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The mystery and suspense of the phenomenon called La Colombe

Rhubarb and Rose. Yet more gems of texture and sweet flavour are hidden below the edible rose, another Gaag signature dish. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

By Tony Jackman

26 Jul 2024

There is theatre here. Drama and intrigue, suspense, and even mystery. There are secrets and, midway, a subterranean surprise. But above all, there is delectable food. So, despite all the smoke and mirrors, La Colombe does what a restaurant is supposed to do best: cook, and deliver, fabulous food.

It’s a wintry day in the Cape Peninsula and, 28 years after the original restaurant opened at Constantia Uitsig just down the road, I step foot inside the world-famous current iteration. The object: to understand why this phenomenon makes waves that lap up on shores far, far away.

Despite all the theatre, La Colombe, by which I mean the version of the restaurant that is now at Silvermist, where you feel you are far from any city, let alone the one only a half-hour drive away, does what any great restaurant must do: deliver exquisite food to your table. That, once you remove any frippery or spectacle, is the minimum that is required. And if it is not there, and not very fine, any theatre becomes ridiculous and obsolete.

It really is all that is required, by any reasonable person. Yet the owners and thinkers behind what we can now think of as the La Colombe mindset, or its raison d’etre, have made their choice, and that choice is to provide high-class food and bright, bold entertainment in the same moment.

A contraption that could have escaped from a steampunk movie

Did Luddites make this otherworldly contraption? Sommelier Michelle Erasmus adds several dramatic touches to the day’s proceedings, including one in what she calls ‘my office’. Here she pours Luddite Shiraz 2013 to pair with a Denver cut of Karoo Wagyu, with celeriac and black winter truffle from the Cederberg. (Photos: Tony Jackman

Everywhere in the room, at any time, there is something theatrical happening, and not only at one table. Eyes at one table glance at a showpiece happening at another, and wonder, is that coming to us next? Or is that part of another menu? A contraption that could have escaped from a steampunk movie is wheeled past. A wine bottle far greater than any mere methuselah slowly drips its contents into a glass at the next table. Midway through their meal, a couple disappears wide-eyed down mysterious stairs to a subterranean world where a strange ceremony is about to take place. Will they ever be seen again? What will we tell their children? ?

On that sunny day in 1996 when we were seated for the first service ever at the original La Colombe at Constantia Uitsig, I couldn’t have imagined that, nearly three decades later, I would be at another La Colombe only kilometres away, and that it would be considered the 49th-best restaurant on the planet. But why?

You swoon, you sigh, if not actually die

The theatre begins when your places are set with a dove’s nest; soon afterwards, it becomes the vessel on which the first of many delicious things is served. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

A lengthy lunch (arrived at 12pm, caught an Uber at 5) provided a number of answers. The second is that this is not the place for a quiet tête-a-tête. You are virtually a part of the show, a bit player in a script. So much attention is lavished on you that you might well be on stage.

But the first, and the most inescapable answer, is that La Colombe does things exactly as the World’s 100 Best Restaurants requires them to do, and the following is my understanding of what certainly seem to be the marks of every world restaurant on that list:

There must be theatre, spectacle, surprises, both in the food and in the service and presentation; and you must be amazed. And not only when you get the bill;

There must be food so exquisite that you swoon, you sigh, if not actually die. (Although if one did die one imagines there might be applause from other tables – “Gosh, look at that! I’ll bet Tempelhoff and JAN haven’t thought of that!”);

There must be many courses, each no less enticing than the last;

Service must beguile and bewitch;

Service staff must treat you as if you were the most important customer they have ever had. (You’re not. But go with it.);

There must be many reasons that you believe you got your money’s worth. And the bill will be jaw-dropping. Consider that a table of four with wine pairings will not be leaving less than R12k lighter. And that does not include water, sundries, or a tip. (Oh and by the time you’ve got that far, you might well think, £¥€# it – let’s order Cognac and cigars and regret it in the morning.); and

There is no room for error. At these prices, perfection is not merely a desire. It is unthinkable not to get everything precisely right.

