PERHAPS I’m a cheapskate but I think R300 just for food albeit good is too much. Unlike Antique where the movers and shakers just seem to have loads of cash, at Forty Ate that too is a perquisite but along with cash they also come with heaps of cache. Perhaps it’s the French influence? The Congolese bar staff with their sculptured jaws, stubble and suave accents make it hard to order the cheaper option when a premium one will do as well.

Food ordering was as coercive but less pleasing on the eye. One of the owners – a Peter Ustinovian figure, sat himself down next to me on the smart candy-striped banquette and enquired about our tastes. “I’ll have the Salmon Foie gras and Kingklip with pancetta”, I say while Colin Douglas ponders the menu. He asks for some help: “I don’t eat milk products” he says to which our host suggests he try the gorgonzola! Colin detailed his particular tastes until he got the picture. Then it came to ordering the wine. “None for me”, I say, “just tap water” calculating the Bombay Sapphire and tonic (R28) and Kir Royale (R30) to the R300 food. “What? No wine!” he says with the kind of scorn that made the English and French sworn enemies. “I don’t care for any tonight”, I say with a haughtiness reserved for declining things too costly instead of admitting the truth.

The couple at the adjacent table – he in a Porcelli & Levy doubled-cuffed shirt with his three initials so discreetly embroidered that I couldn’t make them out in the dim lighting while she, more demure than Demi Moore, pretended not to look on.

Colin had decided only to have one course – if you think me declining wine shocked the host, Colin’s choice left him speechless until he tempted Colin with a fine Pinotage at half price – R100.

To our host’s credit he remembered Colin’s no dairy even when it came to serving the amuse bouche – a bisque, seared tuna and mussel and replaced the creamy bisque.

My salmon and Foie Gras (R120) was perfect. It is a combination I wouldn’t have considered but it works well.

I had the Kingklip wrapped in pancetta (R120) which the waitress called panacotta which was served with a portion of oxtail in a ramekin. The accompanying spiced red wine jus was good. The pancetta perfumed the kingklip and it was good to eat but a little overpowering considering the subtle flavours of the flesh. The oxtail was delicious and the very fine dice of vegetable proved the chef’s attention but why it was on the plate at all remains a mystery.
Colin’s Springbok (R160) was a little too chewy for such an establishment. The waitress confused the accompanying apple tarte tatin as a potato dish but he enjoyed it and, as it was with the fish, it was beautifully presented on a landscape plate.

The owners have succeeded in creating an elegant space that will please the folks that go to Antique as well as the moneyed but serious foodies that support Uitsig and Blue Danube.

The interior, inspired, in part, by Philippe Starck’s over sized wingbacks, dark timber-clad walls and long and narrow benches is delicious and the Haldane Martin Weightless bar stools add a beautiful local touch to a world class dining space. It’s certainly cheaper than traveling to Paris for dinner.

4T ATE (Forty Ate), 48 Hout Street, Cape Town. 021-422-2269.