"Hoe sê hulle? Nou kan ek maar doodgaan," says Ingrid Jones, editor of Mango Juice and my neighbour at Stellenbosch restaurant, Towerbosch's,  tasting table. Roughly translated, she's almost died and gone to heaven. And she's not the only one. Along with the other diners at our long table, we've both eaten our body weights in Sunday-lunch fare. And it's only Wednesday.

Too full to even attempt a reply, I look up at the walnut-branch chandelier hanging above me. Stretching from one end of the reed-thatched dining room to the other, the tangle of whitewashed twigs is adorned with an assortment of colourful bows, vintage silver fish knives, cups and saucers, making it seem as if the Mad Hatter's tea party has reached zero gravity and sent all his table accessories afloat.

This whimsical focal point, along with the rest of the eclectic décor, is the handiwork of Neil Stemmet of Koncept Design & Architecture, former mastermind behind Upington restaurant Le Must and creator of Towerbosch's menu, which he describes as 'Ouma se kos'.

Upon arrival, just as I was about to dig into the enticing welcome platter of freshly baked farm bread, pork pâté and homemade tomato jam, Neil excitedly whisked me off to the kitchen to meet chef Carmen van der Merwe, who was busying herself preparing the day's feast. Her co-chef and fiancé, Westley Müller, was outside, braving a miserable spring-day drizzle while braaing snoek and sirloin.

While Carmen was whisking up a piquant sour-cream dressing for the avocado salad, I snooped around, peeking at the slowly roasting pork and crackling in the broiler, and poking my nose into gleaming stockpots filled with peppered green beans and marmalade soetpatat. This was comfort food incarnate, and it made me a bit wistful for the days when my mom still cooked all my meals.

‘We want to recreate memories of eating condensed milk out of the tin when you were a child, frying boerewors in a pan and spreading the cold fat over a thick slice of farm bread, and of being woken up by your ouma bringing you a cup of moerkoffie and big chunky rusks,’ says Neil.

‘We're taking food back to its most basic form,’ he continues, ‘cooking the way our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did using salt, pepper, sugar and a minimum of spices to enhance the food's natural flavours. I think people are steadily moving on from overly fussy food.’

Looking back at the lunch, I think it was the extra helping of crackling that sent me over the edge. Just after everyone was seated and the tafelgebed said, a seemingly never-ending wave of platters exited the kitchen: tangy tomato-and-onion salad, lemony braaied snoek, medium-rare sirloin, slow-cooked Karoo, lamb shoulder so tender you could cut it with a fork, and of course, that roast pork.

Not that my food coma stood in the way of me dishing up dessert, mind you. When faced with a table of cinnamony sago, baked vinegar pudding (spongy on top and deliciously gooey at the bottom), preserved guavas and homemade custard, it's best to be brave and dive right in.

As the day was winding down and people sipped on farewell cups of boeretroos (coffee grounds tied up in a muslin bag and brewed in a coffee pot over the hearth), my dining compatriots started reminiscing about their childhood food memories. Dunking buttered aniseed rusks in coffee, tucking into daily breakfast fry-ups on the farm and making biltong-and-cheese sarmies for Sunday suppers.

It suddenly dawned on me that there was an extra ingredient in Towerbosch's salt-and-pepper cuisine that Neil didn't mention: nostalgia.

By Annette Klinger