I went to Tokara for lunch on Saturday. It was a friend’s birthday. so we were a table of about 20. One person noted that if Tokara can handle a table of 20 ordering a la carte, why do other places tell you for tables bigger than 8 you must have a set menu? That’s unacceptable.
The view from the restaurant is absolutely stunning. Most wine farms have nice views of vineyards and mountains etc, but this view is something special. Check out the pics I took (the link is at the end of this post). The decor of the restaurant seems to be designed to not distract from the view. It has large windows for the view and the rest is fairly non-descript, wooden tables and chairs.
The food is pretty good. I had the tomato soup starter (R38) which didn’t have too strong a tomato flavour, which is a problem I often have with tomato soup. The main I had was chicken breast on pasta with some steamed veggies (R85). The chicken was tender and the sauce tasty, but nothing to write home about. The creme Brulee (R33) to finish was amazing, one of the better ones I have had. The portion sizes can be described as quite small.
One problem I had is that the place is really expensive. The starters are all R105 except for 2 or 3 and the mains are all R135 and up exept for 2 or 3. If you had 3 courses it could set you back nearly R300 just for your food. I didn’t get to look at the wine list so can’t tell you what those prices are like but I can tell you that Tokara’s wines are excellent.
The service was fine and the place really is lovely. If you’re looking for a place for a special lunch, then this is a good option.
Here is the link to the pics : http://picasaweb.google.com/relaxwithdax/SabrinaSBirthdayAtTokara
Comments
5 responses to “Tokara review”
Hi Dax, sorry I don’t have a comment on the above (though it sounds great and definitely worth a visit). I am trying to contact you to ask for the contact details of Kitima (reviewed on your website) but can’t find an email address for you anywhere !
Please help me out if you can – I would like to book for my wedding anniversary in June.
Victoria
And I in turn don’t know how to contact you. The number for Kitima is 021 790 8004.
My email is dax@relaxwithdax.co.za
We had lunch at Tokara on Saturday. Or rather, we didn’t. It began badly enough, with the usual “Have you a booking?” after we announced our name, and the person on the desk deigned to break off from a more interesting chat with his mates to scan the booking as though he’d never clapped eyes on it – how hard can it be to spend five minutes checking the names before people start to arrive? Obviously muc too hard for Tokara. The tables, for a hideously over-priced joint like this, were devoid of anything resembling an attractive setting and stayed that way for the two hours we spent waiting. Service was incredibly slow. Starters took over an hour to arrive, without cutlery. By then we were too hungry to care about the rubbery quail and limp salads. We begged for bread, which eventually appeared. But no sign of our main courses. After another interminable wait (the next table was suffering the same experience) we gave up and ordered the bill. Which arrived without any gesture from the management. Why should they bother? This is why. Tokara, do the math. Don’t you incompetants realise that every new customer is a potential regular? Maybe a dozen meals a year for another five years? Tokara, you just lost our business for all time. And believe me, we will be spreading the word.
That sounds like a disaster, you can’t believe a place like Tokara could get it so wrong.
Ok, so it seems as though I am the waiter that served these two tables that day, and I will never forget the experience that I had. I was not allowed to speak my mind and had to keep my mouth shut the entire time these two tables lambasted me. Tom, I am terribly sorry about what happened that day, you, your wife and children were terribly polite and it pained me to see you so upset.
I don’t know if you have ever been a waiter before, but at Tokara there are a few things that are done completely differently to other restaurants. Firstly, I was given that entire outside section to do, on my fourth shift that I had worked there. Secondly, there is no management at Tokara and the waiters are expected to deal with it themselves. Thirdly, no quick orders are printed out from a printer when we place them, we rather have to write them down on little pieces of paper, draw a table with the different people sitting at it and also do it in the precise order the people are sitting around the table. These things already make placing the order difficult and getting the job done quickly. This of course is compounded by the fact that all the drinks must be fetched, or made by us. Basically, everything besides cooking the food, we do.
That day was an absolute nightmare for us all. Obviously for me it was a hundred times worse because of those shocking people I had to serve in the Table next to Tom’s who complained about basically everything since they arrived anyway. So basically, it was too much to handle. There was no one to help me, no one who could make things slightly better, it was just me on my own trying to serve these tables.
No one understands what it is like behind the scenes and it is very easy to complain and “spread the word” but I assure you that that day was definitely an exception.
Needless to say, because of the reactions of those tables I was fired afer my shift, so if you do ever go back to Tokara at least you won’t have to deal with me ever again.