Some restaurants ask you to sit up straight. The Country Kitchen is not one of them.
High on the hillside at Mont Rochelle, Sir Richard Branson’s hotel and vineyard above Franschhoek, this is the estate’s easy, all-day table. Just a leisurely stroll from the main hotel, it is the one you come to in no particular hurry, with the valley stretched out below, the mountains showing off, and a glass of the estate’s own wine never more than an arm’s reach away.
Where MIKO is the hotel’s main restaurant, The Country Kitchen is its laid-back little sister: the same glorious views, the same kitchen garden, the same award-winning wines, just a little less fuss and a lot more time for a long lunch.
In summer, there are gourmet picnics, beautifully prepared and best enjoyed outdoors with a view, of which the estate has no shortage. In winter, it is all log fires and slow afternoons while the mist lifts off the valley. Either way, nobody here is in a rush.
Straight from the garden
The cooking is proper farm-to-table, seasonal and unshowy in the best possible way, with a rustic charm that suits the setting. Much of what arrives on your plate starts life in the kitchen garden a short stroll away, and the menu shifts with what is growing and what the season is doing outside.
This is food made for a slow afternoon: hearty, generous and best enjoyed with a second glass and nowhere in particular to be.
A working wine estate, with a daily tasting to prove it
Mont Rochelle is a proper working wine estate as well as a hotel, which means the bottle on your table was made just down the hill.
Curious to know more about what you are drinking? There is daily wine tasting at The Country Kitchen, a relaxed way to get to know the estate’s wines, led by a team who know them inside out.
All you need to bring is a willingness to swirl, sip and take your time.
And something for the smaller guests
Here is the detail that makes The Country Kitchen quietly brilliant for families. While the grown-ups work their way through a wine tasting, the children can have a tasting of their very own.
Their juice tasting hands younger guests their own line-up to swirl, sniff and rate with enormous seriousness, so everyone at the table gets a turn at playing sommelier. It is a small thing, but it is exactly the sort of touch that turns a nice lunch into an afternoon the whole family remembers.
Where the Cellar Master Experience begins
The Country Kitchen sits right beside the estate’s wine cellar, which makes it the natural home of Mont Rochelle’s Cellar Master Experience.
It is a morning spent with cellar master Michael Langenhoven, walking the vineyard and cellar before tasting four flights of rare library wines, many of which almost never leave the estate, and rounding off with a two-course lunch back at The Country Kitchen.
If you have ever wanted to taste older vintages alongside the person who made them, this is your moment. It runs on selected dates through winter and is limited to ten guests, so it stays personal from the first pour to the last.
Make a day of it, or a weekend
The lovely thing about The Country Kitchen is that it never tries to be an occasion, which is precisely what makes it one. Come up for lunch and stay for the view.
Franschhoek afternoons have a way of stretching. And if the drive back down starts to feel like an imposition, Mont Rochelle has 26 rooms and suites waiting. Winter in the valley is quieter, gentler on the wallet and made for lie-ins, so a night away is never a hard case to argue.
Plan your visit
The Country Kitchen is open daily at Mont Rochelle, high above Franschhoek. To book a table, enjoy a wine tasting, or enquire about a stay, head to Mont Rochelle’s website, email [email protected] or call +27 21 876 2770.
Also read:
Jazz nights in the Winelands: MIKO at Mont Rochelle is your new winter Saturday plan
Picture: Supplied
