Cashing In On ‘Forgotten' Food Ingredients

West Coast fine dining restaurant Wolfgat is a culinary hit. Its secret is quite simple: commitment to its niche.

- Glenneis Kriel

Tired of city life, Kobus van der Merwe gave up his job as a web editor nine years ago to help his retired parents open their own bistro, Oep ve Koep, in Paternoster on the West Coast. Since then, he has opened his own restaurant, Wolfgat, which has been ranked one of the top 10 restaurants in the country in the 2018 Eat Out Mercedes-Benz Awards and walked away with the S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna Chef of the Year title, which recognises an innovative chef who is pushing the boundaries and making a notable contribution to the South African restaurant scene.

What did you do before Oep ve Koep and Wolfgat?

After school, I entered a two-year diploma programme at the Institute of Culinary Arts, one of the top chef schools in the world. At that stage I wanted to be a musician, so I quit the course after the first year and went to London where I did administrative work for British Telecom.

On my return, I decided to rather do media studies because I also enjoyed writing, and career prospects in this field seemed more promising. My journalism career started out with me writing classical music reviews for Die Burger as a freelancer, after which I became employed as a copywriter for a travel website, where I got some exposure to HTML coding. This paved the way to my job as web editor of Eat Out, which in turn rekindled my passion for the art of fine dining. So, when my parents bought Oep ve Koep, I saw it as an opportunity to break out of the mediocrity of everyday city life and do my own thing.

Tell us more about the reasoning behind your product offering at Oep ve Koep and Wolfgat?

When starting out at Oep ve Koep, I wanted to give visitors a truly unique Sandveld experience. Oep ve Koep gave me the platform to experiment with veld harvested food, test out some traditional recipes and create food that celebrated the unique biodiversity of the West Coast.