The cold table
- Pieter’s bread, still warm, and butter
- Fig and quince preserve, made in February
- Oats, muesli and plain yoghurt
- Whatever fruit is good that week
- Filter coffee, rooibos, and tea that is not a bag of dust
Breakfast & Dinners
A proper Karoo breakfast
Pieter bakes the breakfast bread himself.
The question every first-timer asks
“Is breakfast included?”
Always. A full Karoo breakfast with Pieter’s fresh bread — it’s half the reason people come back.
— Nadia
The morning
Half past seven until half past nine, and no earlier bell.
Breakfast is laid in the dining room, or on the stoep if the morning is behaving. Come down when you are ready — there is no sitting, no buffet queue and nobody clearing plates around you.
Everything hot is cooked to order, which means it takes about ten minutes and arrives hot rather than sitting under a lamp. Pour a coffee while you wait; that is the whole design.
If you are walking and need to leave before light, say so the night before. Pieter will put out a flask, and a parcel of bread and boiled eggs, and you can go without waking anybody.
On the table
What “a full Karoo breakfast” actually means.
Not a warming tray of everything. A cold table you help yourself from, and one hot plate cooked how you want it.
The hot plate
- Farm eggs, any way you like them
- Karoo lamb boerewors
- Tomato-and-onion smoor
- Mushrooms, when the market has them
- Toast from the same loaf, if you would rather
Tell us, and we cook around it
Vegetarian, vegan, no gluten, no dairy, halaal — say so when you enquire and it is simply handled. Pieter bakes anyway, so a loaf that works for you is usually the easy part. This is a kitchen with four rooms to feed, not a hotel buffet; nothing about it is a special request.
Two small institutions
The bread, and the rusk tin.
Pieter has made the same loaf since 2011 and will not be drawn on the recipe beyond “flour, water, salt, time”. The dough goes in the night before. If you are up early you will meet him in the kitchen and he will give you the heel of yesterday’s.
There is a tin of Nadia’s buttermilk rusks in every room and a bigger one on the stoep, refilled on Sundays. They are for dipping in coffee, and you do not need to ask. Guests have been known to leave with a bag.
“Dankie vir die brood en die stoep. Ons kom weer.”
Thank you for the bread and the stoep. We’ll be back. — the guest book, Die Van Wyks, Bloemfontein
Dinner
Around the braai, on request.
Graaff-Reinet has good restaurants and you should use them. But on the nights people ask, we light the fire in the werf and put one long table out, and it turns into the best evening of most people’s trip.
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Ask by noon
That is the only rule, and it is because the meat comes from the butcher on Church Street the same afternoon. A message on WhatsApp is enough.
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R350 a head
Three courses, added to your bill. Children under twelve are half. Bring your own wine — we have glasses, ice and a fridge, and we do not charge corkage.
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One long table
Everyone eats together, which is either the best or the worst news depending on the person. If you would rather eat alone we will lay a table for two on the stoep instead — just say.
What comes out of the fire
Karoo lamb chops off the coals, or a vegetable potjie that is not an afterthought. A potato bake. Salad from the garden in summer and from the market in winter. Bread from the morning. Malva pudding and custard, because there is no arguing with it.
Small print, small questions
The rest of the food.
Can we have breakfast earlier than 07:30?
The cooked breakfast, no — Pieter is baking. But the flask, the bread parcel and boiled eggs go out from about six for anyone walking, and there is always coffee. Tell us the night before.
Is lunch available?
No. The town is five minutes away and does lunch far better than we would. Nadia will point you at the two places she actually eats at.
Can we use the kitchen?
Not the main kitchen, sorry. Die Werf has a fridge, a kettle and a toaster for milk, medicine and a late-night sandwich, but no cooking — this is a guest house, not self-catering.
Do you sell wine or beer?
We are not licensed, so no. Bring your own and we will keep it cold and give you the glasses. There is a bottle store in town, and a micro-brewery on Church Street worth the walk.
We’re arriving late and starving. What then?
Tell us when you are an hour out. If the kitchen is shut there will still be bread, cheese, preserve and soup in a pot, and nobody has ever gone to bed hungry here.