Luke Dale-Roberts keeps his cool and opens two new Jozi kitchens

There are 430 dinner reservations before the Jozi Shortmarket Club opens. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

By Marie-Lais Emond

1 Oct 2021

Jozi diners are booking seats in anticipation of the launch of Luke Dale-Roberts’ new restaurant, The Shortmarket Club, at Oxford Parks. The Test Kitchen Carbon is waiting in the wings.

Oxford Parks is where it’s all happening and Ethos is already open. Luke Dale-Roberts has been consulting to Ethos, designing the new Ethos’ food, changing processes and taking the restaurant past its opening. That part is pretty much over now, with his chef from the Test Kitchen, Ken Phuduhudu, installed as Ethos’ chef. But now he has his own restaurants in which to devote his creative genius. There’s a very short outdoor but urban walk between all of them.

“The stars were aligned,” he smiles when he talks of the way these new developments have happened.

I say “his” own restaurants though Dale-Roberts is in a partnership with Heinz Rynners for all his new Jozi businesses. Heinz and Brad Cilliers had the beautiful Greenhouse exactly where The Shortmarket Club is soon to open. Rynners and Cilliers have reopened a bigger Greenhouse at 24 Central in Sandton with Carolina Rasenti as chef once more.

Shortmarket’s BBQ pork belly, coconut XO, coconut and lemongrass jus. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

I’m early for my appointment further down the Parks development, so I have a look beyond the red plastic tape at the building site scene of the old Greenhouse. It’s still all ashy, powdery rubble from where the Shortmarket phoenix will very soon metamorphose. The existing patio balcony is going to be a wonderful feature for Jozi punters who love being outdoors all seasons anyway, never mind Covid. On the inner avenue side, the already clubby looking brass doorknob entrance will probably remain, I reckon.

By now every interested person knows that Dale-Roberts has shut the Shortmarket Club in Cape Town and is closing The Test Kitchen in Cape Town this week.

Here he is in Jozi, T-shirted, chatting to a couple of the kitchen staff outside Ethos, where we planned to meet. We were going to have coffee here but there’s a crew shooting inside the bar so we wander down to where Cleavy’s and Double Shot stand next door to each other.

Dale-Roberts goes back to Ethos “to get a warm top” and reappears wearing a rather fetching jersey with lots of birds on it.

Luke Dale-Roberts in the fetching bird top. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

“When it comes to Test Kitchen’s closing day I know I’ll feel sad and upset.” He’s flying down to Cape Town in a couple of hours to do just that.

“My business life will now be in Joburg. It’s been a long time coming and it’s very exciting, a new beginning for me.”

We drink our coffees at health conscious Cleavy’s and not at Double Shot. I’m slightly surprised but Dale-Roberts doesn’t know the story of Double Shot, the place that engendered Jozi’s coffee culture, from Braamfontein days. Why should he? He’s been a Cape Town person till now.

We talk about the ways Jozi works in terms of eating out, as opposed to Cape Town. It is true that Joburg people do eat out. It’s a thing. Many restaurants have gone under during Covid’s darker days but many new ones are opening and many have survived. We, ourselves, are appreciative eaters in our own city and don’t need to rely on tourists as much up here.

Chef Taryn Smith, Jozi’s Shortmarket Club. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

It’s wonderful that we can welcome back our Jozi chefs, like Ken Phuduhudu, Taryn Smith and Tyrone Gentry, who have all worked for many years with Dale-Roberts at his Cape Town places. Chef Ken came back a short while ago but chefs Taryn and Tyrone will head up Dale-Roberts’ two new restaurants here.

“They are ready to fly now. It’s serendipitous.”

We talk about competition and Dale-Roberts is always for that “as long as it’s healthy energy”. I am put in mind of when he arranged for food awards, when we still had them, not to feature him so regularly in Cape Town and to look further afield. In Jozi we applauded that generosity and perspicacity.

He is generous. Especially with time and knowledge. Heinz Brynner has said Dale-Roberts has great generosity of spirit as well as other nice things like his being “humble, with zero ego”.

After he orders his scrambled eggs on toast, Dale-Roberts says how chuffed he is that the Jozi people with whom he’s been working and will work “are hungry for my knowledge”.

The Oxford Parks and Rosebank area is a very good place for his nest and nest eggs. It’s an exciting choice for now and into the future, judging by what’s still planned. This area is where the solid cash without the Sandton flash has landed and continues to land. A new wave of bank headquarters, insurance companies and accountancies have opened up here and even the Hilton Canopy is getting ready to do so.

I keep staring at the birds on Dale-Roberts’ chest and have to tell him what a lovely top it is.

Chef Taryn Smith’s cumin and carrot fish tartare, lime labneh, cumin roti. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

“Sandalene bought it for me. She buys all my clothes.” She’s also been designing interiors for these new restaurants. Sandalene Dale-Roberts was responsible for previous interiors and famously featured “The butterflies” as her husband calls them, a wall of framed, hand-burned “butterflies” at the Shortmarket Club that were created by artist Mark Rautenbach. “They’re making an appearance again,” promises Dale-Roberts of the new Shortmarket Club.

Sandalene’s TKK Fledgelings, the upliftment project that involves both Dale-Robertses, is moving address but not to Jozi. There, young people are taught by the best in cooking and hospitality. It operates its own restaurant and Luke Dale-Roberts will have his non-Jozi time to devote to training more people to fly.

They will continue to live in Cape Town though Luke Dale-Roberts will “spend one or we could even call it two weeks a month” in Joburg. They’ve just bought a house in Kommetjie where their son can skateboard to school and surf every day. “I couldn’t give him a better life. We can’t let that go.”

The Shortmarket Club will open right here in Rosebank in October and promises some old-world decadence and a menu that’s a combination of globalisation and what’s happening right here, right now. With chef Taryn Smith.

“Taryn’s designed the menu. I test everything she does.”

Crispy duck, shiitake broth, udon noodles, toasted sesame oil. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

We laugh about the notion and phrase “fine dining” but “the food is new classics. I hate overworked and overindulgent detail and so I hate it in décor. The idea is to be present, simple and classic. Non-pretentious. And it’s still about kicking back and enjoying a beautiful experience”.

There’ll be no reservations for the deck and Dale-Roberts says there are 430 reservations already for the restaurant. “All paid.” The in and outside together seat 90.

There are 430 dinner reservations before the Jozi Shortmarket Club opens. (Photo: Claire Gunn)

“And we’re coming out with Test at pretty much the same time. ” TGIFood has more about this. Suffice it to say for now that the Carbon in the name is an extension of the Dark part of the much lauded and awarded previous Test Kitchen.

Dale-Roberts disappears for a minute and I realise later he’s paid for my coffees inside. He has to fly but says, “Now I must go and roll some ravioli.” He walks back to Ethos in his bird top. DM/TGIFood

The Shortmarket Club will be at 1 Oxford Parks, 100 Oxford Road, Rosebank.

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here.

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