A Charleston Writer Finds Familiar Ground in Cape Town

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Adirect flight from Washington Dulles to Cape Town sounded too good to be true. But there it was, within my reach: A doable 14-ish hours and I’d be transported to this coastal cosmopolitan city about as far from my Charleston, South Carolina, home as I’d ever been. I’d long been entranced by jaw-dropping mountains-meet-coast photos and reports I’d heard about Cape Town’s sparkling culinary and art scene, but daunted by the distance. When I found the right flight option, I decided it was time to explore this similarly European-influenced port city.

Leaf Cocktail Garnish Bruce Tuck — FYN Cocktail, Image courtesy of Bruce Tuck

I wondered what parallels I might find, and what differences. With its rugged coast and dramatic geography dominated by towering Table Mountain, Cape Town counters Charleston’s trademark politeness with sheer power. Powerful waves, powerful vistas, powerfully bold colors and flavors, powerful design and art, powerful divisions. I wanted to feel all that, and more.

Within an hour of landing in Cape Town, I was seated at FYN restaurant—jet lag and topsy-turvy time zones be damned. FYN awakened all of my travel-weary senses. An art installation of 5,426 African beads a la Japanese abacus dangled from the ceiling, illuminated by a hypnotic, slowly morphing light show; it was as if I’d entered a moss-draped wonderland, only more glamorous. Jennifer Hugé, FYN’s exuberant beverage director, appeared with an impressively stocked sake trolley—a first for South Africa. Her knowledge was as free flowing as her pours, and wine pairings followed, complementing chef Peter Tempelhoff’s nine-course tasting menu, a palate parade through the country. The meal began with deep ocean fish and sea plants, then showcased “land plants” and African game and finished with “Fynbos Fire,” a wagyu course adorned with kapokbos (wild rosemary) and rooibos from the abundant fynbos (“fine bush”) that gives the restaurant its name. This biodiverse vegetation endemic to the Western Cape helped keep early humans alive, explains Tempelhoff, who encourages his team to forage from this abundance. “There’s a big pantry out there,” he says.

While I wasn’t familiar with the delicate fynbos plants and their bright, almost herbal flavors, I was familiar with Tempelhoff’s hyper-local, hyper-fresh approach. FYN felt like the South African cousin of Charleston’s FIG, another three-letter, all-caps, award-winning restaurant. FYN has landed repeatedly in the top 100 of the 50 World’s Best, and in 2023 was named the World’s Best Sustainable Restaurant. This mix of integrity, authenticity, and innovation warrants every accolade.

Tempelhoff sources fish from ABALOBI, South Africa’s first community-supported fishery—their Abundant Seafood equivalent—and uses responsibly harvested dune spinach, sea lettuce, and kelp. His flavors, however, cross borders and continents, with umami undertones and Japanese restraint that somehow harmonizes with South African boldness. I hadn’t expected to come to Cape Town to find Kyoto, but it was a lovely surprise, and a fitting entrée to this country where surprises abound.

Culinary Director Ashley Moss and Managing Director Peter Tempelehoff

The next morning, I departed Cape Town for the wine country near Stellenbosch, about 40 miles east. The drive was a stunning, startling mix, with the iconic profiles of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head drawing the eye upward as swaths of roadside shanty towns brought me back down to earth. Soon, however, the landscape turned to rolling hills and endless vineyards—the Tuscany of South Africa. As I pulled up to Delaire Graff Lodges and Spa, it was clear why this Relais & Châteaux standout has earned global awards. Designed by Keith Kirsten, the grounds blend some 350 indigenous plants and flowers with an exquisite sculpture and art collection, set amidst dreamy views of the Cape winelands and Simonsberg Mountain.

Inside, the Cape Dutch-inspired hotel lobby and “lodges” (luxurious suites, complete with living room, private terrace, and dipping pool) double as galleries for the museum-quality art collection of owner Laurence Graff, founder of Graff Diamonds, one of the world’s premier ethically sourced diamond suppliers. Graff’s passion for fine wine is behind Delaire Graff Estate, which he established within the Banghoek Valley’s mix of mountainous and maritime terroirs and north-facing vineyards to produce excellent chardonnay and Bordeaux grapes. “We were the first to use cab franc for rosé, processed with a gentle press in a sauv blanc style,” explains marketing director Damian Joubert-Winn. He poured their award-winning 2023 chardonnay for me—bright and dazzling, another gem.

An afternoon wine tasting segued into dinner, and yet another Japanese-influenced menu at Hōseki, where chef Virgil Kahn, a Nobu alum, served a transportive South Africa-meets-Asia omakase experience while one of Delaire’s four somms kept glasses filled. As I strolled through the gardens back to my room, slightly tipsy and dazzled by the starry diamonds in the dark sky, I felt like I was beginning to slip into a rhythm that Karen Blixen hinted at in Out of Africa, a percussion of astonishing beauty and awe. “When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music,” she wrote.

Yes, but I was also discovering just how different that sameness could be, location to location, especially on my next stop: Madikwe Game Reserve and Morukuru Family Lodge, northwest of Johannesburg.

South Africa Safari — Madikwe Game Reserve

Here amidst Madikwe’s endless grasslands and open woodlands, I found the South Africa I know through films and TV—the world of safaris and dusty Range Rovers and that honeyed late-afternoon light that you imagine has to be a cinematic flourish but turns out to be real. One of South Africa’s largest game reserves, Madikwe is home to the “Big Five,” but it’s quieter and more intimate than some of Africa’s better-known safari spots, and Morukuru Family Lodge, another Relais & Châteaux member, accentuates this. With only five suites, the Morukuru Farm House feels exclusive and homey, like your own chic outpost in the bush. A personal butler doted on us, and our game driver and guide were at the ready for predawn and late-afternoon game drives across the endless grassy plains.

We checked off all but the leopard on our Big Five quest, and saw only one other safari group on our outings. Much to my surprise, I found the birdlife as entrancing as the big game. The African hawk eagle, parrots, the Cape turtledove, the red-billed horn-bill, the giant kingfisher, and a striated heron. “It picks up twigs and drops them in to lure fish to the surface,” our guide explained, and I wondered if our herons back in South Carolina know this trick.

On the final evening, the Morukuru team cooked a traditional bush braai barbecue atop a ridge overlooking the vast gamelands. Somewhere below, the elephants and giraffes were clocking out for the day. The zebras were snuggling neck-to-rump in cozy striped pairs, and the rhinos were doing whatever rhinos do as a sublime sunset doused the land with amber and garnet hues. It was not unlike autumn sunsets across the marsh in the Lowcountry, when the horizon ignites in kaleidoscopic wonder. I was so far from home, but beneath this South African sky, inhaling smoky whiffs of barbecue, I felt at home, too.

That, I realized after a whirlwind tour through this country’s wild and varied terrain, is South Africa’s allure.