You have to see the Garden of Eden at Babylonstoren to believe it. It is heaven on earth. It is an eight-acre fruit and vegetable farm with over 300 varieties of plants growing in it, each one edible and grown as biologically as possible.
Fruit and veg are harvested year round for use in their Babel Restaurant. The garden is divided into fifteen areas for vegetables, fruits, berries, bees, indigenous plants, ducks and chickens. Gravity feeds water into waterways from a stream into the garden as it has done for 300 years.
Take a guided tour of the farm, as we did, before enjoying a lunch made from freshly picked fruit and vegetables you have just seen growing. Don’t forget to stop off for a fresh herb tea in the beautiful greenhouse before lunch.
You can pick your own blend of fresh herbs from the garden. I chose lemon verbena, pineapple sage and mint which was refreshing and light and made up for the beautiful rose water and strawberry cupcake we couldn’t resist to go with it.
Lunch at Babel is a joyful celebration of fresh local produce served in a natural and generous way. The maxim of the restaurant’s creator, Maranda Engelbrecht Cape Town’s food and style guru, is that the food should be served as naturally as possible, not messed about with or chopped into oblivion. Pick, clean and serve is her approach and it works. You really get that ‘fresh from the garden to the table’ feeling.
The restaurant is in a converted cow shed with floor to ceiling glass walls and white painted original brick. It is light, informal and incredibly chic. The menu reflects the seasons and what has been harvested that day. The salads are either red, green or yellow and abundant with beautiful produce in that colour. Speaking to Maranda she told me that she wanted the fruit and vegetables to be the main ingredients and the meat and fish to be additional. We chose the yellow which included edible lilies, passion fruit and carrot, papaya, tamarillo, pineapple, nectarines, yellow heirloom tomatoes, roasted corn and melon. You could add smoked trout, chicken or yoghurt cheese but it was perfect without.
It is the attention to detail that makes this such a memorable experience. The freshly made bread was served with a herb oil made from a mixture of herbs from the garden.
We were given an aperitif of Chenin grapes and cheesecake mouse which was stunning. I ordered the artichoke & goat’s cheese tart with caramelised onion, tamarillo & basil for my main course. The pastry was so crumbly and light and the filling was creamy and delicious. All the main courses come with chips and vegetables. Now about those chips …
They were the best I’ve ever tasted. Thick and chunky, hand cut, very crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle. The perfect chip served with course sea salt, cracked pepper and fresh lemon to squeeze over.
After lunch we had the absolute pleasure of meeting with Maranda Engelbrecht one of the driving forces behind this incredible concept. She let us have a look around her new venture there that is almost ready to launch. Another converted barn being made into a delicatessen and bakery selling freshly baked breads, homemade charcuterie and cheeses as well as a wine tasting area.
Is there no end to this woman’s talents? She is leading the food revolution in South Africa and I, for one, am definitely on board.
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