A little while back I did my first ever real travel review of the Rico Suter Country House, about 2 hours outside of Cape Town, great little place, go take a read if you haven’t. Anyway, on our way back home from our weekend away we decided to take a little turn at the Spice Route ‘wine farm’
Now I say ‘wine farm’ because there seems to be a new age of wine farms that are more wine theme parks than farms. Of course they don’t have any of the fun thrill seeking rides you’de expect at a theme park ( the corkscrew seems like a missed opportunity) but are rather culinary experiences to provide you with a full day of family fun. Assuming eating is fun for your family that is.
We arrived at a very full Barley and Biltong during lunch so the hostess recommended we do a quick beer tasting next door at the Cape Brewing Company while we wait for a table. I didn’t object.
They have 2 beer tasting options, R25 for 4 CBC beers or R35 for 6 beers 4 of them CBC and 2 Jack Black beers, reluctantly we went for the 4 beer tasting having spotted the burgers that awaited us at Barley and Biltong we wanted to get back and stuff our faces.
Not only are you in a working brewery, but they have a little beer tour you can take to find out all about the process. We skipped the tour, because, well, we just wanted to drink the beer, not just look at it. Our “craft beer specialist’ talked us through every beers origin and flavour profile as she expertly poured us our tasters.
Mmmmm. Beeeeeer!
The lager was delicious, but the pilsner won us over, so we stuck to that when we returned to Biltong and Barley for lunch.
The menu isn’t huge, but its not really supposed to be I don’t think, its a craft burger joint, they do burgers, they do them well. Stick to what you know seems to be their philosophy.
We decided to give all the options a try, so ordered a bowl of biltong ( a form of beef jerkey for my american readers), the caraway salted Bretzel with butter and the ‘Tafelburger’ which draws it’s name from Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain landmark, though at R95.00 I thought I might be buying the actual mountain.
The biltong was delicious, though a little dry for my liking, then again, i should have asked for moist, or maybe have gone for something different like one of the game biltongs on offer.
The burger, I can honestly say was worth every cent. Thick, juicy, covered in mature cheddar and a home made tomato sauce, it really caught me off guard as I honestly wasn’t expecting that amount of awesome in my mouth! The chips were okay, they felt a little processed and certainly didn’t deserve to share the plate with the burger, either way, we left none behind.
The bretzel didn’t really feature to be honest. I mean, we ate it, but why did we even order that?
Conclusion?
Definitely go for the burgers. I know I’ll be back, I mean, look how happy I am in that photo!!!
After lunch we walked around a little, had a chocolate tasting and finished off with a very milky flatwhite (nothing worse). There’s quite a bit to still see and do at Spice Route, so we’ll definitely be back to try one of the other culinary rides.
Barley and Biltong is open everyday and you can contact them on 021 863 4539 or drop them a mail at info@barleyandbiltong.co.za for bookings and stuff.
Okay. Stay fancy.
