It was when Bryan Wolmarans emerged from the kitchen after lunch service, lightly steamed and damp, in his denim dungarees, with the tiniest unsuspected fleck of glitter stuck to his cheek that, studying him, the word “endearing” came to mind. He and Stephen de Meyer were quietly discussing the beauty of a huge bouquet of spinach that had been delivered by one of their immediately local suppliers. I saw it laid respectfully on a chest freezer in the downstairs kitchen passage. Each crisply corrugated leaf glowed with freshness and Bryan was deciding how it should most deservingly be served for dinner, later.

That fleck of glitter could have brushed off any of the evening bags or lurex shoes, even boas, arrayed about the two dining rooms. Glitter is not necessarily out of place at Mrs Simpson’s. Guests donate all kinds of glamorous goods to the owners, especially shoes.

The shoes have become almost as much of an attraction as the food that’s all about contentment, some truly vintage collector items, and other current pairs from couturier Errol Arendz, for instance. The mayor of Köln’s boyfriend once called about a pair of glitzy size 10s, which were supplied, for him to wear to an Easter fancy dress party in Germany. And a tradition was born. The shoes are regularly sold off. Paul Harris is a typical supporter, presumably not for the benefit of his own feet but because the money is used for the Dullstroom branch of Epilepsy South Africa with its residents’ centres “just down the road”. The restaurant also supplies food to them.

Fifteen years ago Bryan and Stephen named the restaurant for the fishing fly, this being such a trout-fishing town, “and the rest of the décor just evolved”, says Stephen quite proudly. The “Mrs Simpson” is a classy looking fly with just a hint of streaming glitter, but apparently it was named when Wallis Simpson was luring (the then still) King Edward into matrimony as a catch, something most of Stephen’s many books on the matter gainsay. It seems she wasn’t that keen on the marriage, just an affair for various reasons.

Wallis Simpson out-stares the diners from one particularly large painting. Last night a group of us were eating here and I winked at her. Another table of plumply bare-shouldered girls looked from me to her and back again. She remained impassively stern, even though I had her namesake, Wallis the cat, on my lap.

Wallis snoozed through my completing a plate of rich and memory-making duck ragu that Bryan had served with homemade spaghetti “because I thought it should have a pasta more delicate than tagliatelle – it’s not as if it’s a bolognaise ragu”. Afterwards he mentioned I might have tasted something a bit different in the ragu and, if I did, it was smoked rose paprika and he was using it in all kinds of things at present. He and Stephen had brought back a stash of the best from Hungary on their recent visit.

Like so many others that come to and then come back to Mrs Simpson’s, I long for a certain solace dish of theirs. In my case it’s duck confit and the accompaniments that change with the seasons or Bryan’s whim. This time it would have been sour granadilla, potato and interesting vegetables if Bryan hadn’t said anything about that ragu. When not in Dullstroom, which is most of the time, I think about the cold-room duck legs blanketed in layers of their own fat, waiting for my next visit, ready to be skin-crisped.

Trout and salmon cakes, chunkily fishy and creamy inside. Photo: Gwynne Conlyn

Wallis hadn’t stirred much either for trout and salmon cakes, shared with one of the others, chunkily fishy and creamy inside, held together by the crunchy exterior and not by soaked breadcrumbs or mash.

An ever-favourite – Moroccan prawns and mussels. Photo: Gwynne Conlyn

One of the men with us polished off a Mrs Simpson’s ever-favourite, Moroccan Prawns and Mussels. All these favourites, like superbly tender lamb shanks, also on the table, mean that Bryan can hardly change the menu much for fear of people losing their comfort dishes. However, that doesn’t seem to have altered the rate at which the restaurant wins dining awards. The puddings also fall into this succour category, featuring some of the richest homemade vanilla-dotted custard slipping over a malva pudding, over there a real trifle and a fairy tale crème brûlée.

The puddings fall into the succour category. Photo: Mrs Simpson’s

I think of Dullstroom with a glinting silver exterior enclosing a green soft centre because outside the little town are maybe a hundred or so shimmering pools, dams where people are playing with slippery, glimmering rainbow trout. The interior is soft green, criss-crossed by country style lanes, where runaway blooms from expensive gardens have decided to grow. There are hedges more often than fences. It includes the quiet green hill, seen from everywhere in town. The long straight traffic thoroughfare, where most of the restaurants and cafes are, is at a busy tangent to the silver surround. Along it, tourist backpackers and young men selling nuts or helping to park vehicles dodge the trucks and cars streaming through, since there are no pavements. In the very centre of the inner green Dullstroom village is a stone church, a Hervormde Kerk stemming from Dutch settler days. It stands on its green sward where ox wagons would once have gathered around the church every quarter of a year. Then, people from further afield congregated with locals in the little town, for nagmaal or communion, camping around the church and socialising for a few days before wending home again till the next outing.

The green is directly opposite Mrs Simpson’s. Helicopters often land there over weekends. Then one or two men in fishing khakis of many pockets clustered with new flies, even on their floppy hats, make their way over to Mrs Simpson for lunch with a wife or two. “All the gear – no idea” is muttered behind their backs.

The Wallis Crossing road sign from the green is no longer as relevant as it once was. As a very elderly but remarkably beautiful cat, she doesn’t venture much further than the fireplace.

It’s not that the weather is cool. Dullstroom is experiencing record summer highs of 30 degrees, though the mist tempers things at the start of the day and Dullstroom’s 30 seems nothing like Joburg’s glittering 30.

Giant porcini mushrooms come from under the trees on the stone-church green. Photo: Gwynne Conlyn

From the same location across the road, under old Dutch-planted trees, people bring over giant porcini mushrooms. The one just presented by a proud small boy to Bryan is the size of two dinner plates and about that shape. No doubt about there being plans for it because it disappears down to the kitchen hastily.

Mrs Simpson’s is justifiably famous for its pies, as you might be imagining by now. We discuss the organic Dullstroom blueberries collected from a local’s farm just outside the town and talk turns to Bryan’s blueberry-and-apple pies. I’m immediately longing for one. That’s how it is here. His game pies are filled with the meat that the local dominee of the church hunts. The clergyman beyond the porcini and helicopters across the road. The blesbok and warthog meats are from him.

The local dominee hunts blesbok and warthog for Mrs Simpson’s famous pies. Photo: Mrs Simpson’s

One late Sunday morning I watched a fairly large family, probably just out of church, receiving their effusive welcome-hugs from Stephen as they filed into the restaurant. A just-teenage daughter with an uncertain smile was swivelling large eyes from her mother, already inside, to where her father would be entering any minute. Would he, she seemed to be wondering, accept a hug from a man? He did and she remained saucer-eyed, somehow a little shocked.

It was the morning that Bryan asked me if I remembered “a politician called Roelf Meyer”. He pressed into my hand a small bunch of lemongrass tied up with a piece of raffia. “Here, from him – he has a place here now – to me, to you!”

A bunch of lemongrass from the garden of Roelf Meyer, who lives somewhere nearby. Photo: Gwynne Conlyn

A group of very happy late lunchers have just received their farewells from Bryan, a woman a little unsteadily asking him for his own good if he’s started thinking about getting “a new cat”.

A tear slips down Bryan’s cheek. Past the glitter fleck. The eyes that flash steely blue in the kitchen amid the sharp steam and clash of pots are soft as his voice almost whispering, “I can’t think about Wallis going.”

Here it matters. Emotions and people matter. We matter. Reassuring food and the friendliest ingredients matter. At the end of the story, this place in Dullstroom makes the world seem more worthwhile. DM

Mrs Simpson’s  Dullstroom 013 254 0088