(Photographs by Tom Clark)
Many Masterchef fans will recognise the name, Guy Clark. Guy made it to the top 11 of South Africa’s first ever Masterchef season, and although he wasn’t in the top 3, his charisma and obvious creativity in the kitchen caught the eyes of viewers. Masterchef was a vital building block in Guy’s culinary development. It gave him the push he needed to realise his potential and devotion to cooking.
After refining his ability overseas in places like Miami, LA and even New Delhi, Guy returned home to Cape Town in 2016, but not before winning the television competition show Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network, in LA. This gave him the recognition he needed as a self-taught chef, and pushed him to the next level of his career that he would find in Cape Town.
At first easing himself into the Winelands culinary scene, he teamed up with fellow Masterchef contestant Samantha Nolan to create a pop-up Winter lunchoen at Bellingham Homestead in Franschhoek. And then just under a year, Guy now finds himself at Tinstwalo Atlantic heading up the recently reconstructed kitchen.
The kitchen, along with the entire estate, was wrecked from brutal fires that engulfed the area in 2015, which led to an entire rebuild. The setting is as beautiful as ever right on the sea front, below Chapman’s Peak Drive, a wooden deck juts out over the rocks as waves lash the shore. It’s the ideal place for any chef to develop a menu, with smells and sounds that allow the imagination to soar.
One look at the menu, and it’s validated that Guy really did allow himself to be totally inspired by the locale he now finds himself working in. The Winter menu, titled Ocean and Ash, draws on the natural surroundings of Tinstwalo, with foraging forming a significant part of the recipe development. The focus was to use what was abundant and close, like seaweed and Fynbos, and to create dishes that defied conformity and ultimately would define Guy’s style as an executive chef.
The dishes all show a significant amount of risk and pushing of boundaries. Guy’s ingenuity has enabled him to create a menu that is unlike any other in the fine dining flock of restaurants. On top of that, plating arrangements steer far from normal and pay tribute to the natural surroundings of Tinstwalo.
The set menu makes up 8 courses, the first dish with 3 varieties of seaweed, the next 3 following a smoke theme and the last 3 following a Fynbos theme. Highlights include liquid umami, Atlantic line fish, burnt lemon rind, scallop and seaweed velouté, Rooibos smoked kudu with wild garlic smoked ‘skattie’ cheese and ocean water cured egg yolk, presented over burnt wild garlic ash, and a dessert of buchu ice cream, ash meringue and ocean salt itakuja Valrhona chocolate.
The set menu is ideal for special occasions, with a setting that embodies both luxury and Cape Town’s renowned nature and scenery. The menu is charged at R1100 per person and bookings are essential. To reserve a table call 021 201 0025 or email reservations2@atlantic.tintswalo.com.