Why would any sane person put themselves through this hell in order to achieve world status? It’s clear that they get a heady kick out of it, and the staff (or some of them) benefit in one huge way: being taken overseas once a year to dine at the eateries of their international contemporaries. It seems extravagant at first sight, and is, but when you think about it, it is an investment in their present and their future.

And the result of this kind of achievement – ranking in the world’s top 50, let alone top 100 – has international tourists arriving every day and every night. Just randomly at our adjacent table, for lunch, was a couple from Colombia who had heard all about La Colombe and made a beeline for it.

Is it for locals too? Well, of course it is. As long as you’re in an earnings bracket as heady as the cuisine, or are prepared to save up for a year.

A trolley of delights

Two of the day’s showcases: Aaron Farquhar, who in his other life manages both La Colombe and Pier at the Waterfront, presents the charcuterie course; there is finesse and detail everywhere. Right, at the start of the meal you are taken through all of the main items on the menu. Much of it made its way to our plates. Including some of that glorious Cederberg truffle. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

Which brings us to what any good restaurant is all about: what is on the plate. And the first thing we see on the table.

A dove’s nest.

It’s there for the eyes to savour, a table decoration with meaning; a pointer to what is coming. After a trolley presentation displaying almost everything we are to eat during the afternoon, the nest will be put to use as the first morsels are, well, nestled in it. I never use that maddeningly overemployed word; this is the only time in at least 30 years that I have been served anything that is actually nestled in anything. It resembles a broken eggshell topped with a log of beautiful morsels. An egg custard in the Japanese style and the crunchy bridge atop it celebrate mushrooms and Jerusalem artichokes with an XO umami hit.

It’s the kickoff to the long game. Nothing will have less impact on the palate from this morsel on. Everything here is as beautiful as you would hope it to taste. And that, given La Colombe’s status, fame and pricing, is precisely what you would expect. Any criticism could only be petty.

Cape Town’s most impressive beard wheels up a trolley of delights. There is a smiling man somewhere behind the beard. I call him Beardy McBeard and he doesn’t seem to mind. It’s the charcuterie course. On the trolley (this is going to take a while, it’s the most complex and varied course) are a range of cured meats (and fish in one instance).

There’s Wagyu beef biltong from the Denver cut, which is boneless short rib, one of the most delicious of beef cuts (biltong is most often made with silverside). It truly is biltong on another level (another phrase I never use; they fit where they fit). It’s flavoured, the chef’s notes tell me later, with coriander, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Straight off the Karoo braai, that, but La Colombe style.

There’s a chorizo of wild boar from the Langkloof near George, easily the most delicious chorizo I can think of. There’s divine KZN Pekin duck ham; Three Streams trout gravlax with a verbena-citrus cure, herby and tangy in equal measure, and, at the far end, a vegan option. A sort-of chorizo is made of chickpeas and lentils, and smoked. It has a texture much like chorizo, sort of. I imagine that if I were vegan, Dionysus forbid, I would have been happy with it. In reality, despite its competence it demonstrated exactly why a nonvegan diet is so much more enticing.

Each protein is paired with what they call “spreads”. The Wagyu biltong is with what looks like a mushroom but is a fine pâté composed of mushroom and a soubise of truffled smoked onion, not a sauce, as a soubise usually is, but has been set softly to deliver a cool thrill to the palate. The mushroom cap has a sherry glaze. A dark-red chilli much like a red jalapeño turns out to be pâté of Calabrian nduja sausage coated with a smoked tomato glaze.

A duck liver parfait has a naartjie glaze and is very much like Heston Blumenthal’s famous “meat fruit”, which I had at his Knightsbridge restaurant. It’s been 12 years, but my palate memory struggles to tell the difference. I didn’t ask chef James Gaag if this was intentional, or whether he regarded it as quite different. Perhaps, alongside one another, distinctions might be clear. Adored both, so.

