On The Dock Of The Bay

A legacy of excellence, hands-on commitment and steadfast vision are the foundations of 9th Avenue Waterside restaurant, which is reeling in patrons at its prime spot on Durban’s harbour

- Andrea Abbott

When Gina and Graham Neilson, owners of Durban’s multiple award-winning 9th Avenue Bistro, announced they were relocating the restaurant, their website received so many hits – around 90 000 – it kept crashing. “One of the biggest lessons I learnt from moving is that I hadn’t realised how much we meant to Durban,” says Gina. The move was necessary though. “We were a neighbourhood bistro but a lot of our customers and many local businesses were moving out of Berea and going north to Umhlanga and beyond.”

The couple knew that in the challenging restaurant arena, if they were to grow their business, they too would have to move from the space they’d long occupied in a shopping centre on 9th Avenue in Morningside. “The bistro was purely about dining. We realised we needed a bigger place so we could offer multiple facilities like a cocktail lounge, and a venue for conferences and weddings,” Gina shares.

Their search for a new location took them to Umhlanga and as far as the KZN Midlands before ending at Durban’s Yacht Mole, a pier that extends into Durban’s harbour. There, the dockside premises that once housed the popular Café Fish (which closed down in 2013) grabbed their attention. The dilapidated, 25-year-old building had been condemned by the city but Gina and Graham were not deterred. “We loved it and saw a chance to do something special in Durban that would also uplift the neighbourhood, in a similar way that The Test Kitchen in Cape Town has uplifted Woodstock,” Gina enthuses.