DISCOVERING THE MANY FLAVOURS OF CAPE TOWN
▶ John Brunton eats his way around South Africa’s culinary capital to sample unique Cape Malay-inspired dishes, bursts of flavour and common gourmet trends throughout the city
The Cape Town dining scene is booming and everyone wants a reservation at Granary Cafe, signature restaurant of The Silo, the hottest hotel in Africa, which sits atop the city’s spectacular new museum of African art. Both the museum and hotel are housed in what was once an immense concrete grain silo, which has marked the city’s skyline since it was built in 1924. I am seated at one of the dramatic window tables, mesmerised both by the sun setting over Table Mountain, and the choice of daring, modern dishes on the menu – ostrich tartare with buttermilk labneh, spicy apricot chutney and confit egg yolk; a vegan combination of roasted sweet potatoes, red quinoa, cranberries and kale pesto; linecaught Kingklip with pak choi, onion bhajis and fennel achar. Food in Cape Town has always been what locals proudly call “lekker”, Afrikaans for tasty, using the country’s wonderful local produce in simple, delicious recipes. But today, chefs are a creating a new Cape identity with innovative menus, often inspired by spices and flavours of the city’s Muslim Cape Malay population and the flavours of African cooking.
To find out more about this new trend, I head to the elegant Signal Restaurant in the heart of the historic Victoria & Albert Waterfront to meet Malika Van Reenen, the pioneering chef who started this taste revolution. “Being Cape Malay myself,” she explains, “and having grown up with the familiar flavours of sweet complementing savoury alongside freshly-ground spices, I always believed this style of cooking would become popular one day.” Van Reenen perfectly combines classic European cooking techniques with her own upbringing, and tasting her butter curry risotto with grilled prawns or tender springbok fillet cooked with traditional Bobotie spices and sweet potato rosti, it is just surprising that chefs are only now discovering the unique heritage of the Cape Malays. As with much of South African history, the story of the Cape Malays is steeped in controversy, dating back to the 17th century, when the first Muslims arrived in Cape Town, from what today is Indonesia and Malaysia, brought in as slaves by the Dutch colonial rulers. Apartheid determined their descendants were classified as “coloured”, and their Bo-Kaap neighbourhood was initially a ghetto. But times change, and Bo-Kaap is now one of the trendiest places to live, and the spices of Cape Malay cuisine have become the flavour of the day in restaurants all over the city.
Alex Grahame is one of numerous young, talented chefs from Europe and Australia arriving in Cape Town to make a name for themselves. His seafood restaurant Sea Breeze has been packed from the day it opened, perfectly located on Bree Street, the city’s unofficial “restaurant row”. “It was a big risk to leave our cosy restaurant in Aberdeen,” he confides, “but in just a few months, we feel totally at home, and for a chef, the choice and freshness of local fish and seafood is overwhelming. We are committed to support the local fishing community, caught basically within 30 miles of here – so don’t expect to see Norwegian salmon or Maine lobster on my menu.” Like all restaurants here, prices are exceptionally affordable, with a full tasting menu costing roughly the same as a main course in a gourmet European restaurant, where frankly, Grahame’s dishes would not look out of place. It is difficult to choose between seared tuna with charred cos lettuce, anchovies and quail egg, and the local favourite, fish bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with creamy fish curry. Grahame tells me: “I certainly did not come here to cook British food, and living near the Bo-Kaap Cape Malay neighbourhood, I can get the most fabulous freshly-ground spices at an Aladdin’s Cave emporium called Atlas, which makes all the difference in my efforts to create a contemporary vision of traditional tastes.”
Garrulous Irish chef Liam Tomlin arrived here four years after a long gastronomic stint cooking in Australia, and is now running four of his own restaurants. His emblematic Chef’s Warehouse is still the most popular diner in town, serving a compulsory seven-course tasting menu of Asian, Mexican and locally inspired tapas in a communal wooden table canteen, and I was intrigued to try his latest venture – the Indian-inspired thali. Fearing the worst when I discovered there was no one of Indian origin cooking in the kitchen, the Thali turned out to be another Cape Town revelation. Tomlin’s menu is an explosion of taste experiences, describing it as: “my personal interpretation of Indian cuisine, not from one particular region, but combining tandoori meat dishes from the North with vegetarian cooking from the South, plus a couple of molecular techniques to add some theatre.” Even on a Monday night, the place is buzzing with locals enthusiastically discovering eclectic dishes like a sublime beetroot-cured salmon with cucumber pickles, plump local oysters with a tangy lime leaf dressing, crunchy tandoori cauliflower and a rich smoked lamb shank curry.
Two young rock-and-roll South African chefs have opened exciting new venues recently too. Right in the centre of town, off the nightlife centre of Long Street, Shortmarket Club is a packed speakeasy, but the stellar dishes created at the frenetic open kitchen by Wesley Randles are Michelin-star standard. Randles collaborates with another chef-superstar, Luke Dale-Roberts, who shot to fame with The Test Kitchen, still the hardest restaurant in Cape Town to get a reservation for, but he has been given a free hand by Dale-Roberts here at the Shortmarket. I breathe a sigh of relief that the usual marathon tasting menu is not obligatory, and as Wesley goes through the menu, he insists that, “we may be in the middle of a huge urban city, but within an hour, I can source sustainable seafood from the Indian and Atlantic oceans, organic vegetables and herbs, locally raised beef, lamb and our distinctive African game.” Difficult to resist specialities include juicy lamb chops from the Karoo desert with porcini marmalade or wild kudu grilled on bay leaves with smoked bone marrow and nectarine jus. And there is an epic selection of South African cheeses that would impress even a French fromagerie. At Janse & Co, Arno Janse van Rensburg and his patisserie chef wife, Liezl,
I always believed this [Cape Malay] style of cooking would become popular one day MALIKA VAN REENEN Chef, Signal Restaurant