May 2025 marks one year since Ellerman House opened a bold new chapter in its culinary offering with the launch of Curate, an intimate multi-course dining experience set within the sculptural Wine Gallery. Conceived as a space where cuisine, wine and art come together, Curate quickly established itself as one of the most exciting new restaurants in Cape Town, a city widely regarded as Africa’s culinary capital.
At the helm of Curate is Ellerman House Head Chef Kieran Whyte, and if the first year has proved anything, it’s that Curate has resonated with diners not by chasing trends but with a commitment to the vision of elevating South African flavours and celebrating the seasonal produce of land and sea. “The first year has been a real journey. We’ve been finding our feet in the space, and people are recognising the value of what we’ve been doing,” says Whyte.
And Curate has certainly turned a few heads in the last 12 months, earning attention from guests and restaurant critics alike for the way it rethinks heritage ideas in a modern context, elevating familiar South African touchpoints through technique and service. Just one year in, the mantelpiece is already filling up with awards. Curate was awarded One Star at the LUXE Restaurant Awards, highlighting the restaurant’s guest experience and culinary standards, while also claiming One Star at the prestigious Eat Out Woolworths Restaurant Awards 2026, and the Haute Property Award from the 2026 JHP Gourmet Guide.
Curate’s tasting menu is designed as a journey, rooted in seasonality and driven by a subtle narrative that draws on the ingredients and food memories that make South African cooking so richly layered. That could see amagwinya steamed breads – a popular street snack – plated with caviar and smoked snoek, a linefish integral to Cape coastal communities. Traditional Afrikaans melktert has been reinvented as a savoury plate, while classic maize meal pap has been transformed from a staple starch into a playful dessert, with fermentation transforming the familiar into a journey of flavours.
Over the past year, Whyte and his team have continued to refine that approach: keeping the heart of the idea intact, while sharpening the execution and a subtle sense of theatre, all while staying true to the pillar of seasonality. Curate’s menu evolves with each season, and as winter makes its presence felt in the Mother City, Whyte’s winter menu is built around a theme of ‘Fire, Depth & Craft’. This new menu will debut at Curate in June, and focuses on heritage flavours, reinvented for the cooler winter months. Diners can look forward to a more focused collection of dishes that will transport your palate from the fields of the Swartland to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Expect a savoury reimagining of iconic Hertzoggie pastries, alongside a fragrant langoustine bobotie that promises an indulgent take on a Cape Malay classic.
With Curate hosted in the Wine Gallery at Ellerman House, it’ll come as no surprise that wine and cocktails are as integral to the experience as the food. Wine pairings – both ‘Heritage’ and ‘Connoisseur’ options – tap into some of the finest bottles in Ellerman House’s 10,000-bottle cellar, while cocktails are created in-house to dovetail neatly with the menu.
“Cocktails might be more associated with summery weather, but we’re showcasing just how well wintry flavours work behind the bar,” says Whyte. “We’re bringing seasonal elements into the mixology and tapping into the fantastic small-batch spirits producers we have in South Africa, from local brandies and whiskies from the Klein Karoo to rum distilled in the sugarcane fields of KwaZulu-Natal. We’re really exploring the way those flavours can travel across the menu, from cocktails to the plate.”
A year in, Curate is both firmly established and ever evolving. In the kitchen, Whyte and his team have won wide acclaim for their elevated approach to South African flavours, and are confident enough to keep refining, course by course, and season by season. With its next chapter already taking shape, Curate is poised to become an enduring highlight of Cape Town’s fine-dining landscape.
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