FYN has firmly established itself as one of Africa’s most acclaimed restaurants. A growing list of accolades – both for the restaurant and chef-owner Peter Tempelhoff – underscores its standing, with little sign that the momentum is slowing.
Fyn opened seven years ago and quickly became one of the defining dining destinations in the country. Last year, Tempelhoff became the first South African chef to receive Three Knives at the Best Chefs Awards, an accolade that positions him among the top chefs worldwide.
The restaurant is regularly ranked among the world’s top 100 restaurants, sometimes among the top 50. Culinary director chef Ashley Moss and beverage director Jennifer Hugé along with Tempelhoff create an experience deeply rooted in the Cape’s land and sea, and explore taste, texture and technique.
But where other fine dining restaurants often use a French approach and techniques, Tempelhoff uses local ingredients and translates them with the ethos of Japanese cuisine, with its multi-course tasting menu that blends precision and restraint, with bold local flavours.
On the fifth floor of a building in Cape Town’s CBD on Parliament Street, FYN’s floor-to-ceiling windows frame sweeping views of the city and Table Mountain. The restaurant had a thoughtful revamp in 2025. The dramatic ceiling installation – thousands of suspended discs – remains a focal point, while new tables and chairs enhance comfort and a wooden floor lends warmth. The chopsticks are now handcrafted with South African wood, where previously they had been imported.
The restaurant still exudes a calm sophistication with wood, stone and soft metal tones – with the open kitchen adding energy and transparency. The entrance was redesigned to make it a bit more dramatic, the kitchen flow was improved, small changes were made to lighting, chairs and tables were redesigned and the playlist was fine-tuned.
Our recent dinner at FYN had us savour The Experience Menu, a journey through earth, plant and sea – with indigenous and intriguing ingredients. It was world class.
The team sources much of the ingredients from their indigenous garden at Beyond, the sister restaurant at Buitenverwachting. The garden there supplies both kitchens with rare local produce. Among these are succulents like Sunrose, with its lemony tang, and a nutty root that can grow over a metre long with a taste like macadamia nuts.
They use noodles instead of pasta, and lighter sauces than the cream. They’re using locally inspired dashi (a light, savoury broth used as a base ingredient in Japanese cooking) as well as other broths, and more raw fish dishes. And they’re using sake, and soya sauce. But as Peter Tempelhoff says: ultimately FYN will always be rooted in South Africa, and the Cape in particular.
The tasting menu celebrates what makes the Western Cape singular. It draws from South African biomes and biospheres and land and sea plants. It’s about Cape game fish (tuna and yellowtail), sea plants (kelp, sea lettuce, wakame and nori), land plants (waterblommetjies, sunrose and dune spinach) and Cape Wagyu, a cross between African black cattle and Japanese wagyu, served with sauteed mushrooms and rooibos.
The courses are delicate and layered, they brim with creativity from the plating and presentation to the interplay of colour and form. Service is precise but not intrusive.
There’s also an element of playfulness. The non-alcoholic drinks are inventive – a vibrant kiwi and green tea refresher and a house-made cola that tastes like Haribo sweets, complete with a cola gummy on the side.
Dessert keeps the sense of fun alive: rice pudding made with Ishikawa rice, coconut and meringue, topped with ginger and puffed rice; a coconut-citrus sorbet with chocolate tuile for crunch; and a zingy finer lime and pineapple taffy inspired by Tempelhoff’s Durban roots, with chilli and shichimi spice adding a zestful bite.
Fermentation plays a central role. The team brews their own kombuchas and water kefirs (along with other infusions and tinctures) at the Buitenverwachting farm. Pescetarian, vegetarian and vegan tasting menus are also available.
As for the wine, Hugé, a French-South African sommelier who co-founded FYN and previously ran La Colombe for almost 18 years, curates pairings. The list is almost a tour of the Cape from Klein Constantia and Sadie Family Wines from the Swartland to Brookdale in Paarl, Delheim from Stellenbosch and Newton Johnson in Hemel-En-Aarde in the mix.
Tempelhoff knows the expectations are high. It’s about constantly pushing to do the best they can and offer the best possible experiences to their guests. A tall order, but FYN certainly rises to meet it.