Review: Foxcroft

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

Food
Chef-proprietor Glen Williams puts the fun into fine dining, offering guests a refreshingly relaxed, yet exciting eating experience underpinned by excellently executed food and seamless service. The food is presented simply, without a confusion of garnishes – every leaf, crisp and gel serves the purpose of elevating the result. The tasting menu and reduced tasting menu hit all the marks, showcasing seasonal and sustainable produce that is well cooked, treated with care, and presented in innovative, modern ways. There’s a satisfying interplay of textures and temperatures throughout, and each bite is loaded with flavour – in the vegan and vegetarian menus too, which are by no means treated as an afterthought. The mosbolletjies with snoek butter and Cape Malay pickled onions are a great interpretation of the bread course – the sweet, soft, must-leavened rolls presented steaming hot with a perfect, shiny glaze. Add a knife full of the smooth snoek butter and some of the golden pickled onions on top and your mind is transported to eating hot cross buns and pickled fish on Easter weekend. Yellowfin-tuna tataki with roasted sesame, cucumber, seaweed, citrus and dashi promises a light, refreshing taste of summer – and delivers with great additional texture and freshness from cucumber and radish slices – but the balance of strong flavours and rich mouthfeel is also warming and deeply satisfying. Moving onto mains, the risotto with pecorino, black pepper, guanciale, confit pork cheek and crackling delivers on the Foxcroft promise of unpretentious food executed with technical precision: a soft, creamy risotto rests on spoonfuls of delicious pea purée, topped with a meltingly soft pork-cheek round, textures of crispy Italian cured meat and snappy pork crackling, all balanced with crispy fried mint leaves and a dusting of pecorino. Nearing the finish line, a pre-dessert of tiramisu with Jerusalem artichoke, hazelnut, coffee and naartjie translates into a light-as-air mascarpone mousse, golden, earthy nuggets of candied Jerusalem artichokes and toasty hazelnuts, a subtle, soft coffee flavour in the background and small drops of naartjie gel adding a South African accent to the Italian icon. Dessert is another cleverly reimagined classic – this time, lime cheesecake. An ultra-creamy cheesecake is piped onto the plate and topped with small drops of yuzu gel and paper-thin miso crisps. This, accompanied by a melt-in-the-mouth litchi sorbet resting on a bed of flash-frozen edible flower petals and topped with an elderflower snow, makes for a magical combination of creamy, cold, soft, crisp and frozen textures. The bill at the end offers exceedingly good value for a top-notch fine-dining experience that leaves you feeling spoiled and that your presence was appreciated.

Drinks
The sommelier knows his wine, but isn’t a show-off by any means, preferring instead to share his knowledge in a relaxed, unassuming way. The wine list is well balanced with a great selection of local wines from the valley and greater Western Cape region. The combination of white, red and blends gives the diner enough choices in all price ranges. A selection of local gins, beers and whiskies – South African, Japanese, Scottish and American – ensures that there are enough options for all guests. There is also a small, but well-curated line-up of cocktails, if that floats your boat.

Service
The service is what you would expect from an establishment of this calibre – efficient and attentive, but not intrusive, overbearing or over-compensatory. The team is well-informed about the provenance of menu ingredients and functions as a cohesive unit, adding to the experience, rather than taking away from it.

Ambience
The décor is moody and modern, with charcoal walls and accents of dark wood, black steel and pops of greenery, yet somewhat understated. There are no big design features that scream for a capture on Instagram, but it’s the perfect, unassuming backdrop for letting the food shine.