Eight at Spier – a definite 'must' for brunch

Eight at Spier

Before the word gets out, I thought I'd share my addic­tion to the latest res­taur­ant to open on the Spier Wine Estate in Lyndedoch Road, Stellenbosch. Eight at Spier serves good whole­some break­fasts, brunches and lunches on the grounds of the pop­u­lar week­end destination.

The res­taur­ant is child-friendly, afford­able, and one of very few res­taur­ants with a green ethos where envir­on­mental con­scious­ness and com­mit­ment to the Earth is a high pri­or­ity. Most of all, the res­taur­ant lacks pre­ten­tious­ness, and eas­ily ranks as one of the best places to get  a decent, healthy break­fast over a weekend ...

The res­taur­ant lies behind the wine tast­ing and shop build­ings, off the main path­way, close to the sprawl­ing gar­dens at Spier. Outside, under umbrel­las and foliage, lie a few  tables that invite alfresco din­ing, whilst inside the mod­ern, min­im­al­ist look­ing res­taur­ant has clean lines and décor with a strong accent on wood and recycled design – Heath Nash fea­tures pre­dom­in­antly and his ceil­ing design  of over 10 000 individually-crafted flowers made from recycled white plastic milk bottles is quite lovely (we've got a Heath Nash light fit­ting in our kit­chen, so I recog­nised his hand in the décor immediately).

Eight at Spier

The waitrons, who have obvi­ously recently received train­ing, wel­come you at the entrance (or at least they did when I vis­ited, but that was pos­sibly their very first week on the job) to explain the ethos behind the res­taur­ant and just what you can expect from your visit — it's a farm-to-table eat­ing exper­i­ence of nour­ish­ing, healthy and deli­cious food.

The glass door through which you pass is etched with the num­ber eight, lying on its side, in a sim­ilar vein to Spier's water treat­ment plant where a series of flow forms through which water flows also lie in the form of an eight, and rep­res­ents infin­ity (their waste water recyc­ling plant, as an aside, is also a yin yang pool reflect­ing the bal­ance of energy where newly recycled water is pumped back into a dam and used for irrig­a­tion). The num­ber 8 is about bal­ance, cycles, har­mony, infin­ity and abundance.

One of Spier's aims is to be a zero-waste pro­du­cing estate by 2015, and this is pretty evid­ent in their new Eight at Spier res­taur­ant. There is no sign of lam­in­ated menus for a start, and the sea­son­ally pro­duced items on the menu, most of the ingredi­ents of which come from their bio­dy­nam­ic­ally farmed veget­able gar­dens, are writ­ten up in chalk on black boards that are brought to your table, and described in detail by your waitron.

Eight at Spier

Heidi Newton-King, Spier's COO describes Eight as 'the mani­fest­a­tion of Spier's belief that a res­taur­ant can be a cata­lyst for social and envir­on­mental change while still offer­ing fab­ulous food.'

Roughly 300 hec­tares of the farm at Spier is farmed bio­dy­nam­ic­ally and has been since December 2008. Pasture reared beef, chicken, eggs, wine grapes and veget­ables, as well as olives, artichokes, nec­tar­ines and almond trees are all in pro­duc­tion. It is a won­der­ful feel­ing to know that you're eat­ing food that was grown but a few metres away from your table. What the chefs at Eight can­not source from their garden, they source from local farms and sup­pli­ers chosen for their mind­ful and sens­it­ive approach to the way food is grown, handled and packaged.

Spier's waste-recycling pro­gramme col­lects roughly 11 times more than the aver­age South African busi­ness in a year, and recycles around 80% of its waste – there are on-site recyc­ling pro­grammes that con­vert food waste to worms to pro­duce fer­til­iser, and other recyc­ling pro­jects such as the Adobe Brick Works, a Biolytix waste-recycling pro­ject (already men­tioned), and a bio-diesel pro­ject that will power the estate's tract­ors and generators.

Eight at Spier

They're lead­ing the way when it comes to eth­ical respons­ib­il­ity in busi­ness. And Eight at Spier is just one more example of their com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing aware­ness, and cut­ting back on waste.

As well as won­der­ful food, the res­taur­ant already had a num­ber of inter­est­ing items on sale made from recycled goods, inter­est­ing books and DVDs about food and farm­ing, and other prac­tical items like hemp bags and wine car­ri­ers. Their aim is to have farm pro­duce here too from the farm – so deli­cious cheeses and other fresh, nat­ural and organic pro­duce from local sup­pli­ers should also be up for sale, although when I was there this wasn't yet the case.

We began our break­fast at a table indoors, set against the win­dow, the sun­light stream­ing through the glass, with freshly squeezed organic juices. I was sur­prised at how reas­on­ably these were priced. Usually a freshly squeezed glass of juice costs more and I was equally sur­prised to see that it came in a reas­on­ably sized glass. I ordered a deli­cious com­bin­a­tion of car­rot and pine­apple, whilst my com­pan­ion enjoyed a beet­root, car­rot and apple juice.

Eight at Spier

Breakfasts include the man­dat­ory eggs and toast com­bin­a­tions but I ordered a deli­cious sound­ing col­lec­tion of rolled oats, fresh ber­ries, yoghurt and honey. It arrived in a huge wine glass, quite a novel way of serving a deli­cious meal! Before it arrived at the table, we were also served with a couple of slices of gor­geous look­ing home-made fruit bread, served with vari­ous com­bin­a­tions of but­ter, jam, salt and pepper.

Breakfast at Eight is not only a deli­cious exper­i­ence, it's a feel-good exper­i­ence too — know­ing that most of your food is grown moments away on a bio­dy­namic farm means not only does it not travel miles to reach your plate, but it's also prob­ably that much bet­ter for you because of the inher­ent fresh­ness. I don't know about you, but I'm all for this type of eating.

Address: Eight at Spier, R310 Lynedoch Road Stellenbosch
Telephone: +27 (0)21 809‑1100

Useful Stellenbosch Links:
Stellenbosch Attractions
Things to Do in Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch Hotels
Stellenbosch Accommodation
Cape Winelands Accommodation