Jonkershuis Constantia — Restaurant in Constantia

We booked a table for 10 people for my best friend's birthday, approximately 2 weeks ago. During the booking process, we confirmed that we would be bringing a cake with us.

The table was booked for 12:15, upon arrival at 12pm today, we were told that the table wasn't ready, that we were very early, and to "Go for a walk girls". Mind you we're two 28 year old women, not girls, it was strange.

Well, we went for a walk as instructed. When we returned, we were seated at our table - still just the two of us (for now).

During the initial booking phone call, we also informed them that we'd like 1 large charcuterie board and 2 large fromage boards for the table, specifically with no nuts because one of the members of the party has a very serious nut allergy.

When we arrived, we reiterated our order, and asked that it be ready on the table when the guests were due to arrive at 12:15. We then were informed by the waitress, that the front desk didn't know what exactly we were asking for - despite it already being repeated twice.

Eventually we got the boards, we got the first round of drinks, and things were going well, but sort of went downhill from there.

I'm going to skip through a lot here, but basically there seems to be lots of miscommunication between the frontend and kitchen staff. We were also served by multiple waiters, who didn't really seem to be communicating with each other. Coffee orders were missed (we waited 45 minutes for a cappuccino), and we waited about an hour for a pasta.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we enquired about the cake that we'd brought. I asked them to bring it out, along with candles that we'd provided. The cake was eventually brought, after 20 minutes of waiting, without lit candles lol. We then had to wait, again, for them to bring a lighter. Odd!

Surely it's common knowledge in the service industry, that you'd want lit candles? I don't know.

Whatever, skipping ahead. The bill comes, there's a cakeage fee of R200 that we were not made aware of, despite asking them to store it in the fridge, and making the "events manager" aware of the cake on the booking phone call.

A cakeage fee is reasonable, but R200 is not. I mean, I've never heard of a cakeage fee before in my life, but go off I guess.

We raised this with our waitress, who then called the manager. The manager then told us that we had to pay the cakeage despite not being informed of it upfront. One of our party members, who admittedly was frustrated, then requested that we take the cakeage out of the tip, due to service breakdowns.

Management then said we'd be welcome to do that, and then brought out our waitress and demanded that we tell her what she did wrong, when she did nothing wrong. It was clear that there were miscommunications between the kitchen and frontend staff, it was no one person's fault. We were all extremely uncomfortable, made it very clear that it wasn't her fault specifically, and that she'd tried really hard to accommodate us the entire day.

This felt incredibly unprofessional and inappropriate and, quite frankly, really passive aggressive. We were a large table, we spent a good amount of money, and it just really felt like we were all put on the spot, in a very weird way.

Eventually cakeage was taken off the bill, thank you for that. But as we were leaving, we were told that we had better say something nice about the waitress because she was due for a "promotion" which again, made us feel really bad. I don't know why any of this was handled in this way. It was really very bizarre.

Anyway, wait staff not the problem. Management clearly has a chip on their shoulder, and should know better than to try and humiliate staff in front of their table. Do better...

Good day

It is with great sadness that I wrote this review. I truly hope the owner sees this I will be sending emails as well.

We booked for a picnic.

The day before I called to book and Amber( who thinks is Gods gift to human kind) was extremely rude telling me do I how the costs and I must pay deposit ect. As if I can’t afford it. Thereafter telling me to email. I called again a lady picked up extremely friendly and assisted me and took my booking.

When we arrived she was very rude as if doing us a favour. Amber again.

Then my husband dropped his card the owner gave it to unfortunately Amber. The bank called my husband and we arranged for Uber package to go and pick up the card. We called the restaurant and asked if she could just step 10 steps to the parking lot to drop off the card once the Uber is there. No need to wait just to go when the Uber is there. She was extremely rude and told us no they are busy she cannot do that. She then spoke to her friend a male Manager by the sound of it and he said simply cut up the card simple as that. She then hung up on me. I called back again and when I asked for her by name she said she refuses to talk to me. Bear in mind that we were just at the facility we just had lunch there and we were nothing but kind. She had a problem that I gave our waitress more than the tip she advised to give. As well and she said It is customary to give X amount.

I find this behaviour extremely rude and unprofessional and this is not how you keep customers in runner restaurant. I will never be returning for this reason. For as long as Amber works there we will never be coming back and we will be telling our friends that do go regularly...

Jonkershuis restaurant although situated in one of the most beautiful settings in Cape Town, manages to disappoint on more levels than one.

The waiter forgot multiple things throughout the service from drinks to starters.

Then we move on to mains, in my excitement I ordered the 28 day dry aged sirloin and asked for it to be done medium rare. The first steak I was given was well done, immediately upon showing this to the waiter it was taken away for replacement. I thought to myself, I am hungry but I'd rather wait for the steak the way I ordered it.

Out comes the replacement steak about 20 minutes later, unfortunately they must have been really really scared of over cooking this one as it was rare bordering on blue in parts. I was hungry so I ate the parts of it which were not blue and kept the rest to show the waiter if/when he shows up again. Upon his return when I presented the barely cooked piece of meat to him he shrugged and said oh sorry about that. No offer to replace it, no offer to take the steak off the bill, not even a sincere apology.

Something else to note - both steaks looked like they were many days past their prime. Also the sear left much to be desired and was something that you'd expect has been done by an amateur home cook rather than a professional chef!

My only regret is that I didn't take a picture of the food to share...