98 ShortMarket Street, Cape Town Central, South Africa
Cuisine:
French
Good for:
Dinner, Doing Business, Entertaining Clients, Late Night, Local Cuisine, Lunch, Private Dining, Reservations, Special Occasions
Bizerca Bistro
4 Visitor Photos +
Expert Review
Voted best bistro in South Africa, Bistrot Bizerca (formerly called Bizerca Bistro before moving to its new location), is a...
Voted best bistro in South Africa, Bistrot Bizerca (formerly called Bizerca Bistro before moving to its new location), is a small restaurant serving a small menu of delicious French cuisine. The highlight of Bistrot Bizerca for me is its wonderful location. Tucked away in Heritage Square, it sits nestled among several other restaurants, wine shops, and the Cape Heritage Hotel. It has a small, elegantly decorated dining room with exposed raw brick walls and interesting decor, but tops for me is the courtyard seating area. It’s light, airy, quiet, and serene. Enjoying a glass of wine or a coffee there, you can easily forget that you’re sitting in bustling downtown Cape Town.
The menu has just six classic dishes, complemented by daily specials written up on a chalkboard in bistro style. Between lunch and dinner, Bistrot Bizerca serves light cold dishes and desserts. I visited for a weekday lunch and had a wonderful time relaxing in the courtyard among a few business lunchers, foreign tourists, and South Africans on a long lunch break. I tried the server-recommended sirloin special from the chalk board. It was a perfectly cooked, medium rare, nice cut of sirloin served with braised shitake mushroom, green beans, and really tasty French fries. The portion was quite large, and I had to take half my steak home. The fish dish on the specials menu also looked very tempting as did the steak tartare and the free range chicken and bacon ballottine.
Service was excellent—very friendly, knowledgeable, and attentive. The food came out of the kitchen impressively quickly. I would definitely return to Bistrot Bizerca to sample some other dishes. It’s also a great place to spend some time having a coffee or wine and oysters in the wonderful courtyard as a break between browsing through the galleries and shops in Heritage Square and along nearby Bree, Loop, and Long Streets.
Expert Review
Now that Laurent Deslandes has moved his stylish bistro to the charming confines of Heritage Square, it’s no surprise that...
Now that Laurent Deslandes has moved his stylish bistro to the charming confines of Heritage Square, it’s no surprise that Capetonians have come out in droves to see if the food is as good with all the extra tables.
Happily the answer is a resounding yes, and the modern French cuisine that has become Laurent’s signature remains a breath of fresh Continental air in Cape Town.
“I love the backbone of French cooking, but very traditional French cuisine is sometimes a bit passé, so I try to give that a bit of a twist; make it a bit more modern,” explains Laurent.
A daily chalkboard menu offers half a dozen choices for each course, with a printed menu of Bizerca favorites always on offer. They include the trio of oysters, and a salad of Norwegian salmon that I cannot help but order on every visit: thick slices of fish, fatty marbling like veins of white gold, plated alongside a rocket salad dressed with vinaigrette of chives and spring onion. The braised pig trotters – deboned and wrapped in crisp pastry to be served with pan-seared scallops – are outstanding too, when available.
Bizerca is equally charming in day or night, with courtyard tables ideal for lazy summer lunches sheltered from the Cape’s notorious winds, while the sultry indoor space is a stylish, romantic space for evenings. There is also a new menu of small plates to cater for guests dining between lunch and dinner service, or late in the evening. Service, led by Laurent’s wife Cyrillia, is brisk, friendly and devoid of any fine-dining fawning.
Bistro in character, but modern in approach, it’s little wonder Laurent has become one of the city’s best-loved chefs.