Hennie Fisher visits Dunkeld West’s The Grazing Room, the more casual sibling to DW Eleven-13, and discovers inventive tapas bites and excellent service.

Food at The Grazing Room. Photo courtesy of the restaurant.

The food

Every one of the tastes sampled at Marthinus Ferreira’s slightly more relaxed restaurant delights the senses. In the manner of Asian restaurants, orders come out of the kitchen as soon as they are finished. Recommended are the red bean chilli, served with sour cream and homemade tacos, and the classic combo of salt and pepper squid with lemon mayonnaise, which will never taste the same anywhere else. Impala tataki comes as dukkah-crusted loin with a kimchi dipping sauce, misoyaki (a miso marinade) and radish and cucumber slices. The BBQ chicken wings are coated in a fabulously smoky homemade sauce and garnished with celery curls. They are deeply delicious and messy, making it impossible to keep your napkin pristine. Old-fashioned Yorkshire pudding is given a new twist: stuffed with oxtail, caramelised onions and oxtail jus, its savoury goodness is perfectly balanced by the bite of a horseradish cream. Also worth mentioning are the poached pork wontons and the Parma ham and smoked mozzarella spring rolls with a wine sauce. To conclude a meal of small but satisfying bites, popcorn-flavoured crème brûlée makes for a quirky version of the classic.

The drinks

The wine list consists of two carefully composed and laid-out A4 pages, but, if choices are carefully made, you don’t need more. They have all the bubbles covered, from Louis Roederer and Pol Roger to Colmant and Genevieve. There are at least four of each of the major varietals, some international choices and a lovely selection of dessert wines. Blackwater Chenin Blanc, Adoro Naudé and Meinert Riesling are some of the white wines on offer, while on the red front you can expect such gems as Groote Post Kapokberg Pinot Noir, Bizoe Estalet Shiraz and Sijnn Cabernet Sauvignon from Swellendam.

The service

There’s something to be said for the level of service in a restaurant that has ice-buckets ready, awaiting the arrival of guests. If a venue fills up to maximum capacity over the course of the evening and service remains attentive and professional, you know you’re in one of South Africa’s top restaurants. Used cutlery is replaced with meticulous attention, and even just looking up stirs a service person into action.

The ambience

Guests enter The Grazing Room through the DW Eleven-13 main restaurant. The space is intimate, flanked on one side by a lovely built-in banquette and the other by an entire wall of wine racks. Like most contemporary tapas-style restaurants, the décor at The Grazing Room is elegant yet simple and unfussy. Tables are unadorned but functional, which makes sense in a restaurant where diners are encouraged to share food. Glassware (including the most delightful branded blue thick-bottomed water glasses), cutlery and crockery are of high quality and the experience in general is one of simplified luxury.

The interior at The Grazing Room. Photo courtesy of the restaurant.

And…

The tiny satellite kitchen is probably not where all the food is prepared, but it’s lovely to watch young chefs chop and fry and make small, pretty plates of food. A square Perspex tray bears little friandise – decadent litchi and raspberry Turkish Delights and perfectly made passion fruit pastilles – as send-off gifts with coffee and the bill.

Have you been to The Grazing Room recently? Let us know what you thought of it by writing a quick review.