Praise be, the La Colombe Group has added another jewel to its crown of sensational restaurants, and it’s fast becoming the PIER de resistance of the V&A Waterfront’s cornucopia of dining options. Located on the first floor of the Pierhead Building (above The Waterside Restaurant, the group’s other new restaurant), PIER offers an intimate, multi-course fine-dining experience that is, I’m happy to report, worthy of the internationally acclaimed reputation its sister La Colombe has garnered over the years.
Upon arrival, we were ushered upstairs to an unpretentious and minimalist yet warm and elegantly appointed dining room with 360-degree views of the harbour-facing façade of the V&A Waterfront and its quays. From the comfort of our table, we soaked up this scenery, delighting in the assortment of gulls and terns that whipped right past the generous windows and later, the moonrise over the Tygerberg hills to the northwest.
PIER delivers a 10-course ultra-fine dining experience that, in true La Colombe style, pays a deeply moving homage to the Cape’s natural heritage, with enough theatrical embellishment to keep you wide-eyed in wonderment and occasionally giggling like a child. Chef John Norris-Rogers, previously of La Colombe and La Petite Colombe, is at the helm of the kitchen so diners can expect genuine haute cuisine, and BOY, did we get it.
The 10-course Chef’s Tasting Menu kicks off with two hors d’oeuvres: a crispy salmon tartar, horseradish, and dill “taco” and a sweet crispy cracker topped with a nugget of springbok, chicken liver pâté, shaved truffle, and pea shoots. These are perched atop a cluster of barnacle shells (skillfully rendered from ceramic, I believe) and an upside-down mushroom, which was such a beautiful presentation we squandered a good five minutes just taking pictures. Next up were fresh oysters, tossed table-side in a skillet of creamy velouté, then served with an MCC foam, a sweet green salsa, and a generous smooch of caviar.
A brief aside: having before experienced a wine-paired meal at La Colombe, I ardently recommend the wine paired option (R1250) because it truly elevates the meal.
The third course was a caraway seed loaf served with a rich bone marrow butter and garlic butter, and then mussels served in a rich soubise with nuggets of black forest ham. This was followed by my absolute favourite of the evening: Thai-style tuna draped with a velvety blanket of apple and celery jelly and served with coconut and lime-laced tiger’s milk and topped with furikake, a delicious Japanese spice mix featuring crispy onions, garlic, spices, and sesame seeds. The combination of flavours and textures was rapturous. And then there was a dish of crayfish tortellini and melt-in-your-mouth pork jowl, served in a spiced coconut sauce.
I should also take a brief moment to mention the exquisite presentation of every dish, served either in a shell-shaped dish or adorned with edible flower petals and micro herbs, as colourful as butterfly wings. It felt somewhat sacrilegious to destroy the artistry with knife and fork, but, well, when you know what’s waiting for your palate on the other side, it makes the destruction a little easier.
The interlude for the meal was a brief sojourn to a bar-like counter at which we were treated to a palate cleanser of nitrogen-poached calamansi, a type of citrus fruit. Humans are somehow predisposed to find anything explosively vaporous intriguing, and so watching our palate cleanser hit the liquid nitrogen—which is so cold it practically ‘cooks’ whatever’s placed in it—elicited a round of “oohs” and “aahs”. The creation was bitingly cold on the tongue but quickly melted, unleashing a refreshing and cool citrus explosion upon the palate, readying us for one of the evening’s heavier meals: the karoo lamb.
Rolled in herbs and seared table-side on a trolley with a miniature firepit, the lamb was served in a pomegranate jus with smoked aubergine purée, harissa spice, tender stem broccoli, pearl couscous, and a crispy samosa-like shell for texture. At this point in the meal, we could have added a cheese course for an additional R150, but with just enough space left for our sweet courses, we decided against it.
Dessert was a dish of honeycomb, stone fruit, and bergamot, followed by petit fours. Referred to quite simply as “sea salt” on the menu, these consisted of chocolate and mango truffles atop a ceramic mussel dish filled with sea salt, the idea being that a few grains would cling to the chocolates as you lifted them off the dish, adding a most wonderful contrast of sweet and salty flavours.
And with that final chocolate, we concluded our meal at PIER Restaurant, which, I’m happy to report, is absolutely one worth repeating! The cost of dinner per person, minus the cheese course, is R1650, with an additional R1250 for wine pairing. They also offer a vegetarian version of the Chef’s Tasting menu, which, with there being a vegetarian in our party, looked just as appealing as the regular experience.
All-in-all, PIER delivers a steady, impeccably managed procession of dishes, culminating in an ultra-fine, ocean-side dining experience that will send you home reeling with the artistry and table-side theatre of it all. And all of this, accompanied by the iconic views the Cape Town harbour is adored for. It’s little wonder the waiting list is several weeks long. Better book well in advance!