A few weeks ago, my wife Jun and I celebrated our anniversary by visiting South Africa and Namibia. It was an exceptional trip, starting in Cape Town and then around Namibia where we thoroughly enjoyed a safari tour in Etosha National Park as well as the tremendous beauty of places such as Sandwich Harbour and Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert. We also ate every well throughout our trip, especially in and around Cape Town. I had visited this beautiful city before I married Jun and had wonderful food at several restaurants in the area, so I was very excited to bring my beloved wife this time and enjoy the dining scene here together. Our first stop was at Dusk in the wine country of Stellenbosch about an hour away from the city. Among the acclaimed restaurants in Cape Town, Dusk seems to be a relative newcomer, led by a young chef named Austin Callan. Overall, it was a solid experience, but we had expected a little more memorable from the dinner.

I discovered one not-insignificant blunder (from my end as well as the restaurant) toward the end of our meal. I booked our dinner for a longer and more expensive Epicurean Menu, but it turned out we were served the other Odyssey Menu instead. Would a few additional dishes from the longer menu have dramatically changed our experience? It’s hard to say. Overall, the presentation and execution of the dishes that came to us was of comparable quality to other fine-dining restaurants. All of the dishes following the duck liver dome snack had separate names attached to them; I did, however, have trouble connecting each dish to the significance behind its assigned name. For “Freshness,” we had delicious Scottish salmon gravlax with horseradish panna cotta as well as carrot and tamarind broth. Sure, the salmon was indeed fresh, but did adding all these other ingredients add to that freshness? Then came “Modesty,” which came with glazed sweetbreads, gnocchi and Diablo crème. The flavor of the sweetbreads and gnocchi was anything but modest, even though I still enjoyed it for its creative mix of ingredients. For the palate cleanser, named “Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap,” we got the refreshing apple and tamarind sorbet in the shape of an expletive. When you are in South Africa, you have to try some springbok (a type of antelope common in southern Africa) meat, and Dusk’s version of pepper spiced venison loin with charred and braised stuffed cabbage and polenta, named “Weekly Cut,” was a nice fine dining expression of how the tender meat should be prepared. For dessert, we were served “Nostalgia” in the form of banana ice cream, semifreddo, peanut ganache and cardamom cake; it was another solid dish, but nothing quite groundbreaking and I had trouble finding any elements of nostalgia from it.

I booked a reservation at Dusk more than a month ago so it’s hard to gauge how difficult it is to get a reservation here. Judging by the dining room that didn’t completely fill up even during the peak hours on a Saturday evening, probably not too challenging. One thing that would surprise a lot of travelers coming to visit South Africa from the U.S. or Europe is how cheap the food is compared to the peer fine dining restaurants. Our Odyssey Menu came at 1,295 Rands or approximately $70 per person. Since we were in the South African wine country, I was eager to try a wine pairing option. The restaurant offered the “Pandoras Box” pairing where diners are led to the cellar and choose a box out of random. It was a fun experience to explore different wines from the Stellenbosch region, but I couldn’t stop wondering whether the boxes on the shelf contained all the same wines. The dimly lit and stylish dining room makes it a great place for date nights, and the service was more than adequate, but there was one time when we had a rather long gap in between the dessert and the petit fours. I was secretly hoping before our visit that Dusk would be a surprise standout meal; we did enjoy the food here it was somewhat all over the place (I certainly would’ve liked to have a better understanding of why each dish was named that way).

KenScale: 8.0/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.0/10)

Address: 43 Plein St, Stellenbosch, 7600, South Africa

Website: https://duskrestaurant.co.za/

Reservation via Website