Riebeek Kasteel – a perfect little Swartland town

Riebeek Kasteel

One thing you need to know about Riebeek Kasteel is that it's no longer a secret. Which isn't to say that you won't enjoy your­self immensely in this gor­geous little town nestled up against the Kasteelberg Mountain roughly an hour's drive from Cape Town, but if the cost of homes is any­thing to go by (and there are at least four estate agen­cies jost­ling for atten­tion on the square as you enter town) then people are lin­ing up for their spot in the sun in this rural, Tuscan-style village.

Riebeek Kasteel lit­er­ally is a sight for sore eyes. The scenery is intox­ic­at­ing, and vine­yards, olive groves, moun­tains and charm­ing cot­tages cre­ate a styl­ish, yet rus­tic appeal that has a buzz­ing local com­munity, and a ser­i­ous col­lec­tion of unique eat­er­ies that draw food­ies from Cape Town in their droves ...

It helps, of course, that the Swartland town and its coun­ter­part Riebeek West, a little fur­ther along the R311 (the other emerged due to a clash in polit­ics over the build­ing of the valley's first NG church, hence you'll find another not even 4 kilo­metres away) are part of the Swartland Wine Route, and there are a num­ber of award-winning wine and olive estates vir­tu­ally a stone's throw from both towns.

Getting there is a lovely drive with a num­ber of vari­ations, but we headed out along the N1 and then turned onto the R45 to Malmesbury and fur­ther onto the R46 to Riebeek Kasteel. But you can take the N7 to Malmesbury and then the R46. En route back, try tak­ing the R302 from Malmesbury, via Klipheuwel, to see the three wind tur­bines just off the road – makes for inter­est­ing view­ing. This route is also on the Perdeberg wine dis­trict, a col­lec­tion of some 46 mem­ber wine farms that lie in the heart of the Boland, but I am get­ting ahead of myself.

We were intent on lunch by the time we arrived in Riebeek Kasteel on a Sunday morn­ing, not usu­ally the best day to come explor­ing we dis­covered, as a couple of renowned res­taur­ants such as the The Barn were closed, and wine estates were also closed for tast­ing, but that could have had some­thing to do with the fact that we left any sampling of wines until after four in the afternoon.

We parked off the main roads of the town under a beau­ti­ful weep­ing wil­low in the hope that after lunch it would still be in shade, and headed up along Main Street to Short Street, just oppos­ite the 19^th cen­tury Royal Hotel, its ver­andahs cooled by the lazy sweep­ing of over­head fans that has the effect of draw­ing one back in time to colo­nial times. It's claim to fame is as one of the old­est hotels in South Africa, and it's been here since 1862.

Short Street is just that. A rather short street with a dead end in the form of 'crisp', where you can pick up fresh, healthy coun­try veg and fruit, except on a Sunday it seems. Interestingly Short Street wasn't always here. Despite look­ing incred­ibly authen­tic – all of the build­ings are built in the tra­di­tional style – it's new, and lined with an excit­ing col­lec­tion of shops that include little boutiques with names like Revive and ancient spirit, whilst the Wine Kollective stocks most of the local wines. The street also serves as the venue for the Fine Food and Wine Market, a flea mar­ket that hap­pens on the first Saturday of every month.

We were after a res­taur­ant with the rather unique name of Bar Bar Black Sheep, hav­ing done our home­work about where to eat, and already hav­ing found Café Felix closed. And the sign on the Main Road that poin­ted down Short Street, gave noth­ing away. My first thought was that alco­hol would pre­dom­in­ate, but it did noth­ing to pre­pare me for the quaint, tongue-in-cheek, we-don't-take-ourselves-terribly-seriously, except for our food, atmo­sphere the res­taur­ant has man­aged to capture.

The décor is an eclectic kitsch meets funky 'Boeroque', and bright floral plastic table cloths, hybrid­ised Barbeton dais­ies in vases, bam­boo latte roofs, a wire-art sheep and other paraphernalia, which includes an old 'third class' rail­way sign in the loo from the times before 1994, effort­lessly merge to form a fun, friendly and relaxed ambience.

Bar Bar Black Sheep describes its food as slow-cooked coun­try fare with fresh sea­sonal ingredi­ents. One of the part­ners in the res­taur­ant runs the Wine Kollecktive next door, so it isn't sur­pris­ing to find that the menu stocks all of the wines in the area, includ­ing a couple of organic vari­et­ies. The menu emphas­ises that this is slow, coun­try food not fast food and that you can expect to wait, although we didn't. The ser­vice was excel­lent, the chef, Mynhardt was sur­pris­ingly access­ible, for a chef (he cleared out plates for good­ness sake!), and the food delicious!

We ordered the Cuban Flat Bread, an inter­est­ing array of home made flat bread with bowls of beans, guacamole, roas­ted pep­pers, mar­in­ated mush­room, cream cheese and tomato and cori­ander salsa, and the restaurant's fam­ous 'viskoekies', made from snoek, pan fried and baked in the oven, served with sweep potato slow cooked with but­ter, sugar fresh ginger and cin­na­mon sided with a pine­apple and cori­ander sam­bal. And we can highly recom­mend the potato wedges!

This was accom­pan­ied by a wel­come glass of Babylon's Peak Chenin Blanc that went down a treat.

We treated ourselves to cof­fee in the gar­dens of the Royal Hotel, where the views are quite beau­ti­ful and, in anti­thesis to the buzz­ing court­yard of Bar Bar Black Sheep, the atmo­sphere sed­ate and slow. It makes a wel­come space in which to spend a late after­noon gaz­ing quietly out over hill­sides covered in vine­yards, but it was the local band play­ing typ­ical South African liedjies like 'Bobbejaan klim die berg', and 'January, February, March...' that really cre­ated the atmo­sphere on the ver­andah lead­ing into the hotel in the late afternoon.

A day in Riebeek West was so eas­ily filled with gast­ro­nomic and visual delights that it isn't hard to ima­gine, with all the olives, wine farms, coun­try mar­kets, shops, gal­ler­ies, tours and museums, that a week­end here isn't long enough. Definitely a place to which to return!

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