La Colombe… and why it is one of the world’s great restaurants.

May 07, 2022

La Colombe… and why it is one of the world’s great restaurants.

The Dove’s Nest

There are times when you eat at a restaurant and just know that you have experienced something very special and unique and unforgettable.

Some of the restaurants where I have felt that way are Eleven Madison, Atomix, Le Bernadin, Disfrutar, Den, Andre’s, Saison, The Ledbury, Clove Club and Gaggan.

I’m not saying that La Colombe is at the same level as the restaurants I just mentioned.

But it had the same sort of impact on me and I feel that this is a restaurant with the potential to be spoken of in the same breath in the not too distant future.

It’s strange because two days before going to La Colombe, I went to Fyn and ended up writing a piece about what separates a very good restaurant from a truly great one. At La Colombe, the chef James Gaag takes inspiration from the fantastic local ingredients and produce to create food that breaks away from genres and categorisation, food that is playful and imaginative and creative, cooked with a degree of technical perfection that is flawless. As as result, every dish fills you with wonder and the meal leaves you smiling and just a little bit awestruck.

The cooking style is clean, the flavours are fresh and light but bursting with flavour, you can taste every element of every dish and it all comes together so harmoniously at both a dish and a meal level that I really felt it was a work of genius. This is modern cooking at its very best, a chef who is inspired by his heritage, who is powered by his imagination to create a bridge between his heritage and the wider world, that connects the rooted food of South African farms to the global avant-grade of food, the way it is experienced in Tokyo and San Sebastián and New York.

Smoked tomato, aubergine, pine nut

I ate a wonderful tomato dish where the fresh local tomatoes were smoked with wood chips from old wine barrels and stuffed with an aubergine pate and pine nuts. The smokiness, the umami, the smoothness of the aubergine with the crunch of the pine nuts and the freshness of the tomato… it was a textural and sensory marvel.

Mandarin, Jivara, Pistacio

There was a mandarin dessert where the mandarin is made up of 8 separate segments that are painstakingly put together to try to recreate the actual fruit. The segments include Dark chocolate with mandarin and coconib, Mandarin mousse, Pistachio and praline, and Madarin compote. These four flavours are alternated, dipped multiple times in a bitter “pith” panna cotta and then sprayed with 3 different colours of cocoa butter and white chocolate to give the mandarin skin look.

Both these dishes reminded me a little of Heston Blumenthal’s famous meat fruit that he serves at Dinner in London. But having had the meat fruit, I can safely say that La Colombe’s version is miles better. They are much more casual and therefore much more modern dishes, where the chef highlights the things that inspire him…the flavour of the elements, their freshness, rather than just put out a technique driven visual reinterpretation of a heavy meat dish. The best chefs today wear their technique lightly, never letting the technique be the hero like in the days of molecular gastronomy, and James Gaag, who studied locally at Silwood kitchen and who has worked locally in South Africa for the last twelve years has somehow created dishes that are more modern, more global and simply more tasty than one of the world’s greatest chefs.

Tuna La Colombe

I loved how every dish had a sense of theatre, beauty and playfulness while never degenerating into gimmickry or kitsch. There was a tuna dish inspired by the canned tuna that we have all loved in our childhood. It came in a tinfish can and you weren’t told what’s in it so you end up discovering new elements in every spoonful. The Yellowfin tuna encounters avocado, cumin, coriander and leche de tigre… and suddenly a one-dimensional classic packaged product is transformed into something that is new and layered and complex but still retains its sense of simplicity, of nostalgia, of fun.

Petit poussin, Langoustine, miso corn

There is also a wonderful understanding and mastery of texture as well as contrast. The langoustine came with a crispy, crunchy potato wafer that complemented the smoothness of the corn and the sweetness of the langoustine. The passion fruit in the prawn and coconut course was charred in a Yakitori grill using Namibian hardwood to bring a decidedly more grown up, robust, almost rustic flavour to a very Asian inspired dish.

Silvermist honey

And finally, the sheer visual beauty of the dishes. The egg amuse bouche was a juice that came served in ceramic eggs placed in a nest to introduce the idea of theatre as well as the name La Colombe (Dove in French). Every single dish was beautifully, almost artistically presented, none more so than the unforgettable three layered “honey” dessert that served as the finale of our meal. There was a Honeybush bonbon that looked like a bee, enclosed in a small meringue bee hive made of passion fruit and lavender, and finally an eclair with rooibos and honey.The inspiration for the dish was the fantastic honey and honey products you get locally in the Western Cape.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is a travesty for La Colombe to be ranked in the 80s in San Pellegrino’s list of the world’s Top 100 restaurants. I can name at least ten restaurants in the top 50 that La Colombe blows out of the water. I know that it’s hard for restaurants in places like South Africa or India to get the global attention that you can get in Europe or the USA or East Asia. Most of the voters and organisations behind these awards don’t end up going to places that aren’t big global centres of commerce or tourism. They also suffer from a lack of access to the media and PR machinery that is at the disposal of restaurants in these bigger centres.

Which is why I felt the need to really shine a spotlight on the brilliance of La Colombe.

I love South Africa. From the wildlife to the culture, the nature and the diversity, the history and the wine and adventure. It really is a magical country, a land of endless enchantment. But today I have to say that a meal at La Colombe is one of the greatest experiences South Africa has to offer. If you happen to visit Cape Town, take the time off to eat a meal there. It is one of the best creative expressions of South Africa you will ever encounter.

We ate: