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Lunch at Sabi Sabi’s Bush Lodge

I have four contenders for lunch of the year, in a never-ending Travelife, and all of them are in South Africa.

The most obvious choice would have to be our lunch at La Colombe, one of South Africa’s best restaurants and still perhaps its most famous dining venue, on the last day of our two-week trip.

We’d had the best table in the house and an excellent meal, where I’d ordered everything completely not good for me: oysters poached in champagne and foie gras to start, a big Chalmers beef steak as a main, and something terribly fattening for dessert.

But this day was actually a package deal, as I loved this entire day, which was also the last day of our South African trip.

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After lunch, we’d driven to the Cape of Good Hope — the very tip of the African continent — for a last sightseeing hurrah. That picturesque drive along the coast from the wine valley of Constantia to the Cape of Good Hope, full of quaint towns and quietly beautiful bays and coves, was perhaps our most memorable drive.

So full from lunch, we ended up eating dinner at the restaurant of our hotel, the lovely Steenberg in Constantia, and we’d ordered a repeat of everything we’d liked on our first dinner here: I ordered oysters again, and we had one plate of mussels in a lemongrass broth and another plate in white wine, plus salad and dessert. And, of course, some champagne.

It was a really wonderful day to end a great trip.

Steak lunch by the waterfront in Cape Town

Then there were two spur-of-the-moment lunches that stand out in two weeks of nothing but enjoyable meals: a dry aged steak at the waterfront in Cape Town and, of all things, a club sandwich lunch at the equivalent of a fast-food joint at Johannesburg airport while waiting for our connection to Cape Town.

Club sandwich at Joburg airport

We ate the club sandwich with a strange mixture of hot mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise, that actually tasted very good.

Both meals were more about my memories of them rather than solely about the food.

But now when I really think about it, my best lunch was a long and fun one at the Bush Lodge camp of the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, one of the most luxurious safari experiences in the world.

Sabi Sabi has four stay options on its 65,000 hectare private game reserve (read more about this in the current issue of Travelife Magazine, by the way), and we’d chosen the very nostalgic, vintage and intimate Selati Lodge as our main base.


Selati Lodge and the ultra-futuristic and jaw-dropping Earth Lodge at Sabi Sabi are two very special experiences, and these were the two places we chose to stay at for our safari.

And next time I find myself at Sabi Sabi, I think I’d like to stay at the Little Bush Lodge, which is Sabi Sabi’s ultra-stylish contemporary camp.

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Selati Lodge is a full-service deluxe camp — certainly no roughing it up whatsoever here — with highly personalized service and all the luxuries in the world. My presidential suite was an entire villa with a private pool, antique furniture and amenities on par with the best hotels in the world.

At Selati Lodge, we had most of our meals on an open terrace and they were very social affairs. It’s a small lodge so when we were there, there were only three other couples as guests and we got to know everyone quite well.

Bush Lodge at Sabi Sabi

But one day, we decided to venture to the bigger Bush Lodge nearby, which caters to tourist groups and families or friends traveling together en masse, just to see what it was like and to sample the food.

I’m very partial to exclusive experiences so I didn’t have high expectations of Bush Lodge, frankly, as it’s a much bigger venue compared to the Selati Lodge.

But one day we decided to have lunch there anyway and see it.

Bush Lodge at Sabi Sabi

The lodge itself was really beautiful. It was full of the kind of interesting contemporary African art and accents that I wanted to take home for my own house. I kept oohing and aahing over everything, and taking photos, so it took us forever to get to the restaurant.

Bush Lodge at Sabi Sabi

A healthy lunch at Bush Lodge

The restaurant itself is on a terrace, and lunch was buffet style and excellent.

We had all kinds of salads and a very good vegetable quiche which we ate with pesto salad dressing that wasn’t really supposed to be for the quiche, for a well-matched kick.

For the main course, we had shawarma, and neither of us got the pita bread that went with it.

Lunch at Bush Lodge

Again, an excellent plate of meat, especially when I got the chef to warm it up again.

So the food was very good, and I remember that we sat for about 2.5 hours just eating and laughing about all kinds of nonsense. Actually, on this trip, we were averaging an hour for breakfast, two hours for lunch and at least three hours for dinner, so the duration wasn’t new.

But for some reason, the combination of fresh and healthy food, lots of laughter and this chic contemporary setting in the middle of absolute wilderness has left a very good memory with me.

Lunch at Bush Lodge

We must’ve made a pretty good impression on the people around us as well. We were laughing so much at that lunch that people around kept looking at us.

And later on, while we were buying stuff in the gift shop, two girls staying at Bush Lodge, who’d apparently seen us at lunch, had suddenly said to us: “We were told that two people were joining us in our safari jeep from today. You guys looked like you were having so much fun at lunch, so we were hoping it would be you two joining us.”

No such luck, unfortunately. Each lodge or camp has their own set of rangers and jeeps, and we had our own assigned jeep and ranger team from Selati Lodge for our stay.

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The post Best of Travelife 2012: Lunch at Sabi Sabi’s Bush Lodge, with good food and lots of laughter appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

The understatedly elegant Steenberg Hotel

Our last full day in beautiful South Africa began with a very nice breakfast at the Steenberg, a lovely winery and boutique hotel in Constantia, in the suburbs of Cape Town, that had been one of the hotels on my “must stay at” bucket list.

Our breakfast was prepared by Steenberg’s executive chef Garth Almazan, whose grandfather was actually Filipino, and we had a chat with him when we went over for breakfast.

