At the Plettenberg, a cheese soufflé worth writing about

The parfait with, to the rear, the crème brûlée, somewhat disguised. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

28 Mar 2025

I found myself at The Plettenberg, the late Liz McGrath’s beloved hotel in the famous Garden Route town, for the first time in more than 10 years. Being there took me back, and I decided to drop her a line about it.

Good morning Mrs M,

It’s 5.15am in Durbanville and I’ve been up since 4.30am. I’m on a mission, you see, but I can’t tell you more about it this week because it’s still in progress. I’ll be writing about that next week, but right now I’m writing about something close to your heart: The Plettenberg, your beautiful hotel where we stayed last week for the first time in years. For the first time since you left us, in fact.

Being back at The Plettenberg was bittersweet — happy because it’s still beautiful, if somewhat changed since your time, and sad because of course you weren’t there. But I thought of you by the minute, almost as if you were somewhere around, sitting elegantly in a wicker chair, reading a newspaper with a cup of tea on the table before you.

It’s 2025 now, and in only a few weeks I will turn 70. I know you couldn’t quite picture me another decade older; I was in my late 50s the last time I saw you, in the street outside the Lord Milder Hotel in Matjiesfontein. You’d pulled up in the passenger seat of a little white car having been driven from Cape Town, bringing cushions and lamps and whatnot for your redecorating of the bedrooms and reception spaces. You had just completed renovating every bathroom of the old hotel in black and white, so elegant, and they’re all still intact today. I think it might have been circa 2014, because David Rawdon had died in 2013 and he was already gone.

You wound down the car window, clutched my arm, and said, “Tony, this is keeping me alive!”

Well. For a while, at least. It’s 10 years and two months now since you left us all in January 2015. And last week was the first time I’d been back to The Plettenberg; I haven’t been back to the Marine since, or the Cellars-Hohenort. They’re on the cards, and I’ll write again. But first, your original “Lookout” overlooking the ocean. Oh, I hear you ask and I see your frown: “But why haven’t you been back in all that time, Tony?”

The Plettenberg at sunset, before dinner. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Ah. This may be hard to believe, but the world has changed in those 10 years. There are “influencers” everywhere now, people with “social media numbers” which of course is something that real journalists don’t pursue; we’re judged by what we write, not how many “clicks” or “likes” we get on pictures of food we put on our social media accounts. We did have social media back then, but now it’s rampant, everywhere, pervasive and unavoidable. Oh and The Cape Times today. You wouldn’t want to see it, ma’am.

Yes, I am still writing, and yes, I often remember you now when a column I’ve written has been published, especially if it’s one of which I think, “Liz would have liked this one and would have rung me up to say so.”

Or — sorry — “Mrs M” would have called me or sent a note. Even today, staff at the Plettenberg refer to “Mrs M”, I’m happy to say. And your name is still on the “Liz McGrath Collection”, as it should be, and I still haven’t met any of your children (well, they’re hardly children but you know what I mean), but it would seem that everything is swimming along nicely, which I know would please you.

The Plettenberg. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

An astute marketing person invited me to the old place, as she thought it was high time I went back. But when I stepped inside (to find a new colour scheme, and I sense your eyebrows prickling even as I write that) I thought to myself that it almost seems as though Mrs M has dispatched me to check up on things for her. Which I hereby do, if you don’t mind, ma’am.

Well. It’s all very blue and white, with accents of green. It’s only recently been redecorated, I was told, and even on hearing that I thought, “Oh dear” and pictured your face before me.

But don’t worry, it has all the elegance you appreciated (is demanded too strong a word?). Everything is tasteful, nothing is overstated. Oh: It’s not chintzy at all. Hmmm. I’m not sure how it would go down, to be honest. There are no warm colours, no pretty pink and peach florals. I cannot and will not try to speak for you, as I cannot know how much, if at all, you would have approved of this new look, but I can assure you that it has been done well and it really does suit the place with its aspects of blue-green sea and azure sky. If you had been deposited inside, without knowing where it was, you would think, “we must be near the sea”.

Anyway, at one stage it seemed my inability to share my “social media numbers” precluded me from a media visit to The Plettenberg, but things have been put to rights, and you may be pleased to know that Ainsley Williams, who in another era used to welcome us to the Cellars, in the office behind reception, is the GM there now. She’s pure class, everything you would expect. Genuinely friendly and warm, engaging, efficient, never pandering but always on point. I doubt you’d recognise anybody else but somebody is keeping standards up. Another manager, a Mr Ravi Kumar, is a perfect fit too.

The lounge of our villa. I didn’t ask the rate, for health reasons. Much blue and white, as mentioned ma’am. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

They put us in a villa. An upgrade. It’s what the Irish would call The Business. So beautifully done, lots of white, even the floors are painted white. I don’t know if you owned it in your day, but it’s right behind the hotel on the corner. There are two, apparently. Private heated pool and all. We were given a brief tour of everything, the annex across the road too with that long, narrow ocean-facing strip pool. Continental visitors were floating in it; your traditional clientele appears to be intact. There are still five stars on a plaque near the front door.

