The 2026 hot list: the 6 best new restaurants in South Africa

Constantia does not need another place asking you to behave beautifully over lunch. Kleinsky’s gives the suburb a better everyday move: bagels, breakfasts, noshes and New York-style deli classics from the Cape Town brand started by brothers Adam and Joel Klein in Sea Point in 2014. The formula still does the work because the details hold up: bagels rolled, slow-fermented, boiled in malted water and baked, pastrami brined, spice-coated and braised for hours, breads and pastries made in-house. Go for bagels, deli breakfasts, catering runs, coffee and a casual stop before Groot Constantia gets all postcard about itself.

High Constantia was the warm-up. Foxcroft has moved to Constantia Nek, taking chef-proprietor Glen Williams’ small-plates discipline into a southern suburbs landmark with valley views. La Colombe Restaurant Group holds two Eat Out Awards stars (2025) and runs tasting-style menus built on tight flavours and clean technique. Expect herbed-salt bread with jersey butter, truffled cauliflower and roasted yeast, yellowtail ssam and tomato kimchi with Namibian crab and perilla. Later courses lean bolder: crayfish with mushroom, jollof and berbere, cannon of lamb with turnip and denningvleis, then chestnut, mascarpone and burnt vanilla. Petit fours land at the end, as they should.