Some heavy-hitting Joburg restaurants have opened sister locations in Cape Town, and there’s more to come, with high-profile dining destination Marble set to open at the V&A Waterfront later this year, about eight years since it first made a splash in Jozi.
It’s the latest in a growing list of Joburg restaurants setting up shop in the Cape. Sandton-based Tang, for example, opened its second restaurant at the V&A Waterfront in May 2021 — an establishment that was crowned Africa’s best new restaurant at last year’s World Culinary Awards. Il Leone Mastrantonio — sister of Mastrantonio in Joburg — has a shop in the Waterkant area, and Bellagio recently opened a large restaurant nearby. Farro, originally in the Joburg suburb of Illovo, is now at Gabriëlskloof wine estate, where it has garnered an Eat Out star.
Marble is set to shake things up in Cape Town. The restaurant in Joburg is all about an open-plan kitchen, prime cuts of meat and cooking on an open flame. It makes for an experience that’s part dining, part theatre.
“We think there’s a nice niche in the market for a meat-centric restaurant, something we’ve cooked on fire,” co-owner and chef David Higgs tells the FM. “It’s not about competition, it’s about offerings, and we do feel that Marble fits in nicely in its own bracket.”
When it comes to the Cape Town branch, some things will stay the same. “One thing with all our restaurants in Marble Hospitality group is that when you walk into one of our restaurants there’s a blueprint — a lovely bar area, it’s generally a large-format restaurant, beautifully designed by Irene [Kyriacou, creative director of the Marble Group] and the food experience is at the highest level we possibly can [make it],” Higgs says.
But there will be subtle differences. For a start, there’s going to be a Mediterranean emphasis, with a focus on vegetables, and seafood and fish — light, fresh and cooked on the coals — in addition to its meat offering.
Getting the Cape Town venue off the ground has been something of a labour of love. Higgs says he started looking at options in Cape Town about five years ago, just before the pandemic. The problem was finding the right spot. “We wanted good views, we wanted a special setting, we wanted a bit of a destination, and the Waterfront was great for that. With electricity, safety, water and parking, the Waterfront is almost a city within a city,” he says.
Along the way, Higgs looked at Dubai as an option. “We saw something we really liked, a beautiful space, but it didn’t work out. We decided that was probably a sign and soon after that the Marble site came up in Cape Town after [we’d been] looking there for five years.”
0 of 3
‘Space to play’
While the number of travellers in Joburg has decreased, Cape Town has experienced a surge in tourism and semigration, making for a more vibrant restaurant scene. But Higgs believes the market there is different to the Joburg one; Joburg is more corporate, and people are looking for more of a vibe — a bit of fun within the dining experience. “Not that Cape Town doesn’t have that, but it has a lot of fine dining restaurants. The large-format restaurants seem to work better in Joburg, and it’s related to the number of people who live in this city. The Cape Town market is a large tourist market, while the Joburg market is more corporate and local.”
One of the early movers, The Butcher Shop & Grill, opened in Mouille Point at the end of 2013 — a second restaurant after its venue at Sandton Square. Owner Dani Pick — son of Butcher Shop & Grill founder Alan Pick — agrees that clientele and spending patterns are different between the two cities, but things are changing. While Joburg has traditionally been known for its corporate and professional clientele, including lawyers and politicians, “Cape Town has seen a fourfold increase in this demographic, altering spending dynamics”, he says.
Preferences between the two cities vary though. In Joburg, dining out is a leisurely affair, says Pick — patrons linger over dinners, indulging in more alcohol and occasional splurges on extra items such as additional bottles of wine. In Cape Town, “locals tend to dine earlier, preferring to finish by 9pm, and they’re generally more cautious with expenditure”.
Amori Burger — who owned Van der Linde in Linden, Joburg — has opened the popular Upper Union off Kloof Street. She says Cape Town has for years been seen as the food and restaurant capital of South Africa, driven by tourism and international travellers with high expectations for dining out. “We see more locals eating out in Jozi, and more international visitors and ‘swallows’ in Cape Town,” she tells the FM. “The Cape Town guests also have far more adventurous palates compared to what the Jozi crowd likes. This gives us as chefs far more space to play in terms of flavours and being creative with our menus.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.