The village of Franschhoek, an hour west of Cape Town, anchors one of South Africa’s major wine routes. The Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, arrived here in the 1688 to behold a landscape garlanded by granite-crowned mountains and surrounded by fertile fields where goats could roam and wine could grow.
photo by Todd Pitock
It looked like France, it smelled like France, and best of all, from a Huguenot perspective, it wasn’t France. Franschhoek (franz-hook) is Afrikaans for Le Quartier Francais, or “where the French guys live.”
The village, whose main thoroughfare runs through a grid of quaint streets lined by Cape Dutch buildings with gardens and whitewashed courtyards, has recently charmed other wanderers looking for a place to settle, happily many of them with culinary ambitions.
Over the past 15 years or so, Franschoek has blossomed with fine restaurants, artisanal boulangeries and boutique olive-oil producers, cheese-makers, a chocolatier and a charcuterie. Wine farms and tasting rooms begin right at the edge of the town.
It’s all been led by an unusual community of chefs, a dozen of whom posed, tastefully (depending on your tastes), as The Naked Chefs of Franschhoek, for a recipe booklet and calendar to support a local hospice. One of the nudes, and one of South Africa’s best-known chefs, is Margot Janse, who presides over the Tasting Room at Le Quartier Francais.
The Tasting Room, with 4-, 6- or 8-course degustation menus, is a demonstration of culinary refinement and finesse, utilizing ingredients – roasted wildebeest loin, say—that doesn’t leave you wondering what part of the world you’re in.
Across the street, Reuben’s Restaurant & Bar has a diametrically opposite style, with strong flavors and Lucullan portions. The most desirable spot is its whitewashed, stone-floored courtyard, where Sunday afternoon visitors fill the linen-clothed tables, and take their time with a menu that cleverly combines unlikely textures and ingredients. A crispy snapper topped with succulent calamari tubes comes on a bed of polenta that’s kicked up with a fragrant, creamy curry, a gastronomic meeting point of Cape Malay and French Huguenot.
photo courtesy of Franschhoek Wine Valley and Tourist Association
Franschoek is also, famously, a wine destination. Among the tasting room standouts is Rupert & Rothschild Vignerons, a joint venture with the French Rothschilds, and Tokara (which, in addition to fine wines crafts sensational olive oils).
Right across from Tokara is another winery, the Delaire Graff Estate, which is producing some of the country’s finest reds. Its restaurant is superb.
How you experience Franschhoek depends on when you visit. On a weekend afternoon, it’s a crash of feeders and wine-drinkers. When the festive interlopers clear out, the local aspect comes through more clearly.
That’s what Neil Jewell, a 33-year-old British transplant, loved about the place, which he found after vagabonding around Africa and leaving behind the sun-deprived, dreary confines of London. Jewell, the chef at Bread & Wine, a vineyard restaurant at a wine farm called Moreson, is also the local charcutier.
His maturing room has 5,500 pounds of meat hanging on hooks – cured, smoked, and dried. The kudu biltong has a splash of port, pimiento and juniper. Locals bring pigs they slaughtered themselves for him to carve up and work his magic on.
“We have something special here,” Jewell said. “People come to experience it. Jo’burgers look and think it’s another gold mine. They’ll come in and open a restaurant that someone will declare is going to ‘set a new standard’ and put the rest of us out of business.
“They don’t understand that here it’s only about the food. So, let them come. They’ll be gone soon enough.”
Actually, they likely will come back — as diners with reservations.
A version of this story originally appeared in ForbesLife and is reprinted by permission of the author.
One good book: Franschhoek Memoirs: Life in the French Valley
For a look at another unique wine region, check out Christine Sisson’s visit to Mikulov, Czech Republic, here.
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