Asian Underground

The Red Room is a bold, evocative space and stands in striking contrast to the more subdued and gloriously pink Mount Nelson where it resides.

Whereas the “Nellie” is stately with light streaming through, the Pan-Asian restaurant downstairs has no windows. Designed to evoke the feeling of a Hong Kong fine dining establishment from the 1930s, the Red Room is expansive with intricate chandeliers and re-upholstered original banquettes; the impact is intimate and elegant.

The brooding feel is tinged with a sense of the theatrical — you can sit amid subdued lighting in a lavish booth or at a table, sipping  a cocktail or sake before your meal. There are stand-out details such as several ink-and-coffee drawings of pagodas in different parts of Southeast Asia by local artist Jenna Barbe.

Inspired by the melting pot that is Hong Kong, the Red Room features dishes from across Asia. The restaurant was opened after the Mount Nelson asked top restaurateur Liam Tomlin if he’d like a space at the grande dame. He’d declined the main hotel; what intrigued him was the underground space.

“To me it’s very New York, very London. I know it’s not very Capetonian. There’s no natural light. I love the space and I love the underground but I’m used to it ... when I was in London I lived in basement bedsits, travelled to work on the underground and worked in basements,” said Tomlin.

Tomlin is one of the country’s most celebrated chefs, and known for putting “global tapas” on the forefront of local menus with his various incarnations of Chefs Warehouse. He has seven restaurants in his portfolio in Cape Town, and an events space, Room 91, on top of the Chefs Warehouse and Canteen on Bree Street, and is approached regularly to open new sites.

“People come here and they see our concept, a lot of them eat in two or three or four of the restaurants. It really appeals to them ... I think the approach we take is we are very serious about what we do, but we’re not very serious about ourselves,” he says.

Tomlin’s business model is to open a new restaurant only once he has staff who have worked for him for a long time and can be a partner trusted to run the operation. In the case of The Red Room, it is David Schneider who also runs Chefs Warehouse & Canteen and Merchant Bar & Grill, as well as Maison with Tomlin. At two-star Eat Out restaurant Beau Constantia it is Ivor Jones.

Tomlin has had an impact on the local industry in terms of the number and quality of the restaurants and was acknowledged earlier this year with the Pioneer Award from Luxe for his influence on the evolution of South Africa’s dining landscape.

He trained in Europe for 15 years and worked in Australia for 15 mote, where his restaurants were among the top five, notably Banc which garnered many accolades, including three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Tomlin had a restaurant in Barcelona which he later sold. Plans for a restaurant in Moscow were scuppered by Covid and the war in Ukraine. Beirut was also on the radar but nothing materialised because of regional uncertainty.

Still, Tomlin will be opening a restaurant in Hamburg at a site now under renovation. Patrons can expect an experience that would be a cross between Chefs Warehouse Bree Street and Maison.

“I think it’s more seasonal there than here, so you have a real winter there, autumn, spring and summer so the cooking there will be like we cook here, very seasonal with more seafood,” Tomlin says.

It will of course include “global tapas” and they will pursue the same avenues as they do here, seeking out small suppliers and boutique cheesemakers, people to buy great beef, pork, and lamb farmers. “I’ll be looking for game over there. Game is bit different there to what it is here, there is a large variety of game birds over there that we don’t get here.”

To Tomlin, it’s not about a formal environment. “After having the restaurant in Australia I really didn’t want to have a really top-end fine dining restaurant again but I wanted the food to be really great, I wanted the service to be really good. I wanted the space to be interesting and comfortable but I didn’t want that stuffy, formal ‘look at us’ sort-of thing.”

Running a fine dining experience was relentless and that took the fun and enjoyment out of it for Tomlin. “I found that going to work and it has to be 100% every time, which it should be but it can’t be, it’s impossible. And I just don’t want that pressure in my life.

“I want good restaurants. I mean there’s enough pressure in running a restaurant without having to bow down to every food critic that comes into your restaurant. That’s not my game. My game is bums on seats, my game is running a restaurant, looking after the staff, ... making sure our guests have a great experience, that’s my job.”

Tomlin and his entourage will be heading off shortly for an exploratory food trip to Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. “It’s great to go and just see something different and get some inspiration. For me it’s Hong Kong where it’s all about the Red Room”.

The Red Room stands out as an Asian offering with head chef Caroline Lamb. The food is Asian, but pared down and kind of Westernised says Tomlin. Earlier this year it garnered an Eat Out star.

There is an à la carte menu or a set four-course meal to share. The set menu has options such as game fish sashimi, Doenjang beef short rib siu mai, pork belly ssam and Singapore chicken. We shared sweet and sour duck spring rolls, Vietnamese rice rolls and, of course, the signature Peking duck with mandarin pancakes and broth. It was a well presented, and super tasty with attentive yet not overbearing service.

Part of the joy was being seated at tables that aren’t right up against each other. where you aren’t crowded next to one another. Heading up the stairs it felt as if we’d spent a few hours somewhere entirely different.