24 Hrs Dining at The One&Only Hotel

From the minute you enter the doors of the One&Only Hotel in Cape Town, you realise two things. One. You will be eating a lot. Two. You will still find space for more.

Besides the complimentary treats in your hotel room and the tidbits in corners like the Spa relaxation room, there’s the decadent Afternoon Tea as well as four superb restaurants on site. I spent a night with a friend and we wined and dined at three.

What’s On Offer

• Japanese Nobu – Read the review below
• Local flavoured Reuben’s – Read the review below
• Isola – This more casual, contemporary restaurant next to the pool on the island offers island and classic Italian cuisine, including wood-fired pizza, seafood and local game. The One&Only is the only city centre hotel set on a private island.
• Vista Bar & Lounge – We enjoyed sundowners and Afternoon Tea here in the centre of the hotel lobby with panoramic views of Table Mountain through floor-to-ceiling glass.

The One&Only Hotel in Cape Town is on a private quay in the famous V&A Waterfront, which is a working harbour and marina in Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain. Watch our video of the V&A Waterfront here.

Nobu – Turning Japanese

Madonna has been quoted saying, “You can tell how much fun a city will be if Nobu has a restaurant in it.” Nobu touts itself as “the world’s most recognised Japanese restaurant, known for its innovative new style cuisine paired with a hip crowd and celebrity following”.

And they’re not blowing smoke. P Diddy, Paris Hilton and Justin Timberlake are big fans and Robert de Niro is even one of the partners in the New York Nobu.

Nobu, from Japanese master-chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, is the first of its kind in Africa. If you find yourself in Cape Town, it’d be a travesty not to book a table here.

It was a Thursday evening and we were greeted at Nobu by a row of male models and a talent scout sitting at the upstairs bar; not people you really want to sit near to when the only thing on your mind is chopsticking as much into your mouth as possible. So we took a table in the downstairs area of the two-storey restaurant, near the sushi bar.

The restaurant’s high ceiling gives it a roomy feel, but the decor is not my style. It’s dark, adding intimacy to the atmosphere but you expect Count Dracula to fly out of the woodwork. The giant orange lights on the ceiling look like scales on a dinosaur’s back. Kitsch even in prehistoric times. Luckily, the food is amazing and the service good.

Drinks

The way to start a Japanese dinner is with Sake. We sipped on a Japanese Margarita (Chili Infused Sake, Takara Shochu, Cointreau, lime juice and honey syrup) and a Saketini (Grey Goose & Hokusetsu Sake, Takara Plum Wine, Cointreau & cranberry juice), followed by Nobu Mojitos (Utkins White Organic Rum, Grand Marnier, lime juice, mint and gomme).

The world starts to get hazy after just one of these drinks. But a beautiful hazy, a let’s-strip-and-run-into-the-moat sort of hazy. There are also several wines on offer, by the bottle or glass. Be sure to eat up.

Food

We ordered the Bento Box, a three course laquered black box with small portions of various dishes in separate compartments. While naive to its wonders at first, I’m fully sold on the Bento now. It’s a unique experience – sitting with friends, sharing different dishes together. It’s unifying and makes for a great dining experience. Unless you’re sharing with someone like me who finishes the chicken teriyaki before anyone else can have a stab and leaves only the, well, leaves.

The Winter Bento Box includes tuna sashimi salad, assorted sushi roll, Nobu sashimi jalapeno, white fish tempura, nasu miso and chicken teriyaki. You can watch the chefs creating the dishes by the sushi bar and pull up a chair and eat right there where the magic happens. There are many other dishes on offer that looked equally good – I’ll have to go back, I guess.

Dessert. Chocolate santandagi with almond ice cream and caramelised pistachio; berry soup and fruit with ginger and mint sorbet; and a suntory whiskey cappuccino. How do the likes of Madonna and Paris Hilton stay so scrawny?

Reuben’s

We dined at Reuben’s for both breakfast and lunch. The decor at Reuben’s is not much better than Nobu’s in my opinion, but it does have a warm, spacious feel about it. You might have heard about Reuben’s (from Chef Reuben Riffel) in the Cape Winelands village of Franschhoek. It offers something quite different and Provençal-esque, but city folk have the advantage of dining at this popular favourite too now on the grounds of the One&Only Hotel.

Reuben was offered the restaurant space after Gordon Ramsay’s Maze closed (failed) and hotel management decided to add a local flavour to the hotel. Reuben calls the restaurant “rustic in style, but the focus is on freshness. The menu is seasonal and all produce is sourced locally.” Emphasis is on simplicity and natural taste.

I recommend sitting outside if the weather is good. Breakfast is a buffet of almost everything you can think of – from cheese platters to oysters. Lunch we enjoyed outside, looking out over the moat that wraps around the hotel, the island in the near distance, connected to the hotel by a bridge, and Table Mountain towering above behind the city.

It’s easy to love Cape Town…

We ordered salads – considering the mass of food already ingested, and washed it down with an ice cold Bombay Sapphire G&T. There’s an entire wall of wine bottles, so you’re bound to find something that suits your fancy.

I polished off the Cobb Salad (with shrimp, prawn, avocado, pancetta, red onion, egg, olive, croutons and tomato confit), while my dining partner opted for Reuben’s Caesar Crunch Salad (with Elgin chicken, butter lettuce, Spanish anchovy, ciabatta, poached hens egg and shaved Parmesan). Both were infallible, delicious and light.

Verdict

With its great views from outside, Reuben’s lets you feel miles away from the city centre. If I had to throw it and Nobu in the ring, they’d trump with different punches. Nobu for sushi lovers and Reuben’s for everything else; Nobu for more evening intimacy – and male models – and Reuben’s for something more relaxed in the daytime.

Either way, the One&Only Hotel has everything you need when it comes to food and drink – it’s even down the road from takeaway fish and chips shops and pubs in the V&A Waterfront.

>> To visit the One&Only Hotel and dine at its restaurants, or to book your own tailor-made itinerary to the Mother City, contact one of our expert travel consultants.

>> For more Cape Town Restaurant reviews by our Hornygrazer, visit our website. Take a look at more photos of the hotel on the Rhino Africa Facebook Page.

>> Been to the One&Only and dined at one of its restaurants? Comment below and tell us what you thought!