The Restuarant
Reneessance restaurant is named after Renee but aptly also means a new beginning or new era as with the word Renaissance.
This is a dream come true and it all started with a dilapidated building in the main rd that was viewed with the estate agents just barely after the 100 year flood went through Napier. But according to Renee half the fun was the planning and actual renovation.
Renee found a 200 year old gate that was originally from Spain and was moved to Argentina where it was sold on an auction and then came to Cape Town with Napier as its final destination. Guests walk through the gate to enter the restaurant.
The food is unashamedly Mediterranean, “it is what I love to cook”. The small blackboard menu changes every week.
Napier has a lot of residents that have their own vegetable patch and outside town is Appelsdrift Farm who seriously farms organic and also heirloom vegetables. Surrounded by all the choice it is no hardship to change every week according to what can be picked up locally.
Old favorites will always be the chickpea rissoles with grilled vegetables, double bake cheese soufflé inspired by the Larder at the back, open lasagna with a medley of cherry tomato butter with grilled haloumi, tomato tartlet layered with camembert, basil pesto and fresh tomatoes studded with garlic and basil leaves, chicken breast stuffed and served on a homemade ricotta and pea mash with fresh herb butter sauce.
There are also some pizzas uniquely to Reneessance with odd shapes and spread with a herb sauce before the toppings of dill and salmon with avocado, basil pesto and tomatoes on the vine.
Breakfast comprises of their famous foccacia bread spread with a grilled cherry tomato and herb butter with farm eggs and cream turned into scrambled eggs served with farm cured bacon with rind. The corn fritters are a must if you are hungry.
Reneessance strives to keep Napier as the food capital of the Overberg.
The Larder
At the Larder in Napier we do not only bake bread but rather experience bread everyday. It is a living element that we partake of from early the morning when the previous day’s dough is shaped, proved and baked. To see the mounds of white suddenly explode in the oven into beautiful crisp brown breads is a revelation every day. Afterwards we will mix the batch of dough for the following day and leave it quietly for 5 hours to develop. By mid afternoon we will prepare the dough for the overnight rising, working with it for 1 ½ hours to stretch the gluten and to benefit the maximum from our starter. Thereafter it is left overnight to let nature run its course. This process gives us a robust bread with lots of flavour, a crisp crust and soft on the inside. Eating our bread is an experience and not for the fainthearted. Thus is our daily ritual every day, four days a week.
The Ladder
Food and décor go hand in hand at Reneessance. Renee kept a space in the barn behind the restaurant for her décor shop, the Ladder.
At the moment the Ladder is on the restaurant’s veranda and is interspersed with the tables in a elegant but rustic French style.
If you have to ask Renee what her favorite 3 colours were, she would say “grey, grey and grey”. So expect everything in that colour palette with the odd burst of unexpected colour like the charming “koskas” inside the restaurant in unashamedly proper “turkoois”.
Jean did ask Renee when the cupboard was brought in whether the shop owner paid her to take it away, but he has been made to eat his words as there is a list of future hopeful owners for this “koskassie”.
Contact Information
Contact name: Reneé Daneel
Tel number: +27(0) 28 423 3724
Fax number: +27 (0) 28 423 3789
Mobile number: +27(0) 82 577 7041
Email: [email protected]
Web address: http://www.jdwines.co.za/restaurant.html
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