A Fare To Remember

At The Moveable Feast, Cape Town’s unusual new bistro, nothing is as it seems.

- Piet Smedy

They say you should never trust a skinny chef. The sentiments of someone in favour of engineering cholesterol bio-warfare on the restaurant industry, maybe, but the take-away does stick: when it comes to food, leave it to those who know. And much like looking chic while smoking, maintaining a size 28 waistline on a diet of baguettes and Merlot and making extra-marital affairs seem permissibly romantic, no one pulls off being French quite like the French. Put it down to their je ne sais quoi. Case in point: Cape Town bistro The Moveable Feast, where the Gallic it-factor positively permeates the rococo boiserie, and its native Frenchmen owners Rafael Wallon Brownstone and Vincent John Soimaud.

The restaurateur friends, a former DJ and music producer, respectively, who made their culinary debut pioneering Japanese eateries in Paris, occupy a level of cool so stratospheric Felix Baumgartner wouldn’t jump from it. A dangerously fulsome metaphor but still pretty accurate.