Best Restaurant in the World found in South Africa
The World Restaurant Awards, where the best chefs and restaurants in the world compete, took place in Paris recently. Among the judges for the award were Rene Redzepi, Danish chef and co-owner of the two Michelin star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen; cookbook king Yotam Ottolengi; and Claire Smith, the first woman to receive and retain three Michelin stars in Britain- according to the portal dailymaverick.co.za.
The judges were expected to choose a winner from the pick of Europe’s trendiest restaurants. To the surprise of many, the award went to the small and somewhat unknown Wolfgat in Paternoster, in the Western Cape.
The restaurant opened in 2017 in a 130-year-old beach house. Its chef is Kobus van der Merwe, a 38 year old who mainly uses fish and seafood caught fresh from the Atlantic Ocean in his dishes.
He also makes his own bread and butter. He calls his signature dish ‘seaweed’, made by cooking fish with a special recipe which combines pancakes, mussels and vegetables.
The restaurant’s seven-course tasting menu costs around 53 Euros- a steal when compared to a similarly fancy restaurant in France. Van der Merwe, a former food blogger, said that in addition to using the finest local spices, his cooking philosophy is to “influence products as little as possible and keep them clean, raw and unprocessed.”