Tokara Restaurant, situated 400 m above sea level at TOKARA Wine Estate on top of the Helshoogte Pass outside Stellenbosch, offers its guests terroir focused contemporary cuisine, award-winning wines and dramatic views over Stellenbosch and False Bay. The building housing the restaurant is a Cape architectural icon utilising glass, steel and stone.
Tokara Restaurant opened its doors in October 2001 and was one of the very first iconic winery restaurants established in the Cape Winelands area of South Africa.
A prominent feature of the restaurant interior is five large-scale tapestries by internationally renowned artist William Kentridge. No other venue in the world has as many of these works from Kentridge’s “Porter Series” on display to the public. Book Now
Our food
We are proud to showcase chef Carolize Coetzee’s menu inspired by the South African countryside and farm produce.
Carolize grew up in Humansdorp, a small town of some 30 000 residents located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. She recalls that some of her favourite memories are of meals spent laughing and telling stories around the kitchen table, enjoying her mother’s lovingly prepared food and heirloom recipes being passed on from one generation to another.
“My most cherished food memories involve emotional and physical sensations. Some of these are rooted in the expectation of reliving a fond memory, such as waiting for a cherished ingredient to be back in season, while other are more nostalgic, such as that morning slice of farm bread, heaped with my grandmother’s homemade marmalade.”
The generosity of chefs - whether professional or skilled lay cooks such as her grandmother and mother - are a source of inspiration for Carolize that she infuses with her own food memories in designing refined “plaaskos” (farm cuisine) for the Tokara Restaurant menu. Menu