Is Babel open to the public?
Yes, Babel Restaurant is open for breakfast every day of the week from 8h00 to 9h30 and for dinner from 18h00. Lunch is served Wednesday to Sunday from 12h00. Our menu is seasonal and is always guided by what is available in the garden. Depending on the weather, guests can enjoy their meal in the glass-enclosed restaurant or under the plane trees in the courtyard.
What type of restaurant is Babel?
Babel has a unique style of menu, which focuses on fresh produce from the garden and the region. It is fed by a growing garden that you can overlook while you enjoy the restaurant experience. Like so much else at Babylonstoren, a meal at Babel promises to be both an adventure and a rediscovery of the honest essence of things. Babel’s food is directed by what the garden offers in a particular season.
- For breakfast, our menu is focused on texture. Help yourself to golden honey dripping from whole honeycombs. Or enjoy dollops of farm-made water buffalo yoghurt with a homemade baked granola. There’s also a scrumptious hot breakfast option which changes daily according to the chef’s inspiration from the garden.
- Our starters, or as we call them, Stirrings, focus on what we see as the highlights of the season. Simple cooking is paired with seasonal ingredients and our produce from the garden to capture the rhythms of the season.
- Main meals, or Progression, consist of two parts: first, meticulously sourced proteins where we focus on origin and relationships with the farmers and, secondly, delicious veggies from the garden that are served on the side, fully highlighting their beauty.
- Dessert, or Culmination, is focused on simple and nostalgic plays on flavours (salty, bitter, sweet and sour) as well as techniques, once again built around what is in season in the garden.
Our food always reflects the season. In spring, for example, we might serve Babylonstoren water buffalo mozzarella, fresh marinated early spring peas from our nursery tunnels, and fresh foraged herbs finished with one-year-old elderflower vinegar.
What is your food philosophy or style?
Simple, generous and honest. Fresh, seasonal food that is closely tied to its origins in the garden. Our style of food leans towards simplicity, but we play with unexpected flavour combinations and new varieties of fruit and vegetables in every meal. And while our meals are creative, we don’t like to tamper unduly with our food. Our meals are always clear in structure, so that fruit and vegetables gathered daily from the garden are often served whole or with the skin on – we believe our guests must be able to see what they are eating. Our helpings are very generous.
Is everything you serve in the restaurants grown or made on the farm?
The fresh produce used in our restaurant dishes is planted and harvested in our garden. What we cannot produce ourselves, we source locally. It sometimes happens that the fruit and vegetables in our garden need a little more time to ripen. We would rather wait to harvest at optimal ripeness and at such times we source locally, supporting our neighbours and other suppliers in the area.
Who is the head chef at Babel?
Schalk Vlok is the current executive chef. He works closely with our bakers and gardeners.
Photo and copy credit Babylonstoren