Wining & Dining On The Waterfront

What’s cooking at the V&A Waterfront? Practically everything, making it Cape Town’s culinary epicenter

- Graham Howe

You can travel around the world in eighty days at Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. A culinary marathon takes your taste buds globetrotting from Africa to Asia, the Americas, Europe and beyond – exploring the old world of France, Italy, Greece and Spain, and the new world of China, India, Japan and Thailand – without leaving the precincts of Table Bay.

Sampling all eighty restaurants would test anyone’s appetite, stamina and spending power. Decisions, decisions. Dining at the V&A Waterfront is not for the indecisive. Visitors are spoiled for choice from an A-Z of fine dining to fish ‘n chips, family bistros, microbrewery pubs, tapas and wine bars, seafood, steaks and sushi, pasta, pizza and pancakes.

Whatever you’re looking for, you’re bound to find it within a price range for every pocket. The view is on the house – with many alfresco terraces on restaurant row offering a spectacular vista of Table Mountain, the city bowl and Table Bay. The seals, seagulls and tug horns provide the ambient soundtrack of a working harbor. New restaurants open every season, chefs play musical chairs, and old favorites get a makeover.

We’ll start with the new kid on the block that’s generating a bit of a buzz around the harbor. Set to launch April 1, the Alba Restaurant is a fine dining cruise experience aboard a 72-foot enclosed boat, plying the waters of the V&A Waterfront harbor. The Alba can accommodate 72 seated guests for three-course lunch or dinner cruises, or 100 for cocktail functions.