Beautiful Food at Thonga Beach Lodge, Mabibi, Northern KwaZulu-Natal

Insert Before and After Selfie Here

Look there’s no need to make a complete scene, but do allow yourself a silent little weep when you encounter the heavenly food at Thonga Beach Lodge, Northern KwaZulu-Natal. How often does one find food that is truly delicious at the same time as being wholeheartedly healthy? Here you can camp out at the lunchtime buffet table, come back again for the high tea, eat every course of the glamorous dinner and start all over again with a cooked breakfast – all without self-recrimination of any kind.

The Thonga open deck lunches have all the right colours – bright green salads, red and yellow roasted peppers, orange caramelized butternut, green-black pumpkin seeds and olive coloured … well olives. You will find creamy Gorgonzola, lemon glazed chicken, glossy asparagus and fresh muscles in white wine sauce.

Dinners have creative spicing on sustainable fish, plentiful pesto super-green sauces, tender ostrich fillets and succulent pork.

If the thought of too much health makes you lose the will to live, fear not – decadent puddings and teas elevate the meals from worthy to worshipful. I meet the friends-forever kind of drunken chocolate mousse and I take a defensive stance over the red velvet muffins at the tea table (they have the good icing over which many a war has started from Mabibi to Manchester). I have a fleeting image of finding squashed cupcakes in my luggage back home, shrug and take another.

Despite these delicacies, combined with the plentiful beach activities and visits to the serene spa, you will come out of this holiday looking the healthiest, happiest version of yourself. Take a ‘selfie’ before and after photo to show the change from pudgy, pasty, stressy old you to slim, smooth, toned, shiny, happy new you – with just a hint of cream cheese icing on your nose to authenticate the image.

The Loft, Old Oak Manor, above Café Felix, Riebeek-Kasteel

Escape Fantasy

This is the kind of place where you find yourself spending much of your time imagining some series of (un)fortunate events which of course leave nobody any worse off, but where you are somehow trapped here for days on end in this loveliest of spaces, unable to return to your everyday hectic life. In this very particular and unrealistic fantasy of ‘circumstances beyond your control’ you are nonetheless nourished throughout your stay by the delicious meals from Café Felix below.

This is The Loft, at The Old Oak Manor, above Café Felix in the small one-street South African town of Riebeek-Kasteel. It is a surprisingly stylish space in which to indulge your escape fantasies, well designed by a kindred spirit who appreciates good design and décor. An open plan suite, one enters through double French wooden doors into a spacious lounge with couch and wingback chairs. There are pale grey walls, French antiques and wooden furniture throughout. 

The lounge is divided from the bedroom by a creative screen of white painted window frames. On either side there are more seating and writing areas, with coffee and tea facilities and an antique desk. A wooden slipper single bed and another wrought iron bed with teddy are available could you bear to share this place with anyone else. The bathroom is ever-so-lovely, with a French style freestanding bath, painted wooden floors and louvre screens on wheels.

Accommodation Experience:

I have always wanted to sleep above a restaurant, the idea of having a fabulous meal and then simply walking upstairs to a silky white bed somehow capturing my imagination. I sit in a corner of the Loft, listening to the sounds of life and smelling the enticing aromas from the restaurant below, but feeling hidden away from the world. 

Instead of joining the warm buzz of the restaurant below, I decide to continue my solitude and order dinner at the deck of my pretty suite which overlooks an autumnal vine and mountain. The universe responds, sending a Prussian blue sky, full bright moon and softly hooting owl as accompaniment. As opera music and a sweet local port drifts up from the restaurant below I drink in this moment and am able to extend it, seemingly forever, with no-one else any the worse off, and myself completely fulfilled and restored.