Review: FYN

Wednesday, December 6th, 2023

Food
Chefs Peter Tempelhoff and Ashley Moss, and service and beverage director Jennifer Hugé, are consummate professionals and give diners a truly world-class dining experience. The Japanese-South African fare at the heart of the restaurant is characterised by precision, but is never over-presented or over-garnished, letting the inherent flavours of the ingredients do the heavy lifting. With no fewer than nine courses, the Experience menu is an odyssey. A first course comprised of tempura dune spinach, tuna belly with rice and truffle, and Mozambican crab with rice and seaweed salad sets the tone for the meal to follow with three beautifully calibrated bites – the tempura batter is light and crisp, not overshadowing the dune spinach’s innate saltiness in the slightest; the tuna melts on the tongue and sits atop perfectly cooked rice, with a fine shaving of Drakensberg truffle bringing it all into focus; and the soft, delicate crab filling is offset against the brittle texture of a paper-thin roll of brick pastry. The bread course – dombolo with Karoo bredie – is refreshing in its innovation. The steamed dumpling is served with a side dish of set lamb stock with morsels of lamb suspended within, placed over a copper burner, so that the lamb jelly melts into an unctuous puddle, rich in classic bredie flavours and waiting to be mopped up by the fluffy dombolo. The seafood course of Cape fish temaki involves the diner, who is presented with a selection of local tuna, sea bream and yellowtail sashimi laid on top of sushi rice, toasted nori sheets, a bowl of double-fermented soy sauce and a cup of sake – the idea being to let diners roll their own sushi with sips of sake between bites. It's a showcase of clean flavours, choosing to highlight the complex flavours inherent to the fish themselves. A wild-mushroom chawanmushi offsets layered umami mushroom flavours with the clean taste and creamy texture of the steamed egg custard – the temperature of which is just warm enough to melt on the tongue. Mains wise, a robata grilled springbok leg with Peppadew, monkeygland sauce and bubu arare (crispy rice pops) illustrates the deftness with which the chefs blend South African and Japanese ingredients. Springbok from the bushveld is cooked to textbook medium rare and topped with the crunchy textures of bubu arare from Tokyo, crispy fried sage and paper-thin garlic crisps, while the monkeygland sauce is a refinement of the cloying original, with hints of smoky flavour and soft spice notes. At the end of the flavour journey, diners are in for a final treat – a sweet kaiseki tray with three small plates: the first, a deep-fried wonton with a chocolate fondant-like filling, topped with a pumpkin seed brittle; the second, burnt persimmon, with a pop of acid from yuzu, and soft warmth from the shichimi spice, bringing the humble fruit into balance; and the third, a smooth, flavourful Gohan rice ice cream counterbalanced by the intensity of a dark shoyu. A meal at Fyn is not an everyday-eating experience, but is worth every single cent, as you leave feeling like you have experienced art in its purest form.

Drinks
Compiled by Jennifer, the wine list reads like a love letter to South African wine and offers customers enough choices and price points. There is also a Fyn white and red library that contains a special selection of old- and new-world wines. Also crafted by Jennifer is the cocktail menu, which is filled with beautiful Japanese-inspired cocktails such as the umeboshi martini – a sipping sensation of salty, sweet and sour flavours. Being a Japanese-inspired establishment, there is also a selection of Japanese beers, whiskies and sakes on offer.

Service
Arriving at Fyn feels like stepping into a magical world. After the quick elevator ride, you are greeted by the front of house. You feel welcome from the get-go, never intimidated. Once seated, a warm lemongrass-scented towel cleans your hands, and the scent establishes that you’re in for a meal where fragrance will play an integral role. Under the sure-footed leadership of service and beverage director Jennifer Hugé, the service team is informed, highly polished, precise and neat – in other words, world class.

Ambience
Stepping out of a retro 1960s lift and into Fyn is an experience itself. The thousands of disc-shaped wooden beads dangling from the ceiling of the double-volume industrial space is by now iconic, thanks to social media, but seeing the scale in person is truly breath-taking. The slick and sexy open-plan kitchen stations right among the dining tables never gets old, and neither does the view of the city and Table Mountain looming majestically in the background.