We booked to celebrate a special occasion for a Saturday night in December. The restaurant has been on my to do list for many years, following their continued success on the Eat Out Top 20.
I was surprised that the restaurant was not fully booked on a Saturday night, in season. But nonetheless I was happy to be there. The service from all the front of house staff was exceptional throughout and in perfect timing to a relaxing evening.
The room was cosy but had no air flow. It was a cool evening, which made it bearable.
Their wine list was quite small, with rather unfamiliar wines on the list. We opted for a middle-of-the-road shiraz, based on the wine list's indication that it was a 2015 vintage (a great year for SA wines). When the bottle arrived, the vintage was 2016 - and upon enquiry found out that the 2015 was sold out. This is always the challenge with indicating vintages of the wines you have on offer, but I would expect a restaurant of this calibre with a paper printed menu to be able to manage the vintages of the wines available better.
Moving on to the food. We opted for the 3 course menu, preceded by some oysters - the star dish of the evening. On the menu, each course had 4 options (one vegetarian) and we opted for different dishes to ensure we try as many as possible. The cucumber gazpacho was sensational, and perfectly balanced. The zucchini flowers were also very tasty, but quite a rich dish for a starter.
Unfortunately this is where the magic for us stopped.
I opted for the duck leg and cauliflower puree, which was tasty but rather underwhelming. My partner ordered the steak. Now, when a restaurant only has 4 items on offer, surely they would ensure they can nail every one of those dishes. The steak (ordered medium rare) had a few problems. Firstly, the cut was really bad, so the end of the steak was massively overdone and dry. My partner sent this back to the kitchen, followed by massive apologies from all but the chef. The new steak arrived much better, but slightly under cooked. He ate it anyway, as under cooked is always better than over cooked (and also, I had long finished my meal). There was definitely no confidence in the kitchen when preparing that steak. And the age old saying is also true, you cannot cook a bad steak well. The quality and cut of the meat was equally as problematic as the confidence the chef cooked it with.
By this point I had eaten enough, so my meal was changed to a two course - a nice touch as this wasn't presented to us as an option and I would've happily paid for the dessert I didn't eat, just to avoid the waste. My partner had the chocolate whisky dome, which he declared sensational.
Overall our experience was good, but not exceptional and we left slightly underwhelmed. It was quite an expensive dinner, considering the flaws to the mains. Im glad I got to tick this spot off my list, but it's unlikely that I will return or even recommend. There are far better options at far better prices in Stellenbosch.
