The Cape Town CBD’s edgy East City is fast becoming a foodie haven. Please welcome Tambourine and its bright young chef to the hood.
A small dining space in a renovated heritage building has understated decor and a keen focus on flavour. Here it’s about casual eating, using fresh produce in mini dishes that have a modern global stamp. And cultural elements drawn from Africa, South-east Asia and elsewhere, on a base of classic techniques.
Tambourine opened next door to Belly of the Beast in late July 2025, adding to the East City’s eating offerings. It is a sister restaurant to the Gorgeous George hotel’s Gigi Rooftop Restaurant & Bar in St Georges Mall. Gigi’s executive chef Kyle du Plooy was receiving a kitchen door delivery in Harrington St in the East City when I arrived one lunchtime. He’s had a hand in the design of the menus, but the food offering is the work of head chef Keane Munro, he says.
Munro may be only 26, but he’s been trained or mentored in solid kitchens from Franschhoek to Singapore (the latter in celebrated Asian chef Justin Quek’s restaurant) for close to a decade.
I asked Munro to define “rhythm of the flavour” during his kitchen break. “Kyle and I don’t want to group ourselves under one set cuisine. I don’t want to say it’s organised chaos, but we’re exploring different flavours and not saying it’s just South African cuisine or just Asian cuisine,” he says.
“My whole thing about food is to try and step away from fine dining. I grew up with a family where at 6 o’clock you sat down, shared the food, found out about each other’s day. The idea behind small plates is to bring that feeling of ordering lots of dishes, eating and sharing. Bringing people together.” If you’re a table of two, start with four plates, then add more if still hungry …
CASUAL & COMFORTABLE
Today’s diners generally opt for unintimidating spaces. “There’s a time and place for strict fine dining, but you don’t have to be in that environment all the time,” says Munro. “A lot of how I cook now is about good flavours, no BS.”
Tambourine’s décor is casually comfortable. Exterior walls have lively red ochre, pink and midnight-blue painted designs. A satin curtain welcomes diners into the restaurant in the same blue. Tambourine director Josh Cawood explains that they opened the building space and brought in light: “We honoured the heritage value by leaving the top part of the wall as the original bricks.”
Artist Ralph Borland’s dichromatic filters hang from the ceiling like upside-down lollipops, spotlights from opposite walls casting orange and green beams of reflected light. Above tan banquettes, black lamps arc away from walls, throwing spotlights on dining tables.
The ochre red of a painted structural beam is repeated in the bar’s mosaic tiles, and in same hues are repeated in the framing of a ribbed glass cabinet suspended from the ceiling above it. A small courtyard terrace has seating in pincushion protea orange-red. “It’s more of an in-between space to have a drink,” Cawood notes.
SMALL PLATES MENU
Less than 20 small plates are on the menu (there are no starters nor mains), with fish, seafood and red meat options costing a little more. The fish collar dish is visually appealing: tender flesh near the gills marinated in white miso and yuzu, with a stock reduction. Aged beef tri-tip entices with bone marrow butter, flaked chilli and hand-chopped gremolata.
“In the kitchen we cook on a massive braai,” Munro explains. It’s a very fancy one, and is used to smoke meat, lamb and chicken, to char cabbage – and to bake bread.
There is a lot to like in vegetarian options, too. Charred baby cabbage with chestnuts, dates, blue cheese and chives is proving popular. A white wine and hay butter risotto pairs with Jerusalem artichokes, illustrating the restaurant’s seasonality focus.
Cawood talked me through essence of lamb and pap. “It’s a reminder of Sunday roast. Kalahari lamb rib, loin and neck, served with a yellow maize pap, plus skoko, the piece of pap that crisps on the bottom of a pot. Traditionally the head of the house gets the skoko.”
Two other plates also honour African heritage: Fish fillet partners kumquat atchar, with nasturtium, macadamias and sesame dukkah. A wild African rice parcel emulating a dolmade uses African rice in spinach instead.
SOCIAL COMMITMENT
Keane Munro The farm-to-table project at Moya weKhaya farm in Khayelitsha supplies about 60 % of Tambourine’s fresh produce. Ten gogos and two men run the operation. “They sit with knowledge, but the lacking commodity was physical labour. So, we’ve been trying to get more youth involved, add the muscle,” says Cawood.
It’s a socially conscious example of how Tambourine is shaking things up with a long-term partnership. The farm grows leeks, chives, carrots and spinach, radishes for pickling, plus herbs and edible flowers for the kitchen and bar. “We’re collecting our kitchen food waste and ash and that’s going to the compost on the farm when our driver collects their seasonal produce twice a week,” he reveals.
“We advise them on what to grow and they’re making sure they have what we need. We’ve tried to position in such a way that there is no middleman, so it all goes back to the farmers.” A win-win for farmers and flavours.
Tambourine is open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner.
Address: 104 Harrington Street, Cape Town
Contacts: 021 612 0400, www.tambourine.co.za, Insta @tambourinecpt
IMAGES: Jon-Erik Munro, Visual Pill Productions, Kim Maxwell
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