I can’t say one hears much about the cuisine at the Greenhouse in Constantia any more, by the way; I don’t know what’s happening there. But I’ll find out in due course. I remember when you appointed Peter Tempelhoff at the Greenhouse, and we started seeing him at the annual awards ceremonies. (Oh, I must write again about those.) He’s soared in the intervening years, Peter that is; his FYN restaurant in central Cape Town is now a high flyer in the wider world. He’s gone into ramen too (it’s become a big thing) and has his Ramenhead eatery specialising in it at street level below FYN, near Parliament. And a second branch at the TimeOut market at the Waterfront. Yes, we have one of those now.

Peter Tempelhoff at FYN. A few years older. Still a mensch. (Photo: Bruce Tuck)

He is hugely influenced by his explorations of Japanese cuisine, techniques and ingredients, and while I do wish people at his level would pay more attention to our local ingredients and try to really MAKE something of Cape cuisine, his extraordinary passion for his chosen route cannot be faulted, nor should it be. Cape Town is more of a world city than ever, anyway, so this isn’t even a mere quibble, only a remark on facts.

But, yes, I do wish that somebody, somewhere, would please remember that we are in Cape Town and we do have our own food traditions. Mace, anybody? Dried naartjie peel? Ah well. Me and my old bugbears.

The interior of Amelia’s. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The restaurant at the Plettenberg is called Amelia’s, and I hadn’t known that it was your own second name but they tell me it is. Thinking about it now, I think it was called Amelia’s back then; I’d forgotten. It’s bigger than before, extended to the exterior on the ocean side. The chef is Ewald Schulenberg, who I first encountered at the Drostdy in Graaff-Reinet, so oddly there is a link back to David Rawdon both there and at the Lord Milner, and the Marine, coincidental but of interest to those of us who can join the dots.

Oh, Michael Oliver has also left us by the way. And Peter Veldsman. I’ve become the old guard, no longer the kid looking up to them all.

The bar next door to Amelia’s has had a revamp too — well, everything has. There were crunchy, cheery snacks of sweet potato and butternut and goat’s cheese. I ordered a bouillabaisse starter of beautiful intensity after an amuse bouche of smoked salmon and peppadew mousse on lavash toast (I’m still not a fan of these tartly sweet little pickled peppers which are neither quite one thing nor the other) but I did enjoy it.

A Thai curry, but I asked myself why. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

But then! This you would have adored, ma’am: a soufflé of Dalewood Fromage’s lovely nutty Huguenot cheese that demonstrated that this chef deserves his place in one of your kitchens. Sublimely light, airy, deeply satisfying in flavour and texture. The perfect soufflé. The kind of dish that should never leave a menu. “Pillowy,” I wrote. And “divine cheese sauce”. I got so excited that I photographed it and sent it to Petrina Visser at Dalewood, saying, “Look!” She thought I’d made it myself. I wish.

I made a note: “Something good is happening in this kitchen. Stocks and reductions are being made with care and love.”

I chose a Thai seafood curry and, when I say I regretted it, it was just a Thai dish, though a tad too restrained and polite, nothing wrong with that but the Thai thing on our menus has gone on for more than three decades now, the novelty’s over, leave that to the specialist Thai eateries and put something local on our other menus. Please. Yes, we know you went to Thailand, yes we know their cuisine is delightful, but for goodness sake. Look around you. (Not you, ma’am. You know what I mean.)

The Dalewood Fromage Huguenot soufflé, a work of culinary art. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

You may remember that I wrote about Thai food for The Cape Times before even Wangthai and Sukhothai, the city’s first Thai restaurants, opened on the Foreshore and in Gardens, after I’d eaten Thai for the first time in Soho, London. And now look. Oh and there was pink sushi ginger in the Thai curry. And slices of courgette (I hear you: “What!”). And little bits of baby corn, and green pepper, and no basil that I could identify. But there was coriander. In fact it’s getting further and further away from Thai with every word.

There was the oddest crème brûlée I’ve seen in a while. It was covered in biscuits and sorbet and berries and little green leaves but there was a decent crunchy brûlée topping underneath them, when you could find it. Now what might the point be of that? Pretty I suppose. But isn’t the visibility of that beautiful golden caramel crunch just what you want to see, admire, and then break into? There could have been anything beneath those pretty things on top, but I’m still shaking my head asking why, why, why. Sorry ma’am.

The parfait with, to the rear, the crème brûlée, somewhat disguised. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

There was a frozen espresso parfait too, and a parfait did always suit your menus; accompanied by a dark chocolate crumble, a brandy snap tuile and candied walnuts. Perfectly pleasant.

But if it’s a soufflé that best measures a chef (and it could be argued), this one’s a keeper. You might want to have a word about the Thai thing though, and that overdressed brûlée.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little letter, Mrs M. I hope you don’t think me forward. I still think of you as my greatest fan, ma’am, now decades after we first met. You were always kind to me, encouraging me in my early food writing when I was in my 30s, and staying loyal to me time and time again until I last saw you only months before you left us in January 2015.

Dinners at the Greenhouse, lunches in the Conservatory. I picture you on a sofa at the Cellars-Hohenort, Andrew Brown photographing you; it’s an image I’ve seen again and again over the years. I see you at the Marine with the ocean visible through the windows, white blouse, a broach, trim skirt and smart buttoned jacket. And then that morning at Matjiesfontein...

And I miss you, really miss you, dear Mrs M. DM

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