Forces Of Nature

Few ingredients and more intense flavours are the hallmarks at Janse & Co., award winning chef Arno Janse van Rensburg’s latest venture. Step off Kloof Street and start a journey down a rabbit hole…

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CAPE TOWN’S KLOOF STREET is a favourite haunt for the young and the restless but, until now, perhaps not somewhere you’d expect to find a darkly stylish fine-dining restaurant in a space formerly occupied by the Ocean Basket. But stroll past the hipster hangouts and you’ll come upon an understated entrance presided over by a smiling yet no-nonsense doorman. This is Janse & Co., award-winning chef Arno Janse van Rensburg’s new venture. Quite a change from the bucolic vista of The Kitchen at Maison in Franschhoek, where he was executive chef for six years.

“I learnt a lot at Maison, but it was time to move on and run my own restaurant. We looked at over 30 sites in town – Loop Street, Bree Street, Woodstock, Salt River, Gardens, Vredehoek – before we settled on this one. We needed a fairly large space to do the things we wanted – the wine display and charcuterie fridges, and the equipment for all the fermentation we do – we make our own miso and soya sauce, among other things.” “We” refers to Arno and his wife, Liezl Odendaal, who is also a trained chef and previously national head chef for the Weylandts cafés and, before that, pastry chef at boutique hotel Ellerman House in Bantry Bay.