S. African restaurant named best in world

PARIS — A tiny beach restaurant in an isolated South African fishing village was named the best in the world on Monday.

Chef Kobus Van der Merwe, who did not begin to cook seriously until he was 30, forages every day for ingredients on the wild Atlantic shore of the Western Cape near his Wolfgat restaurant, where he also makes his own bread and butter.

The Wolfgat — whose six mostly female staff have no formal training — opened just two years ago in a 130-year-old cottage and cave on the beach at Paternoster.

Its seven-course tasting menu costs the equivalent of 53 euros ($60), a fraction of what you would pay at a top Paris table.

But its humble setting, and Van der Merwe’s belief in sustainable, back-to-basics cooking won over the judges of the inaugural World Restaurant Awards in Paris.

The 38-year-old, who can feed only 20 people at a sitting, said: “I don’t feel worthy. It’s a big title. My staff who go out every day gathering herbs, succulents and dune spinach, should be here. … It’s their baby.”

With dishes such as twicecooked laver (seaweed), angelfish with bokkom sambal and wild garlic masala, limpets, mussels and sea vegetables harvested within sight of its “stoep” (porch), Wolfgat also won the prize for best “Off-Map Destination”.

The bearded Van der Merwe — a former journalist — said that apart from the influence of the subtle spices of local Cape Malay cooking, his philosophy was to “interfere as little as possible with the products, and to keep them pure, raw and untreated.

No-nonsense restaurants known for their affordable food featured prominently in the awards, set up by one of the 50 Best Restaurants list’s own founders, Joe Warwick, to challenge its primacy.

While the 50 Best has been hit by allegations of lobbying and bias against French cuisine, the new awards claim to pride themselves on their “diversity and integrity”, with 50 men and 50 women on the judging panels.

Nor were they afraid to send up industry cliches with a range of tongue-in-cheek prizes for the “Tattoo-free chef of the year” (won by French culinary legend Alain Ducasse) and the “Tweezerfree kitchen of the year” (Bangkok’s Bo.lan).

Sao Paulo’s lively Mocoto, named for the Brazilian cow’s hoof stew its serves, won the “No Reservations Required” category, while the house special went to Italy’s rather ritzier Lido 84 — overlooking Lake Garda — which boils its “cacio e pepe” pasta inside a pig’s bladder.