch of Uber Eats. There are also sites like U Cook that will deliver the recipes and ingredients you need to make up restaurant-quality food at home,” she says.
“Wazupa is a local foodsharing app where you can find home-cooked meals from cooks in your neighbourhood.”
Uber’s food delivery service Uber Eats launched in Johannesburg last year and in parts of Cape Town this year.
It is expanding its territory to Pretoria, including Centurion, and plans to be in all major cities in SA by the end of the year or early 2018. The app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times by South Africans and 700 restaurants are delivering food using it.
Sit-down restaurants are not the only businesses feeling the pain of the eat-at-home culture. Woolworths, which was once the go-to for food for the middle class and the rich, is also feeling the pinch.
WAZUPA IS A LOCAL FOOD-SHARING APP ... YOU CAN FIND HOMECOOKED MEALS FROM COOKS IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD
In its interim results to December 2016, Woolworths reports that it continued to roll out trading space aggressively in its food segment, adding 7.9%. But this bought the retailer a feeble 0.3% increase in sales volumes after adjusting for 9.2% internal inflation. Like-for-like sales volume fell 3.6%.
But all of this has had no effect on the explosion of new fine-dining restaurants being opened in Johannesburg.
Seasoned local traveller and businessman Stephen Laufer says their standard does not compare with dining experiences in the Mother City.
The lists of the world’s top 100 restaurants for 2016 backs him up. No African restaurants made it into the top 50, but the two that made it into the top 100 were both in Cape Town — The Test Kitchen and La Colombe.
“Recently, I was in Cape Town, where I lunched with a friend at Beau Constantia. From there, we had the most spectacular view of the vineyards and we could see as far as False Bay,” Laufer says.
“In the Cape, you dine in beautiful surroundings. It’s something that Joburg doesn’t get right. Generally, restaurants are in malls and shopping centres and if you are lucky to sit outside, you sit in a parking lot.”
Laufer says the differences in the cities’ food cultures may also be down to the people that are being served.
“The competition in the Cape is fierce. There are a lot of affluent tourists and well-travelled business people visiting the eating establishments. The folk in the Cape, as a result, understand really good food and Joburg likes bling. If a place has enough bling
in Joburg, people will run there.”
This should not be construed to mean that there is nowhere good to eat up north, he says.
“There is a really interesting scene in Linden, where you have a number of people catching up to the Cape Town wave and are trying to be more innovative,” Laufer says.
“It’s great because a lot of restaurants in Joburg talk about being innovative when actually, they are just playing with their food,” he says.
In Parkhurst, Julie Soalheiro, who co-owns the restaurant Workshop55, says there is an eating-out culture emerging in Joburg that could possibly rival Cape Town’s.
Workshop55 has a high rating on Zomato from patrons who have eaten there.
“I think people are becoming a lot more aware of dining as an experience. We certainly find that our clientele, who are pretty well-travelled, embrace the whole dining experience from drinks to the food and really enjoy being told the stories that go with the products such as where it comes from, how best to serve the drinks, what infusions we recommend with the different types of gins.…”
Soalheiro says many customers are looking for far more than just a drink and quick bite. This does not mean there is no place for quick and casual dining, but people are not willing to compromise on quality.
“The Workshop55 experience is a unique concept, from the building to the décor and to the drinks we source from far and wide,” she says.
“We always have something new to share.… We offer the best and for well-travelled clients who know what is happening in terms of food and drink in various parts of the world, we hope to give them a unique experience.”
THE COMPETITION IN THE CAPE IS FIERCE ... THE FOLK IN THE CAPE LIKE REALLY GOOD FOOD AND JOBURG LIKES BLING