Dishes are beautifully prepared by team that replicates Reuben Riffel’s high standard

by JOHN FRASER

When you fancy a bite of lunch in the Cape winelands, you are spoilt for choice. As well as an abundance of restaurants in the towns, there is something on offer on almost any wine farm — from fine dining restaurants to tasting rooms offering platters of cheese and other goodies.

However, few places offer the quality of food that you can find if you wander a few paces off the main drag in Franschhoek and visit the restaurant of one of this country’s finest chefs. I have been visiting Reuben’s restaurant for well over a decade and have found chef Reuben Riffel’s food consistently excellent.

Of course, you are paying winelands prices, which are more of a strain on the wage packets of South Africans than they are for those harder-currency tourists, who gasp in amazement at the superb value our restaurants offer when compared to those in their home countries.

Reuben’s has moved from its original home on the Franschhoek high street — that building has now been downgraded to a Woolworth’s store. However, the newer venue is light and airy, with a covered terrace at the far end, while inside there is a roaring fire in the cooler winter months. As the temperatures were in the 30s when I recently visited, no fire was on offer, nor needed, but the relaxed terrace was a sensible location.

When I discussed Reuben’s recently with two elderly Franschhoek residents, it was sad to hear that they don’t go there. They feel that as the chef has expanded, opening new restaurants beyond his hometown, and no longer confines himself to his founding Franschhoek kitchen, standards must have slipped.

Indeed, lovers of local TV food programmes will almost certainly have seen him judging or cooking on the small screen. His roots may be in Reuben’s, but he has spread his wings. So, are they right? Only one way to find out!

To my mind, Riffel has achieved what only the very best chefs are able to do — by training kitchen and front-of-house teams that meet the same standards of cuisine and service that one would expect when Riffel himself has not left the building.

On my most recent visit, my first to the winelands in far too long, I started my lunch at Reuben’s with one of the dishes that is rarely off the menu — the prawn tempura. Beautifully cooked prawns encased in batter, nestled on a chilli-coriander salsa, enhanced with a creamy sweetcorn velouté and small dice of pineapple. A stunner.

Also on offer was the chilli salted squid, a dish for which Riffel is rightly famous — and then there was a generous, well-flavoured beef tartare. The hand-chopped fillet was flavoured with an array of flavours, including tarragon, rocket, capers and Parmesan.

For the mains, my chums and I had a beautifully cooked pork belly, with melt-in-the-mouth meat and crispy, crackly, crunchy pancetta crackling. Skilfully cooked and flavoured with fennel seeds, cider, chilli and ginger.

The beef fillet with rosemary bone marrow bordelaise sauce was also excellent, and the tender, perfectly cooked juniper kudu loin was a revelation, enhanced with blueberry chutney and pepper jus. All a bit cheffy, I know, but all the flavours worked so well together.

The previous week I had also ordered a venison dish in a celebrated Mandela Square steak house, and in contrast to Ruben’s kudu, I had found it so bland, and boring, and the sauce so unpalatable, that I could only eat a few mouthfuls of it.

It takes skill to cook as well as Reuben’s team does, and the dishes Riffel has created are beautifully prepared by a team that is able to replicate his high standards. While relaxed, the service was efficient and attentive, even as the restaurant filled up.

Unfortunately, unless one is staying in Franschhoek, it can be a long drive home, so I had to modify my wine consumption. I had a (surprisingly generous) glass of the excellent and luscious AA Badenhorst, Secateurs chenin blanc, and followed this with (an equally ample) glass of Reuben’s own red. Both went well with the food, and it is good to see some effort had been made in assembling a wine list with a good selection of exceptional wines by the glass.

My only criticism was that the red wine was served a bit warm on what was a very warm day. However, not being as snobbish about doctoring my red wine as some, this was soon remedied with a couple of ice cubes.

I don’t often dig into a dessert, and I am annoyed that Reuben’s has stopped offering a few craftily chosen cheeses for those who wish to linger a bit but don’t go for the sweet stuff. There are far too few top SA restaurants that put in the time and effort needed to curate a good cheeseboard, and I think this is a betrayal of the many excellent producers whose produce deserves wider exposure. Though cheesed off, I have to accept that demand may be limited, hence the decision to remove it from Reuben’s restaurant menu.

In a 10-day visit to the winelands, I did not confine myself to Reuben’s restaurant, though I did go there three times, making up for the Covid-19 years when restaurant dining was a pleasure banned by our philistine politicians.

I had excellent, simple lunches at the Fairview wine farm in Paarl, which is a firm favourite, and in the Rose Garden cafe on the historic Vergelegen estate in Somerset West. Both are well worth a visit. I also lunched on two of our most prestigious wine farms, where you have to beg to secure a table, and I must confess that I found neither to be good value nor particularly impressive. Some chefs sadly seem to have abandoned flavour to focus on theatre and pretension. I won’t be back.

So Reuben’s, where there is consistency, and skill levels remain high, remains my uncontested winelands favourite. Not only is there great food, but it can’t just be my imagination that wine always tastes so much better when you are glugging it over a fine meal in the heart of the world’s most beautiful winelands.