Richard Holmes finds a Paternoster chef who takes ‘terroir’ to a whole new level
‘Bokkoms have a bad reputation,” says Kobus van der Merwe, the owner/chef of Paternoster’s Oep ve Koep. This cosy restaurant a few streets from the beach is a place where local isn’t just lekker — it informs every dish on the menu. This is a restaurant that takes terroir seriously.
“When I started out here I didn’t have a set idea of what the food would be,” says Kobus, 32, “but I knew I wanted to offer something that was of the area [and] the more I experimented the more wild and regional the food became.”
And wild it certainly is. Ingredients include wild herbs gathered off nearby dunes and fresh seaweed from the icy Atlantic.
Succulent dune spinach is wilted slightly before serving, while klipkombers seaweed is used like a sheet of Japanese nori. Veldkool — “a flower bud that looks like an asparagus spear” — is picked in winter to be used raw in salads or cooked into bredies.
Wild samphire has a similar appearance and transforms a plate of Saldanha Bay oysters — lightly grilled and served with gooseberries, green apple and orange beurre blanc — into a true taste of the West Coast.
“The best way to taste a region is to start nibbling on things in the veld. You can’t get any more local or true to a region than by eating the wild greens,” says Kobus.
Still, if there’s one local delicacy people associate with the West Coast, it’s bokkoms: salted, air-dried fish, the biltong of the big blue. Aficionados will swear by the bokkoms from Velddrif but Kobus prefers his own.
“Traditionally they’re made with southern mullet (haarders) but as those are on the Sassi orange list, I started looking around. I found recipes that use maasbanker — on the green list — which I prefer as it’s fattier.
“I also like to use them before they’re entirely dry. With a bit of moisture left they’re almost like charcuterie when served thickly sliced. I see it like a cured ham.”
Besides the bokkoms, snoek from the village fishermen is often on the menu, while Saldanha Bay mussels may appear minced with lentils and re-imagined as a (delicious) West Coast take on traditional bobotie. Kabeljou from a fish farm in the village harbour is a new addition to the chalkboard, and winter is about the only time you’ll see red meat on the menu, as fresh springbok arrives from a farm near Darling.
The ingredients might be rustic. The presentation is anything but.
“At heart I’m a bit of a modernist, so I admire that style of cooking,” says Kobus. “I’m quite a visual person and I get a lot of direct influence from the landscape: the lichens, the seaweed, the colours, the textures.”
If there’s a downside, it’s that dune scrub and seaweed, served in portions that a hungry farmer might mistake for garnish, haven’t always gone down well with summer visitors hoping for a plate piled high. Happily, three years after opening, that tide seems to have turned.
“It’s reached a point where the people who come here know what kind of food we do. This summer was the busiest season for me, and I could finally stop fighting people about the menu,” says Kobus. “I also think the eating public has undergone a bit of an evolution, and more people are happy with a plate that isn’t dominated by starch and deep-fried things.”
As for future plans, Kobus is wary of sharing too many details.
“Somewhere in the back of my mind there’s an evolution I’m hoping will happen,” he says. “But I’ll always keep it small and local.”
Wherever the West Coast wind eventually blows Oep ve Koep and its unique approach to local cooking, you can be sure those bokkoms won’t be far behind.