Tiny SA beach restaurant crowned best in world

A tiny beach restaurant in an isolated South African fishing village was named the best in the world on Monday.

Chef Kobus van der Merwe, who only learned to cook when he was 30, forages every day for ingredients on the wild Atlantic shore of the Western Cape near his Wolfgat restaurant, where he also makes his own bread and butter.

The Wolfgat just opened last year in a 130-year-old cottage and cave on the beach at Paternoster.

It’s seven-course tasting menu costs R750, a fraction of what you are likely to pay at a top Paris table.

But its humble setting, and Van der Merwe’s belief in sustainable, back-to-basics cooking won over the judges of the inaugural World Restaurant Awards in the French capital.

The 38-year-old can only feed 20 people at a sitting, which usually lasts two and half hours.

With dishes such as twice-cooked laver (seaweed), angelfish with bokkom sambal and wild garlic masala, limpets, mussels and sea vegetables harvested within sight of its “stoep” (porch), it also won the prize for “Off-Map Destination”.

Bearded Van der Merwe — a former food blogger — said apart from the influence of the subtle spices of local Cape Malay cooking, his philosophy was to “interfere as little as possible with the products, and to keep them pure, raw and untreated.”

“It’s a very minimalist approach — it doesn’t make sense to gather amazing herbs but then transform them into a sauce that has nothing to do with them,” he added.

No-nonsense restaurants known for their affordable food featured prominently in the awards, set up by one of the 50 Best Restaurants list’s own founders, Joe Warwick, to challenge it primacy.

While the 50 Best has been hit by allegations of lobbying and bias against French cuisine, the new awards claim to pride themselves on “diversity and integrity”, with 50 men and 50 women on the judging panels.

Nor were they afraid to send up industry cliches with a range of tongue-in-cheek prizes for the “Tattoo-free chef of the year” and the “Tweezer-free kitchen of the year”.

Sao Paulo’s lively Mocoto, named for the Brazilian cow’s hoof stew its serves, won the “No Reservations Required” category, while the house special went to Italy’s rather ritzier Lido 84 — overlooking Lake Garda which boils its “cacio e pepe” – pasta inside a pig’s bladder.

Andoni Luis Aduriz, regarded as Spain’s most pioneering chef since El Bulli’s Ferran Adria hung up his apron, won the “Forward Drinking” prize for the breadth and value of the wine list at his San Sebastian eaterie, Mugaritz.

The “Event of the year” continued the down-to-earth theme of the World Restaurant Awards, going to the Refugee Food Festival, which began in France and has now spread to 18 cities worldwide.

It completed a French hat-trick of top prizes with the legendary La Mere Brazier in the country’s culinary capital of Lyon taking the “Enduring Classic” crown, while the top-end Paris table Le Clarence won for “Original Thinking”.

Judges including Rene Redzepi of Denmark’s Noma restaurant, cook book king Yotam Ottolenghi and Northern Irish chef Clare Smyth, the first woman to win three Michelin stars in Britain, also had to cogitate over which restaurant had the world’s best dessert trolley and Instagram account.

While Redzepi missed out on the original thinking prize, his longtime Noma underling German-born Thomas Frebel won the “Arrival of year” prize for his new Tokyo table, Inua, which has been hailed as “Japan’s most exciting” new restaurant.

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