The smoked trout pâté looks like a green apple, made of cream cheese, cornichons (little gherkins), capers, onion and garlic. It’s not wildly remarkable and probably the only thing on the menu we might make at home (but for the apple finish), but a perfect fit. Accompanying the vegan “sausage” was what appeared to be a stewed apple, made of roasted garlic hummus, with a Cape Malay glaze. Lentil, hummus, chickpeas; familiar terrain for a vegan. I wonder what they make of it.

No one else knows the recipe

The Big Guns arrive in a small sealed tuna can, ring pull and all (see main photo). This is James Gaag’s signature dish, Tuna “La Colombe”, which means it is the dish he is most proud of, if it’s possible to like anything here more than anything else. It comes with a challenge: to identify the ingredient in the Chef’s Secret Sauce. Mystery pervades. No one else, even in the kitchen, knows the recipe. Only Chef James.

It is clear, at one look and then one taste, that it contains many things. We make a few stabs; we don’t come close. Once we’ve had a go, we’re put out of our mystery, not by being told the ingredients, but by a series of “no… erm, no’s” when we try. “We”, I forgot to mention, being the Sunday Times’ Hilary Biller and I, it having been her idea that we should go, since we were both in Cape Town for another food event.

James explained after the event: “The tuna can was the first dish we put on the menu when we moved from our previous venue, Constantia Uitsig. It was the first time we used new and different serving ware and it’s grown from there. Our current version is served with the chef’s secret sauce. It contains between 20 and 25 ingredients that change all the time.” And it is made fresh, every time.

Perhaps ironically, the dish could almost be a tribute to La Colombe’s founder, Franck Dangereux, with his playful and colourful way with fish, bright ingredients and peaky flavours.

What is inside the tin is breathtaking on the palate. Gaag is mad about fishing and has what he calls “my boats”. It felt inappropriate to ask how many so I refrained. But his eyes light up when he talks about his fishing, so it is no surprise that the next two courses are from the sea.

A dish that speaks the chef’s name

Chef James Gaag in his kitchen domain, left, and one of the finest dishes to come out of his kitchen, centred on Namibian red crab. The crunchiest tart base imaginable, and full of little wonders, just as you find tiny delights in a clear rock pool. An extraordinary dish that deserves to become a menu staple. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

The buckwheat crab tart is an extraordinary thing. It’s hard to puzzle it out at first. A strange base made of circles of little concave “dishes”, if you like; each containing little morsels (Thai mousse, Madagascan caviar, confit lemon, kumquat), interspersed with tiny squares of seared gamefish. Here, there and everywhere are slivers of Namibian red crab, as if in hiding from the man in the big boat. In fact, James encountered red crab on a trip to Namibia in 2023 and determined to bring it home. Be sure to choose a menu that includes this. It’s a dish that speaks the chef’s name.

Cape Coastline is the apt name for what follows. That’s False Bay, on a plate, a tribute to chef James Gaag’s passion for deep sea fishing, right there. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

Cape Coastline is the apt name for what follows. The plate tells the story even before you blink and sigh at the realisation that you’re looking at False Bay. Handcrafted plates are surrounded by the mountains that wrap around the bay, from Cape Point to Cape Hangklip, with the Cape Flats somewhere beyond your lunch. There does not appear to be a lot of fish on the plate, yet there is snoek, kingklip, crayfish, chokka, octopus and mussels, and I speared each in turn as I waded into the bay.

“It’s where (German-born chef James) grew up and spends all of his free time,” post-prandial notes tell me. “It’s a huge part of his fondest memories. Catching kingklip 40 miles offshore or snoek in Buffels Bay, chokka in Simon’s Town and diving for crayfish or mussels at Cape Point.”

All of this is adding up to something: that this is Chef James’s kitchen, top to bottom, left to right, and that the La Colombe we have now belongs, in essence, to him as much as the original belonged to Franck Dangereux. Dots, connected, again.