Garth has never been to the Philippines, though, and I understand that we were the Steenberg’s first guests from the Philippines. Hopefully that’ll change, as it’s a beautiful and historic estate from 1700 run on five-star deluxe standards but offering all the tranquility and beauty of the winelands.

You read about the Steenberg here, by the way…

The scenery from the car, in this part of South Africa. Beautiful, even on a cloudy day.

A prestigious international magazine recently ranked a stay here as one of the top 500 travel experiences in the world — probably for the authenticity of its Cape Town wine experience and its understated elegance.

This was followed by lunch at South Africa’s most famous restaurant, and then an afternoon drive to the Cape of Good Hope, at the very tip of the African continent.

The eggs benedict at the Steenberg

But back to breakfast first.

I ordered eggs benedict for breakfast at practically every hotel we stayed in, in South Africa — so much so that on this very last breakfast day and just I was looking at the menu for hot breakfast dishes, The Boss said to me point-blank: “Stop fooling yourself that you’re going to order something else. Just get it over with and order your eggs benedict.“

The eggs benedict at Sabi Sabi Game Reserve

So that’s what I did. So far I’d had the following eggs benedict in South Africa: 


1) Eggs benedict with ham (at Westcliff in Johannesburg)
2) Eggs benedict in a slightly native style (at the Sabi Sabi Game Reserve)
3) Eggs benedict with crispy bacon (at the Mount Nelson in Cape Town)
4) Eggs benedict with smoked salmon (at the La Residence in Franschhoek).

I’d also had eggs benedict with a very deliciously sour sauce at Le Quartier Francais, a lovely Relais & Chateaux establishment we stayed at with a very famous restaurant attached to it, run by one of South Africa’s most creative chefs.

And that morning, at the Steenberg, the eggs benedict was also very good.

But that morning, on the Steenberg menu, we noticed something we’d never seen so far: a Cape Malay omelette. So of course we ordered that as well, and it came spicy with lots of vegetables, and in an open omelette style so that the bottom stayed dry and the top was moist.

The Steenberg’s delicious Cape Malay omelette

It was very good and a nice change from happy days and more happy days of eggs benedict.

So for my last proper breakfast in South Africa, I had my usual fruit plate to start, and then half an eggs benedict and half a Cape Malay omelette to end.

The awards won by La Colombe

Then for lunch we went to La Colombe, a nearby restaurant that is probably South Africa’s best-known restaurant. It was considered the best restaurant in the entire Africa and the Middle East for several years, but I haven’t really kept up to see where it’s ranked now.

The chef at its height of fame was Luke Dale Roberts, the very chef who went on to found the modern and cutting-edge restaurant called Test Kitchen in Cape Town, where we had a pretty fanastic 11-course meal just before coming to stay at the Steenberg in Constantia.

Click here to read about our 11-course dinner at Test Kitchen in Cape Town.

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Casual atmosphere of La Colombe

But even without its former very famous chef, we found the food at La Colombe was nevertheless excellent and very enjoyable.

We got there rather early so we were literally the first customers. This gave us an excuse to look around, and we were surprised at how casual the restaurant was, considering its global fame.

A SURE GUESS

Some of the famous people who’ve eaten at La Colombe

When we were ordering our lunch, the Boss said to me, while looking at the menu: “You’re having the oysters or the foie gras to start and then that Chalmar beef fillet as a main.”

He was again guessing what I would be ordering. Then he looked at me with his usual confidence about everything in his world and said: “Tell me I didn’t guess right.”

Yes, he was right, as usual. He knows what I like to eat and he even knows stupid things such as when I like more salt on my food. Sometimes, he doesn’t even say anything, and he just sprinkles more salt on my food because he thinks it’s going to be too bland for me.

And because the oysters hadn’t arrived yet when we began to order, I had the foie gras first. Midway through the meal, the oysters were delivered so I just had to have these as well, delicately poached in champagne. They were luscious.

This lunch is going to be written about as part of our Africa special in an upcoming issue of Travelife Magazine so I’m not going to dwell on the details, except to say that we had a couple of knock-out dishes in a lunch that consisted of two starters, two mains and two desserts — plus a complimentary starter given to us, maybe because we’d come early.

The after-dessert at La Colombe

THE END OF THE WORLD

Don’t miss a drive to the Cape of Good Hope if you find yourself in Cape Town. We’re so glad we didn’t.

From La Colombe, we headed straight to the Cape of Good Hope, which is about an hour’s drive from La Colombe via picturesque seaside towns and pretty amazing stark scenery.

We had a very nice car but it had the lousiest navigation system in the world. Fortunately, we never got lost on our journey to the end of the world.

Baboons were everywhere in the Cape of Good Hope. I took this from our car.

The weather wasn’t very good, but we’d made up our minds to go and see this last thing on our bucket list for our last day in South Africa.

On the left is the rough Atlantic Ocean, while on the right is the calmer Indian Ocean. You can only see a sliver of the Indian Ocean in this photo.

The Cape of Good Hope is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean, and we climbed all the way to the point where you can literally see the rough seas of the Atlantic Ocean force itself on the calmer Indian Ocean.

Miraculously, the sun shone just as we reached this very crucial point of the earth, and we saw the two oceans meet in great glory.

For a Travelife, it was certainly a must-do to see this point of the earth with our own eyes. And this is exactly where I want to end the story of this journey. At least for now.

The Steenberg

www.steenberghotel.com

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