There’s a delicate balance between storytelling as part of the fine dining experience and belabouring the background, between intriguing or exotic ingredients and straightforward deliciousness. Imaginative narratives, theatre, and the visual beauty of the plates should be superseded by what we taste, surely?
Rest assured, the full package unfolds in an exceptional experience at de Tafel. Situated in the Palm House boutique hotel in Wynberg, Cape Town, it flew under the radar of the city’s fine dining scene. The secret is now out.
Chef Gregory Henderson has won numerous international accolades, including the World Luxury Restaurant Awards’ Best Chef Africa in 2018, and has worked around the world in elite establishments. He prefers to talk about ethical sourcing and the underused — or almost unknown — ingredients within South Africa’s nine biomes. “Actually, we have 11,” he corrects himself, “because we must start including the freshwater and marine biomes.”
A founder of the Wild Food Revolution, Henderson was one of the pioneers of considered cuisine. Beyond the better-known conscious cuisine, this philosophy looks to the deeper cultural and historical context of ingredients and their preparation.
So, indeed, there are foraged ingredients and, of course, sustainability is paramount (Henderson is an ambassador for the World Wide Fund for Nature and the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative). But part of the magic in de Tafel’s five-course degustation menu are insights into South Africa’s tapestry of indigenous food traditions and how they have evolved.
First, diners have an unenviable decision to make: Land and Air, Salt and Sea, or Field and Forest? Selecting one of the meat and poultry, or seafood, or plant-based menu themes presents a pleasant dilemma and the possibility of food envy. The pondering is not eased by the poetry of the respective menu’s introductions. Land and Air, “rooted in ancestral flames, drawing from the Nguni cattle that roamed the land and the wisdom of cooking with time and patience,” evokes pastoral idyll. Salt and Sea sounds transcendental, the food in nature as spiritual insight: “Here in the Cape, where the warm and cold currents kiss, the ocean feeds not just the body, but the soul.”
Eventually, well into a pleasingly apposite glass of Springfield’s Life From Stone, the springbok and quail entice me to Land and Air. My wife succumbs to the lure of abalone and seaweed candy and settles on Salt and Sea.
Bread arrives not in a basket, but under a smoky dome infusing garlic buchu and wild pelargonium into the staff of life. Close your eyes to taste childhood: lemon cream biscuits, or rolling in a meadow alongside a campsite braai.
The first course comprises three small-bite starters. Salt and Sea’s are a panipuri encasing a wild oyster with yuzu buchu pearls and masala tea; a macaroon with snoek mousse and wild fennel; abalone pannacotta with sea lettuce bread. For Land and Air there’s springbok tartare with tobacco onions, Karoo foie gras on tapioca garnished with biltong, and Langside lamb bitterballen with truffle caviar.
The visual presentation, on art paper placemats with Henderson’s drawings of the habitats from where the ingredients are sourced, is an homage to nature. The taste sensations are sublime — aromas that transport to coastlines or the veld, subtleties followed by flavour-bombs, new individual flavours and combinations that sing.
My next course, titled according to the quail’s perspective as Foraging Grains, is less colourful but more unctuously memorable. The bird’s breast is prepared sous vide then jus-glazed. The confit leg is half-hidden under a shroud of elderflower foam, its delicate gaminess accentuated by slightly tart cucumelon — a type of wild cucumber. The grains lie scattered at a bottom of the bowl: tiny pearls of toasty, popcorn-like sorghum.
My wife’s Khoi-Heritage Essence dish is described as an ode to indigenous forebears’ relationship with the sea. In a white mussel broth floats green- and pink-shaded marsh samphire, topped with rose geranium foam and a lavash cracker made with wild nori. The mussel shells are less garnish, more an embodiment of the portrayal of the tidal ecosystem. But does the geranium fit? “We don’t want to serve a singular ecosystem on each menu,” Henderson explains. “Some diversity helps us to minimise the impact of our sourcing footprint.” Like a Cape southeaster, my wife is blown away by the overall taste of the dish.
If I was vaguely disappointed that the springbok was lost in the melange of my starters, the duck main course more than validates my Land and Air choice. The Karoo-sourced duck breast, seven-day cured, is accompanied by duck-fat pressed potato and a wafer biscuit made from the skin. Nuggets of confit then duck-fat-deep-fried baby vegetable roots add dollops of gold to the plate. It’s one of those high-note dishes that brings together the chef’s vision, the origin of the produce, and the simple joy of eating.
Dessert is the same across all three menu theme options: Bioclimate, or honey in all its forms — but sweetness is balanced with creamy pannacotta, crunchy nut brittle, and smoky buchu. Henderson reverently says it’s the most important dish on de Tafel’s menus “because it pays homage to the Cape honey bee, without which the floristic region wouldn’t exist.”
The restaurant offers an all-round experience that, similarly, will see diners tipping their hats — not just to the chef, but to the land, its stories, and the quiet labour of nature.
de Tafel, Palm House Boutique Hotel, 10 Oxford Street, Wynberg, Cape Town