James Gaag’s taste for enchantment

Even the glassware is part of the theatre. Sommelier Michelle Erasmus presents the Ken Forrester ‘The FMC’ Chenin Blanc 2017 in a Zalto Gravitas Burgundy glass; and A.A. Badenhorst ‘Raaigras’ Grenache 2020, right, with chef James Gaag’s Cape Coastline seafood dish. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

It’s time to descend to the mysteries below. Cellphones are placed in a box and removed. We’re led down narrowing, darkening stairs. In a subterranean world that I’m not going to over-describe, so as not to spoil your pleasure when you go down there, one of the most impressive sommeliers I have yet encountered is going to take us through an utterly magical tasting. Let’s leave it right there, out of respect for Gaag’s taste for enchantment. (But I have to say one thing: the very last flavour down there, the very last element, a compelling amalgam of one thing with another, was arguably the taste of a day of fine tastes.)

Back in daylight, many green citrus leaves almost entirely hide the bright-orange domes lurking beneath. It’s the palate cleanser, frozen balls of mandarin sorbet dipped in cocoa butter. I could have eaten a bowl of them.

To accompany the main course of Wagyu Denver cheek “with marbling of 8 to 9 plus” (beef doesn’t get more tender), sommelier Michelle Erasmus wheels a giant contraption between the tables and to us. It’s the Wine Crane, she tells us, and it was made in Austria. It’s the showpiece not quite to match that magical 10 minutes downstairs, but it comes close. Michelle delivers this piece of wine theatre with aplomb, and her wine choices, throughout, have been matchless; from the Steenberg Magna Carta 2021 and the Ken Forrester “the FMC” Chenin Blanc 2017 to the A.A. Badenhorst Raaigras Grenache 2020 to the Luddite Shiraz 2013 now being poured ever so slowly from this monolith of a bottle.

I haven’t mentioned truffle yet but there have been hints here and there and here they are the delightful punctuation to the meal. Completing a richly flavoured, robust yet refined dish are black winter truffle from the Cederberg, and celeriac, but not least an intensely riveting sauce. Taste can be theatre too.

By now you’ve given in to Dionysus

Cheese and Honey. Unbelievably amazing. Gobsmacking. Layer upon layer of delicious things. Even crunchy honeycomb as nature (and bees) made it. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

Cheese and Honey, says the menu. Not a lump of cheese and a drizzle of honey. Oh no. A white ceramic beehive honeypot arrives, with each layer being lifted off in turn. If your appetite had been receding at this late point in the lavish repast, it has suddenly returned. A pair of walnuts, or are they, are like nutty chocolates. A piece of honeycomb to crunch and have honey dripping down your lip. Stout Willis from Langbaken near Williston, candied walnuts, apple chutney, raclette, smoked Stanford Catalan, poached quince and quince butter, baked Camembert, confit garlic, all of these are among the layers to be lifted.

By now you’ve given in to Dionysus. You plod on, because the flavours and textures cannot be denied. You wonder: is this the ideal way to die? One day, if Dionysus or Annapurna or, I don’t know, Demeter is kind, this could be the way one chooses to meet The End.

Rhubarb and Rose. Yet more gems of texture and sweet flavour are hidden below the edible rose, another Gaag signature dish. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

But wait, it’s not over yet. Chef James would have you eat another signature dish, his Rhubarb and Rose, with Iranian pistachios, the tiniest green gems you ever saw. An unfurling cerise rose, modest in size, yet hiding red velvet cake, coconut panna cotta, pistachio mousse; rose cream; rhubarb mousse and butter as well as poached; candied pistachios, Turkish delight… how do they get all that into there? I don’t know, and was happy just to enjoy it.

By now I was inwardly begging them not to bring any more, and I think I got away with it, because we could not delay any further in ordering our Ubers. One more bite and it could have been a different kind of vehicle collecting me. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

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