Our first stop for a weekend in Franschoek to sample some bubbles. We opted for light lunch at Orangerie and to do a tasting. Unfortunately due to not being told about the tasting room canape menu, after placing lunch order, I drop 0.5 points.
Went inside to the tasting room to sample. Nicely set up in here with florally chairs and woods with the silo cellar visable. Lovely bruts.
And then back to lunch. Started with some warm bread/butter and we order calamari and stuffed chicken to share. Both dishes beautifully plated and delicious. The chicken was tender, with veg and puree plus extra jus was served. Ended with profiteroles and a port. The mountainous views adds to the experience. A nice way to spend the afternoon.
WOW! Such a stunning place to have lunch with the family. I was blown away by the decor and the gardens to start and then we were greeted by our fantastic waitress Charlene, she made our meal even better with her bubbly personality and excellent service.
The bread to start was delicious and warm preparing our stomachs for what was to come. The starters were presented beautifully! At our table we had ordered the Brown sugar cured Franschhoek Salmon (possibly the best dish), the Heirloom tomato salad (beautiful), and the French onion soup - they even asked if we were aware that it was made with beef stock. In this case the person who had the soup did in fact eat meat and stated that this was the best French onion he had ever had, even better than the ones in Paris.
For our mains, the soufflé was ordered and a portion of starter mussels. The soufflé was out of this world and I highly recommend ordering this! The mussels themselves were massive and delicious but I wished I had asked for more bread to soak up the divine sauce (I’m Charlene would’ve allowed for that).
For dessert we ordered the chocolate Molten Cake to share and it was a success at the table! We almost ordered another but our stomachs wouldn’t allow the space.
One of my favourite food memories!
After hearing the head chef trained at le gavroche, we knew we had to visit. We had just recently met Marco Pierre White, who too trained there.
The food was incredible! Many of the other "top" establishments around Cape Town cost much more than Orangerie. However, I would have happily paid double for the food we ate! My partner had the sugar cured franschoek salmon , it was incredible, light, refreshing and a great contender to my calamari.
For mains, we decided my mushroom tortellini was probably the best thing we have ever eaten. My partner would choose meat over any other dish and we could not get enough of the mushroom sauce. After spying the dessert at our neighboring table we knew we couldn't skip out on that course. The dessert was incredible but unfortunately I was way too full to comment fairly.
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