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The Test Kitchen takes 44th spot at World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards
“Since its inception in 2010, I’ve always wanted to feature on the list, it really has become an excellent reflection of who is making waves in the international food arena,” says The Test Kitchen’s Luke Dale-Roberts who is the only chef ever in Africa to have his restaurant feature four times – 50th in 2018, 22nd in 2016, 28th in 2015 and 48th in 2014.
This year’s top 50 restaurants list was revealed at the iconic Marina Bay Sands luxury resort hotel in Singapore. It is the first time the awards have been held in Asia (Bilbao and New York City have been the locations over the previous two years) and the organisers pulled out all the stops to wow their talented chef delegates with a week of gastronomic spoils and surprises.
With The Test Kitchen’s 44th place on the World’s Best 50 Restaurants list, and once again being heralded as the Best Restaurant in Africa, Dale-Roberts is certainly in stellar gourmet company and the week-long event is a veritable melting pot featuring the best in the kitchen.
“Going to the awards has been a real highlight for me these past few years; can you imagine having so many incredible chefs in one space? It’s pretty mind-blowing,” he says.
Expanding food empire
Since the last awards in June 2018, Dale-Roberts and his head chefs and their brigades at his various restaurants have certainly been busy. At The Test Kitchen in Woodstock in Cape Town, the Dark and Light Rooms experience continues to delight the limited number of diners (only 41 guests are seated per evening) with their complex epicurean offering. Dressed by Sandalene Dale-Roberts, Luke’s wife and business partner, in many of her own furniture designs and featuring walls clad with charred wood, the Dark Room is an ultra-cool seating area where mixology-style cocktails and appetizers create a sultry mood for his magnificent food. A gong announces the time to move to the Light Room, where the epicurean adventure (there are 21 courses in total) really commences. The experience is understandably booked out months in advance thanks to its marriage of food theatre and artistry that despite its complexity stays true to the essence of the ingredients used.
Never one to rest on his laurels, 2018 saw him help expand the Dale-Roberts family of restaurants significantly. In October last year, fine dining destination Salsify opened its doors. Situated in the historic Roundhouse in Camps Bay, this stylish restaurant with a view has been decorated by Sandalene Dale-Roberts and features both nods to the location’s past as a hunting lodge, and the present, seen in the much-Instagrammed graffiti by artist Skull Boy. Head Chef Ryan Cole has settled into his new role as a champion of seasonal ingredients superbly and the consistently excellent reviews are a testament to this.
Meanwhile, in the City Bowl, he and restaurateur duo Wesley Randles and Simon Widdison opened The Commissary in December. The edgy urban eatery celebrates global street food in an utterly no-frills way – serving ware is disposable, there is a no-booking system and the food is designed to be shared. It’s proven to be a winning concept and again a testament to Dale-Roberts’s unashamed commitment to exploring the enjoyment of food and flavours in myriad different formats.
“I’ve always said I’m about exploring food and flavour in as many ways as possible and it’s been great to really push boundaries in each of our restaurants,” he says.
Giving back
While some might expect Dale-Roberts to be planning a new restaurant (or two) in the coming year, he has his sights set on a bigger challenge. Together with chefs from each Dale-Roberts restaurant and other key chefs in Cape Town, he will be engaging in teaching lifelong skills to students at the Siviwe School of Skills situated in Gugulethu, near Cape Town, a special needs public school. Students in the school’s hospitality stream will not only be given guidance and taught essential skills by him and his team but they will also be given the opportunity to experience the restaurants first hand, as guests.
Dale-Roberts’s commitment to nourishing youth in need with essential kitchen skills is in keeping with the “Food meets Future” initiative announced at The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards. The initiative encourages chefs to commit to a meaningful goal as chefs and leaders in the industry, be it as champions of gender equality in the workplace or focusing on planet-friendly business practises.
His pledge is “to give time and resources to the education and jobs creation of previously disadvantaged South Africans.” The pledge reflects his enormous capacity as a mentor and an extraordinary ability to see talent in those with just basic skills. “The Siviwe project has so much possibility and I’m so excited to be a part of it, there’s so much that can be done. I’m really hoping more people in our industry will get involved,” he adds.
