Best Restaurants in Cape Town: Chefs Warehouse Beau Constantia

We have a list of must-visit restaurants on our annual visit to Cape Town. And at the top of this list is Chefs Warehouse at Beau Constantia. Set deep in the Constantia Valley; the restaurant has beautiful views and even better food. I always get super excited about lunching there.

Chef Ivor Jones serves an imaginative, delicious, and stunningly presented menu of four courses. Things have changed slightly from last year as we could choose from two dishes per course (it used to be just a set menu without options). Much of the produce is grown locally or on the Beau Constantia farm.

What’s on the menu

Okay, there are four courses on the set menu, but there are also oysters on offer. And who can resist these? Especially as there are four in a portion and there were four of us for lunch. They were topped with delightful gels and crispy onions, bringing Asian flavours to the freshest of oysters. They’re irresistible.

My first-course choice was this chargrilled tuna served on perilla leaves with nam prik and Szechuan-style cashews. A squeeze of lime and the leaves with their slight aniseed flavour are wrapped around the tuna and eaten by hand. Wow! Talk about a taste sensation.

The second first-course option is this torched linefinsh sashimi with coconut and lime dressing, mango and aromatic herbs. Beautifully fresh and zesty.

Isn’t this plate a work of art? It’s a pear flan served with blue cheese mousse, smoked pecan nut and thyme relish and aged Balsamic, topped with ribbons of crunchy pastry. Where has blue cheese mousse been all my life?!

And it keeps getting better. This masterpiece is called “We eat with our hands”. It’s an imaginative take on beef tartare, served on creamy liver parfait with mushroom emulsion, steamed buns, bramble jellies, flowers and herbs.

I love a beef tartare and have tried them all over the world. This one broke all records for taste sensations, textures and sheer beauty. Here it is close up.

And those buns! Little warm, pillowy mouthfuls of delight to cut open, spread the emulsion over, and then add beef for something totally sensational. My mouth is watering right now as the memory hits my taste buds.

Course Number Three

There’s always a Chefs Warehouse risotto course. And although I’m not a huge risotto fan, I do love the CW offering, so much that today I ordered it even though I had a choice. Served topped with little balls of ashed leek goat’s cheese, pickled mustard seeds, curry leaf brown butter and pinenuts. So delicate, creamy and buttery with those soft little cheesy balls.

And how’s this for a clever and stunning creation? It’s a Hakurei turnip mille-feuille with preserved spring flowers, vadouvan and buttermilk dressing. Vadouvan is a blend of spices that is a French derivative of a masala (we had to google it) and adds a light spiciness to a sensational dish. Who knew turnips could be so miraculous?

Here our waitress is pouring over the dressing.

The Final Course of Four

And finally. Coal-fired linefish with vibrant green parsley sabayon, Moroccan confit mussels and spring onion. Sweet, fresh and flavoursome.

For the second time in recent days I found myself ordering chicken in a restaurant. Sort of a rule of mine not to do that, but I was intrigued by the Thai roast chicken dish. Served with a bbq cashew nut puree and a zingy tamarind dressing and topped with fresh Thai basil leaves. The taste of Thailand reinvented on a plate.

Okay so that’s a feast – both for the eyes and stomach. But something about Beau Constantia makes you want to extend your stay for as long as possible. And an easy way to do that is to order pudding.

Dessert for two

But we were pretty replete so we decided to share two portions among the four of us. A feast in itself, this is the combination of puds – figleaf parfait, spiced malva tartlet and litchi sorbet

And our lovely waitress talked us into trying this kind of brulee without the crunchy topping made using lavender from the estate’s garden. The wild honey and lavender creme is topped with honeycomb and comes with smoked cassia bark ice cream. Yum, yum, yum.