Manor Kitchen — Restaurant in Stellenbosch Local Municipality

I recently made the journey from Cape Town to Stellenbosch to try the seven-course dinner paired with Lanzerac’s award-winning wines at Manor Kitchen. It was a lovely experience and a wonderful value. The dishes were creative and inspired and paired nicely with the wines. The tuna tartare dish was one of the best bites I’ve experienced in my culinary life. My only constructive feedback, which I’ve shared with the establishment, is (1) for the bread course, the clay pot needs to either cooled longer before being served or come accompanied by some type of mitt for diners to hold it with while removing the bread. It was fingerprint melting off your hands HOT. (2) Some of the wines were too cold when served and did not develop their full flavor profile until the end of the respective dish. We appreciated the sommeliers’ openness to discuss this (she is fabulous!) (3) Lastly, children talking loudly, singing, and running around grabbing the backs of chairs in the mostly empty dining room like it was a playground was highly disruptive to the elevated experience. Neither the staff nor the parents visibly did anything to curtail the unruly behavior. For the time and money spent on this experience, an adult atmosphere would have been greatly appreciated. Overall, I recommend...

TL;DR: service is sloooow, expect 2-3 hours.

So, I have a bit of a love/hate experience with this place. Clearly it's 5 star look and feel but man, the service times are atrocious. 2-3 hours for food and a wine tasting... honestly. They weren't even that busy...and it felt like they were doing us a favour. To be fair, I do not blame the waiting staff, they were very good once we got going. And we didn't book bit we were shown a table none the less, I don't expect less of a service because I didn't make a reservation.

I brought some foreign friends for a wine tasting and food... Unfortunately was let down by very poor turn around times and lack luster management. Food took an age to arrive, the tasting we eventually got going.

Both the wine and food was very very good, for sure top tier (when it eventually arrived) But the wait time and me having to chase down a waiter and ask for menus and all that, was not worthy of a even a 1 star rating.

Thing is, we got AMAZING service at the lesser known farms and honestly after today I feel our time and money would have been better...

I booked a table on the terrace for two pax, which was confirmed by Le Roux. On arrival I was informed that we will have to sit inside or outside at the back. NB nobody else inside or at the back. I informed Duty Manager Smit of our disappointment but was then informed nothing he can do about it. Not a very customer friendly person at all. We then sat inside and our order for drinks were taken. After a while we were informed a table was available on the terrace and we then had to change tables. When ordering food we were informed that various items on the menu were not available - how disappointing. We then settled on scones. Scones were served but the clotted cream was the consistancy of butter, not near the texture of clotted cream. Eventually requested the bill which after three efforts in asking never came. After 20 minutes waiting for the bill I went inside to pay at the desk. Really not impressed with either the presentation of the scones and in particular the...