Wolfgat

The table

Seven courses, picked for twenty

Wolfgat is a restaurant of twenty seats in Paternoster, on South Africa’s West Coast, about two hours north of Cape Town. The chef is Kobus van der Merwe, and the menu is his: seven courses from the Strandveld, the shore and coastal scrub of the West Coast. Mostly fish and shellfish, with veldkos (the wild plants of the veld), herbs, seaweeds from the rock pools, and the garden.

Some of it takes weeks to prepare. Some is picked on the day, the restaurant says, for the exact number of people booked. It books twenty a sitting, and it will not change the menu on the day. It shows no photograph of its dining room and names no table, so there is no seat to ask for. You book the sitting.

Its booking page puts the dietary question plainly, under a heading that reads: “Dietary requirements? You’re coming to the seaside.” Expect the sea in most courses. In season, some include lamb or venison: say so when you book if you eat neither.

Some of lunch is picked on the day, the restaurant says, for exactly the number of people who booked.

The restaurant’s book, “Wolfgat: Sketches of the Strandveld,” 256 pages written by Van der Merwe and photographed by Jac de Villiers, follows a tasting menu: bread and snacks first, then the starters, a main course, dessert. It shows what to hope for. A cultivated oyster from Saldanha Bay, cooked in its shell over hot coals and basted with Cape sparkling wine. Veldkool, a wild green whose short season falls at the end of the rains, in July and August, served three ways: pickled, blanched and scorched in the embers. A chapter on seaweed opens with a line about the low tide as a pantry.

Van der Merwe paints, too. The limited editions of the book come with his acrylics. The Chef’s Edition, 26 copies at ZAR 10,000, also comes with a tasting menu for two, on a date the restaurant can give you.

Under the floor

A cave called Wolfgat

The restaurant takes its name from a cave beneath it. The archaeologist John Parkington, whom the restaurant quotes, describes a large chamber under an unusually large shelf of calcrete, the cemented sand of this coast, most likely hollowed out by an underground stream that carried the softer sand away.

A first survey found pottery and sheep bones from some time in the last two thousand years, with marine shell, ostrich eggshell, beads and stone tools. Hearths are thought to lie buried. Local legend says the passages run inland for miles, as far as the Cape Columbine reserve.

You will not see it. After the survey, the book says, the narrow entrance was sealed with rocks and clay, for safety and to protect what is left. You eat on top of it.

The booking

Twenty seats, 72 hours

Every meal here is by appointment. There is no walking in off Sampson Street. The key to Wolfgat is the calendar on its website, run by Dineplan. The site does not say how far ahead it opens, so look as soon as your dates are fixed. Book there, and pay the deposit straight away: a booking not paid within 72 hours cancels itself. Change or cancel within 72 hours of your booking, the restaurant says, and the deposit is not refunded. Drinks and extras are paid on the day.

The menu is ZAR 1,750 a person. Book everyone in your party together, because tables booked separately are not joined. Ask for the vegetarian menu at the same time; there is no vegan one. Serious allergies go in the special-requests box, well ahead. Children under 16 are not admitted.

There is no telephone number on the site. Questions go by email, to [email protected]. If lunch is full on every date you can make, the book is sold on the same website, from ZAR 900, and it is the closest thing to the table.

Cape Town, 93 miles

Two hours up the coast, then the last turn

Lunch is the sitting to make the drive for: Wednesday to Saturday at 12:30, Sunday at noon. Dinner is served only on Friday and Saturday, at 7, and then the drive back is in the dark. Plan the day around the meal: the restaurant does not say how long it lasts, and seven courses are not hurried.

From the center of Cape Town it is about 93 miles, two hours by car if the road is clear; leave by 10 for the 12:30 sitting. From Cape Town International, it is about 101 miles and still about two hours. You drive north and come into Paternoster from Vredenburg, on the R45.

The restaurant gives the last turns itself. At the first intersection in Paternoster, turn left onto St. Augustine Road. Pass the Paternoster Hotel and the Paternoster Lodge on your left. At the Rooykliphoek center, turn right into Sampson Street. Wolfgat is about a hundred yards down, on your right: a whitewashed house above the beach, which the restaurant dates back some 130 years.