Cape Town's restaurants a rip-off

2006-05-03 09:46

Cape Town's got a bit of a reputation as a crime city, so when I have visitors from overseas, they're sometimes understandably nervous about venturing out onto the mean streets at night.

I'm often asked, "Chris, do you think we'll get mugged if we go out tonight?" And I always answer, "That depends which restaurant you're going to."

What is it with Cape Town restaurants and prices nowadays? This is something I often write about, because it affects me profoundly. It's what I call the Food Chain - I eat in restaurants, and then I have to write columns about the experience so that I can afford to eat in restaurants again one day, once I've paid off the mortgage I had to take out to pay for my meal in the first place.

I went to Antique a few weeks ago, which is a restaurant at the top of the ABSA building in the centre of Cape Town. They had to put the restaurant in a bank building, because they need a metal chute feeding straight into the bank vault so that they can deposit their takings.

This is an example of good old business savvy - if they'd done things the ordinary way, and hired a fleet of security cash vans to transport their night's gross, the profit margin would have been severely compromised.

I don't want to paint Antique as a cold and uncaring restaurant. They're so caring that you don't get to sit on chairs when you're having dinner, you lounge around on beds, and the food is placed in the middle for all to partake of.

'Well done, Antique'

This means that when you pass out with shock when the bill arrives, you're actually already lying down. I can't tell you how many lives this has saved. Well done Antique, for going that extra mile.

The restaurant is called Antique, because they've fixed the prices at a pre-20th century level. I say pre-20th century, because my hazy historical knowledge tells me that that was the last century in which rich superpowers were still allowed to buy small countries. And that's what it costs at Antique - the vaguely tasty Kobe beef will set you back around what England paid for British Nyasaland. Less hyperbolically, the small portion of meat - around 100g, I think - costs a cool R150.

At least the menu is full of chuckles. I mean, naming your beef dish after Kobe Bryant, an overrated, obscenely overpaid American basketball star accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room - that's brilliant! It sums up the entire Cape Town restaurant scene. Again, well done to Antique for going that extra mile.

I don't know why I'm picking on Antique - I could have chosen any of a dozen over-priced restaurants to make fun of. Don't even get me started on Haiku, voted Best New Restaurant of the year by Eat Out magazine.

At Haiku, they serve "Asian tapas". Asian tapas.... what IS that? Something like Sushi dusted in paprika? Sardine Dim Sum? A delicious olive and smoked eel tapenade? No, it's Asian food served in really small portions.

Haiku is one of those Cape Town restaurants that is so popular, it has two sittings. You arrive to eat at either 18:30, or at 21:00. Of course, being Cape Town, if you arrive for the 21:00 sitting (something I've tried twice), you get to wait around for half an hour while the tardy customers at your designated table take forever to pay their bill.

The sad thing about Haiku is that they've got some really great food on the menu - I'm addicted to the scallop dim sum, for example - but you can't ever enjoy your meal in peace. Management has decided, for some reason, that they're going to pump out crap house music at maximum volume, which means that you can never hear what your waiter is telling you.

You can't go out for dinner with an odd number of people, because if you're not directly opposite someone, you can't hear what they're saying. I used to think Haiku was obscenely expensive, but now I've been to Antique. Haiku will only set you back around R300 a head, in my (admittedly greedy) experience. Oh, there's a minimum charge by the way, of R120 per person I seem to remember.

Still, like Antique, Haiku's management at least has a sense of humour. The restaurant is named after the famous Japanese billing system, where your final total has to be written on three lines, and be a number with at least five syllables.

I could go on, but maybe that's enough restaurant bashing for now. I shouldn't be too snide. After all, nobody's making me eat at these places. I used to think that the problem was that Cape Town isn't a city for Capetonians anymore, it's designed for the pockets and palates of visiting Europeans. But restaurants are getting so expensive, even Germans don't want to eat in them anymore.

Yesterday, aghast, a friend read out aloud from a news story: "It says here that a roast chicken in Harare costs a million Zim dollars now! Those poor, poor people." Then he thought about it. "Hmm. Don't know why they're complaining. That's still cheaper than eating out in Cape Town."

Chris Roper will continue eating at Haiku, but will now book using the alias Brian Berkman. And yes, he KNOWS what Kobe Beef is. Now you learn what satire is.

Send your comments to Chris.

See Chris's previous columns in his blog The World

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.

- News24