Valentine's Day dinner at The Wes Bistro and Bar

 14 February 2025

 

THE WES BISTRO AND BAR

55 Shortmarket Street, Cape Town

 

Dear reader, if you’ve been feeling deprived, let me explain that I’ve been absent from here for such a long time, firstly  due to my dear wife undergoing an unplanned, urgent neck operation late last year, which incapacitated her for 6 weeks (and from which she’s recovered quite well, thank you) and our subsequent holiday to Spain. Now she’s  all healed up and we’re back in Town, rested, untanned yet ready to discover the new culinary delights our lovely city has to offer.

 

The Wes Bistro and Bari is a case in point.

 

Von-Mari (the power behind the throne previously known as “the wife”) and I celebrated our 20^th Valentine’s Day together with an excellent meal in splendid surroundings, with a few thoughtful touches from the restaurant to make the evening more special.

 

Valentine’s Night is notoriously a night where restaurants take as much profit as they can from overpriced set menus. 

 

Dinner at The Wes was a good example of being able to have a good time without feeling ripped off just because of the occasion. 

 

The setting is a beautiful, elegant, modern and chic bistro with its entrance at the corner of Loop and Shortmarket Streets. The House of Machines is on the other side of Shortmarket  Street and there is some other venue next to that again, in the space once occupied by the Shortmarket Club, which means that the area is quite busy and vibey on a Friday night.

 

The room is V-shaped with one wing facing Shortmarket Street and the other facing Loop Street and large windows on both sides,  with a central bar.

 

An elegantly dressed hostess greeted us, confirmed the booking and showed us to our table at the banquette seating at the rear of the room on the Shortmarket Street side, and an incongruously dressed woman (shorts and t-shirt) handed Von-Mari a lovely, long stemmed red rose. I guessed that she must be the owner.

 

Shortly after we were seated and gazing around the room to take note of all the small details, we were served  complimentary glasses of bubbly.

 

The Wes didn’t offer a “special, romantic set menu” and we’d already studied the menu online, which is partly why we were there in the first place, other than it being a completely new venue to us. There were, however, the obligatory specials on a blackboard, of oysters, langoustines a fig salad and a dry aged T-bone steak.

 

The bread course consisted of two small brioche buns and truffle butter. Very good.

We discussed whether we should go for the T-bone or the Chateaubriand for sharing (R920) on the standard menu and decided on  the latter seeing as it was an all-out evening of revelry where cost was  of lesser importance.

 

My starter, though, was the smoked trout on blinis (R145)

and Von-Mari chose the grilled squid (R165). 

 She declared that the latter was one of the best things she’d ever eaten, with its delicate crispness and deep flavour. It was a pretty sizable portion too. My more modest dish was good and tasty though the blinis could perhaps have been a tad thinner. 

 

Once we’d quaffed the complimentary bubbly we ordered two glasses of Graham Beck Brut Rosé, a firm favourite.

 

The main course was served with four roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, shoestring fries and rocket as well as fries on the side.

The chateaubriand  was a triumph. The steak was mostly perfectly medium rare, though the ends were a tad too cooked for Von-Mari. The tomatoes were cooked yet still retained an al dente quality and were sweet and juicy. The mushrooms were the best I’d had in a restaurant in ages, also perfectly cooked, firm yet not rubbery, and deeply savoury. The shoestring fries were light and crisp and the rocket was, well, fresh rocket. The fries on the side were sublime, beautifully crisp on the outside, soft on the inside and well-seasoned.

 

Vonni (a term of endearment for the wife), who likes chocolate, chose the dark chocolate pot, served with macaroons,  (R110)

and I chose the Paris Brest (R120)

a pastry I’d seen being prepared on various cooking/baking shows on television but had never even seen on a menu before, much less eaten.

 

Vonni was overwhelmed by the supreme chocolatiness of the chocolate, which was too dark, intense and sweet after a few spoonsful. She dots on a macaroon, though, and was well happy with them.

 

I was absolutely delighted by my selection with its exquisitely, thin, brittle choux pastry and smooth and delectable praline flavoured cream. As the saying goes, I could easily  have eaten a couple more.

 

The culinary part of the evening was topped off by a complementary dessert plate with two more macaroons, two tiny meringues and some strawberries; petit fours, I guess.

 

It had been an excellent, very satisfying meal.

 

The final bill came to R1797,00 (food, bubbly and water), which calculation included the deduction of a (very reasonable) R200,00 deposit and the thoughtful, automatic inclusion of a service charge of R222,00 that’s more than 10% and less than 15%. Dunno how they came to this figure, then.

 

The Wes is a lovely place, and where we sat the acoustics were so excellent that we could whisper legible sweet nothings to each other, the service was efficient and friendly and the food was superb. 

 

The restaurant’s website has a lengthy, breathlessly enthusiastic blurb extolling its virtues, if you’re interested, but despite this hype I’d recommend The Wes for elegant, yet low key dining in the CDB. It’s not extraordinary but it’s good fun.