Considering that this blog is about the yummiest and most current places to find gluten free treats in Cape Town , South Africa, I thought it would only make sense for me to brag about one of our locals. Kobus van der Merwe, the name on every foodies lips, just made cooking history in South Africa, and here’s why:
Kobus van der Merwe’s restaurant, Wolfgat, has just been named the restaurant of the year as well as the best destination restaurant at the first-ever World Restaurant Awards in Paris. According to Africa’s biggest food website, Food24, the awards took place on the 18 February 2019.
Kobus van der Merwe was born in the Kalahari and grew up in Stellenbosch. According to AFP news agency, he was originally a food blogger but trained to become a chef at age 30 and opened up a restaurant named Wolfgat.
In an interview with Filippo L’Astorinafrom The Upcoming,Kobus opened up his beachside restaurant in Paternoster, a small fishing village on the West Coast, in 2016. Kobus continued to tell L’Astorina that Wolfgat is run by a team of six mostly female staff who in fact have no formal training. The restaurant is run out of a 130-year-old cottage situated on a cave on the Paternoster beach. Kobus went on to explain that the name “Wolfgat” is just as true to South Africa as its spectacular cuisine. The restaurant was named after the cave it was built on. This cave was said to be a likely home for the brown leopard (the “wolf”) that roamed the Paternoster area many years ago.
What sets Wolfgat apart from the rest, says BBC News, is that head chef Kobus van der Merwe forages every day for fresh ingredients on the wild Atlantic shore of the Western Cape near his restaurant. Kobus uses Strandveld, otherwise known as beach vegetation, to finely craft his seven-course menu, which consist of hand-picked dune spinach, seaweed, soutlaai and more. Food24says that Kobus’s best dishes will be far from anything you have tasted before.
In an interview with Eyewitness News, Kobus says that 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.” Kobus’s dishes include twice-cooked laver (seaweed), angelfish with bokkom sambal and wild garlic masala, limpets, mussels and sea vegetables harvested from around the nearby area of the restaurant. Eyewitness news says that it was because of this uniqueness, that Wolfgat also won the prize for best “Off-Map Destination. According to BBC News, Mr van der Merwe told AFP news agency: “I don’t feel worthy. My staff who go out every day gathering herbs, succulents and dune spinach, should be here… It’s their baby.” The restaurant can only take 20 people in one sitting and costs 850 rand per head for its seven-course tasting menu.
Just in case I wasn’t excited enough about eating at this world class restaurant, Wolfgat just released a post about its gluten-free-lactose-free sorghum, seaweed and sweet potato bread! You can check it out on the Wolfgat Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/BtlAXKghi9q/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_locale_control.
Nom Nom 