4Roomed The Restaurant – a restaurant in South Africa’s Khayelitsha township in Cape Town – has been named as one of the world’s best restaurants of 2019, writes Jenni Baxter in the SA people news.
The list was compiled for the first time ever in a partnership between two prestigious global magazines – Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure.
It includes 30 restaurants from around the world… and was curated by one award-winning writer Besha Rodell who travelled anonymously to 81 restaurants in 24 countries to find the best of the best, based on recommendations from a panel of worldwide experts.
4Roomed The Restaurant honours South African taste and deliver an authentic African experience
Rodell says while some of the wonderful wineries and restaurants in Cape Town can lead you to believe you’re in California or France, “Cape Town is not in America or Europe. It’s in Africa. 4Roomed The Restaurant makes no secret of that fact—what’s celebrated here is the food and culture of Africa, and South Africa in particular.”
The restaurant – popular with tourists and locals – is named after the four-roomed house that its chef Abigail Mbalo-Mokoena grew up in.
Mbalo-Mokoena is known to South Africans for her stint as a contestant on ‘MasterChef South Africa’, where she was eliminated because of burnt sugar. (Today she often serves a component of burnt sugar in her dessert dishes as a playful nod to that!)
Rodell says the restaurant’s eight-course shareable feast (which includes pap, chicken with fennel, umngqusho and more) is fantastic and incredible value at just $18.
“I ate many good meals in and around Cape Town. But 4Roomed The Restaurant is unique- it’s an experience I could not have had anywhere else,” she says.
What Rodell loved most about both restaurants selected in SA (4Roomed The Restaurant and Le Wine Chambre in Johanneburg) was that they honour South African taste and deliver an authentic African experience.
World’s Best Restaurants 2019 List
Betha Rodell is the New York Time’s Australia dining critic. Her quest to find the best restaurants in the world took her to six continents over four months. She stayed in 37 hotels, spent 279 hours in the air, and traveled more than 100,000 miles!
Africa and Middle East Best Restaurants
4Roomed The Restaurant, Cape Town, South Africa
El Soussi, Beirut, Lebanon
Le Wine Chambre, Johannesburg, South Africa
The Ruined Garden, Fez, Morocco
For the full list of World’s Best Restaurants 2019 and article by Jenni Baxter in the SA people news click here
Abigail Mbalo-Mokoena
Abigail Mbalo-Mokoena is the Curator of the Restaurant, Cafes & Nightlife Route on the Khayelitsha Map
Founder and Creative Director of 4Roomed eKasi Culture, is a Dental Technologist by profession. After participating in MasterChef SA, she swapped her lab coat for an apron to follow her passion for food, art, and home décor. This saw this birth of her company 4Roomed eKasi Culture.
Abigail is making it her mission to get Khayelitsha and other townships on the tourism map in a bid to improve the socio-economic challenges facing residents, while preaching the benefits of traditional foods with a healthier twist though the company’s CSR project on backyard gardening.
