Restaurant Klein Jan at Tswalu Kalahari selected amongst 10 Extraordinary Fine-Dining Experiences Around The World (Travel + Leisure)

Leading travel magazine Travel + Leisure, has singled out Restaurant Klein JAN at Tswalu Kalahari as one of 10 of the world’s most extraordinary fine-dining experiences. The US-based digital and print magazine provides a local eye on the best places to stay, eat, see, and explore, and reaches more than 16 million travellers every month.

Klein JAN tells the story of South African culture through food, from the ways of the old to the new. Creating Restaurant Klein JAN has been Chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen’s great homecoming project. Growing up on a farm in South Africa’s rural Mpumalanga province, he felt an instant connection to the vastness of the Kalahari and knew that the time had come to return the spirit of JAN – his Michelin-star restaurant in Nice – to home soil. The Kalahari region’s underexplored ingredients were the perfect inspiration to open a new restaurant and bring fine dining home – giving the food from the Kalahari the global stage it deserves.

In the words of Travel + Leisure: ‘The adventure begins en route to this one-of-a-kind dining destination, since wildlife and matchless landscapes encompass the drive in. Combine a century-old farmhouse in the midst of the Kalahari Desert’s iconic orange sand, an awe-inspiring subterranean root cellar 13 feet (almost four metres) below, and a soaring dining room open to the wild, and you start to get the picture of Klein Jan, a transportive culinary experience created by Michelin-starred chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen for South Africa’s largest private safari reserve. The surprises are endless and stupendous, both in the way diners physically move through the meal and the flavours, textures, and stories packed into the delectable journey that is distinctly of the Kalahari. This is no passive lunch or dinner; it’s participatory, immersive, and wildly thrilling, mysteries unfolding with every exceptional bite.’