This past Sunday we visited The Goatshed for the 1st time.
Sadly it was one on the worst dining experience we have had, especially after the awesome food at Dutch East Restaurant in Franschhoek on the Friday.

The service was non-existent, the food was delivered at different times, 2 guests food was almost done by the time by husbands food arrived. The food arrived with no cutlery so we had to wait for that to arrive.
My fillet was supposed to be medium it was brown right through, no pink in sight. It had no flavour at all.

The Sunday special which we asked for was sold out at 2.30pm but was still being advertised on the boards.
When I asked for something else with mash I was told that they could substitute, my fillet arrived with potato wedges.

The other guests found the food to be bland and ill prepared.

We had just come from the Spice Route where the staff there are friendly, efficient and hospitable.
The Goatshed Restaurant was overall a very unpleasant experience.

This is worth the trip out of the city. Loved the cheese tasting – perfect if you have vegetarians along. It’s a pity that you can buy the cheese but not the delicious orange preserve.

For the first two years we ordered the same dish every time we went - we could not believe that another dish could be as good - until our friends ordered different items and gave us a taste when they lauded the dish - so now my favourite is the roast duck and I'll go all the way from Cape Town just to have that pleasure. It's on the musts of all our overseas friends' lists of places to go... and we have never yet been disappointed - that's after probably 20 visits at least. It's one of the few restaurants I know of where quality of food and friendliness of service is never compromised, and as far as value for money goes, even with the cost of petrol we still get a bargain. Please don't ever change, Shannon! I rate service a 6/5, food a 6/5 and ambience a 6/5.

The food for the adults might be tempting, but they totally forgot about the little ones. While they tell you how important it is to fight against obesity in kids and they therefore don't have fries and burgers on the menu they don't offer many healthy choices instead. They have only two dishes on the menu that you can get as a kids size portion (no special children's dishes at all) and that is spare ribs and one beef dish. What child is eating that? What would be wrong with a chicken dish or scrambled eggs? That is also healthy. We decided to not go there because we won't enjoy our food if our kids are sitting there starving.

As always, the food and ambience at Fairview was fabulous. We booked for lunch and when we arrived the restaurant was already packed. We figured we would be in for a wait with food and beverages... and Roger our waiter even warned us they were really busy that day and things might take longer than usual. Roger was super efficient, and even though the restaurant was busy, we hardly waited for our drinks or our food. The cheese and cold meat platters were delicious served with a mountain of fresh bread. The wine is very reasonable, with the rose at R40. A great lunch that does not cost an arm and a leg.Will keep returning!