One of the first things we did after booking our honeymoon in South Africa was figure out how to get into one of our bucket list restaurant’s: Test Kitchen in Cape Town.
This restaurant is one of the most renowned restaurants in the world and tops many foodie lists, so we knew it was a place that we wanted to make a culinary highlight of the trip. Their famous tasting menu is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, especially after more than 100 days of being on the Whole30 diet for my wedding and pretty much depriving myself of some of my favorite foods.
But, reservations at the restaurant are notoriously hard to come by, so if you don’t come up with an approach to a reservation early, you’re out of luck. We had good luck getting a reservation at Sukiyabashi Jiro in Japan, which is considered one of the hardest tables in the world to get, so we decided to try our luck yet again.
In Sukiyabashi Jiro, we relied on our five-star hotel’s concierge to nab a reservation for us, but that approach doesn’t work with Test Kitchen. We had a friend of ours who paid a super expensive travel agent for his trip to arrange his entire honeymoon strike out both with the well-connected travel agent and also his hotel concierge – The super elite One & Only, so we knew we didn’t want to try and outsource this reservation. That friend also tried to get his platinum American Express concierge to make the reservation, but they also struck out. This obviously made me fearful of our chances of a reservation.
With this in mind, I went about researching Test Kitchen’s reservation policy. The restaurant only opens up reservations four times a year at a certain time. At that stated time, you can book reservations for the following three months.
So, I marked my calendar for about 12:55AM New York time on the stated date so that I could set up my computer and hover on the Test Kitchen reservation site at the strike of 1am and try our chances at a dinner reservation for two. As I hit refresh at 1am, to my surprise they had 8pm dinner reservations for the Friday and Saturday we are in Cape Town. I frantically clicked the 8pm Saturday reservation and put in my payment details to reserve the table and clicked “enter” hoping that no technical snags would derail my progress. Test Kitchen requires a fee of 600 rand per person when reserving a table. This is then put towards your final bill the night of the dinner.) When the screen refreshed showing our reservation confirmation I shouted a little yelp of excitement and tried not to wake up my sleeping fiancé next to me.
I refreshed the screen after just to check if more reservations were open and it’s pretty remarkable because just a few minutes after 1am almost all of the reservations were filled up. You also have the option for the wait list through the website if you get completely shut out. And, if you get completely shut out of Test Kitchen, the same restaurant group has other restaurants that are easier to get into, such as Potluck Club, so that could be a good option as well.
We will circle back in May with a write up of our dinner at Test Kitchen as well as our travel guides to Cape Town, Hermanus, Franschhoek and Safari!
Read More Of Our Africa Travel Guides:
The Ultimate Cape Town Travel Guide
Where To Eat & Drink in Cape Town
How To Get A Reservation At Test Kitchen In Cape Town
Where To Say In Cape Town: The Twelve Apostles Hotel
Safari Fashion: How To Look Chic on Safari
Where To Stay In Hermanus: One Marine Drive Hotel
Hermanus, South Africa Travel Guide
Franschhoek & Stellenbosch Travel Guide
Our Safari In Sabi Sands