Omilo · Fogo · Avero — Cape Town
Greek, Portuguese and Italian, cooked properly by people who cook. Welcome to The Kitchen Collection.
Tonight, I feel like
The house
Omilo, Fogo and Avero each belong to a country. The Kitchen Collection belongs to none of them. What the three have in common is not a cuisine but a standard: every one of them is a kitchen first, run by people who cook properly.
Each restaurant keeps its own name, its own chefs and its own regulars. We do not dress them alike. We make sure they cook alike: properly.
Good suppliers, honest prices, a pass wiped down before service and a table you are not hurried away from. Whatever is being cooked.
Three kitchens today. The house was built for more, and the next one will not have to be Portuguese, Greek or Italian.
The kitchens
All three are in Observatory. Pick by what you feel like eating; the standard is the same whichever door you walk through.
Observatory
Greek, the way it is eaten at home.
Tzatziki, fava and tirosalata for the middle of the table, spanakopita and ravasaki from the oven and the fryer, then whatever comes off the charcoal grill: deboned baby chicken, pork belly, lamb rump done the chef's way.
Observatory
Portuguese, cooked over live fire.
Frango piri-piri marinated overnight, espetada and pork ribs off the open grill, prawns and Cape fish done the Portuguese way, and pastéis de nata served warm to finish. Wines from the Douro, Alentejo and Dão.
Observatory
Contemporary Italian, given the time it deserves.
Pasta rolled by hand, bolognese cooked long and slow, carbonara with no cream, ever, and Napoletana pizza from a forty-eight-hour dough. The Fiorentina is a 1.2kg T-bone. Bring someone to share it with.
Our story
Andreas and Piet met on the golf course. Somewhere between the first tee and the eighteenth green, over enough rounds to know how the other one plays, a friendship turned into a plan: a restaurant run the way they would want to be fed.
That restaurant was Omilo, a Greek kitchen in Observatory. Andreas brought the feel for the floor and the pass; Piet, who has spent his working life building businesses, brought the structure around it. It worked, so they did it again with Fogo, and again with Avero.
The Kitchen Collection is the name for what the three share. Each keeps its own name, its own chefs and its own regulars. Behind every door is the same friendship and the same standard.
It started with a round of golf. It became three kitchens.
Co-owner · the kitchen
Started Omilo with Piet. Keeps the cooking honest across all three kitchens.
Co-owner · the house
Started Omilo with Andreas. Builds the house around the kitchens: suppliers, rooms and people.
Work with us
One group behind three kitchens means one conversation, not three. Tell us who you are and what you have in mind. We do not take job applications through the site.
Butchers, bakers, growers, fishmongers and wine. If it is good enough for one kitchen, it may be good enough for three.
Landlords and developers with a site that wants a proper kitchen in it.
