Barristers, where the gavel comes down on a good night out

I ventured beyond the Crème Fraîche Curtain this week to make my way to Barristers in Newlands. Though we’d been there many times from the 1980s to the early years of the new century, this was our first visit in at least 25 years.

If you were in any doubt that Barristers should be regarded as a classic among Cape Town restaurants – the category does not require a restaurant to be fancy or refined – you have their word for it. On their website the claim is stated plainly: “Barristers Grill has always been a favourite meeting spot in the Southern Suburbs and is one of the grand old restaurants of Cape Town.”

Grand, and old. Well, it is now. But it’s the next sentence that explains more aptly what Barristers is today, 46 years after it first opened in 1980: “Situated in the heart of Newlands Village, the restaurant continues to provide warmth, friendship and good cheer.”

And this focus is clear as soon as you walk in. There has been some change over the decades, but it’s in the management style more than in the physical restaurant and bar. It feels more pub-like in 2026, whereas Barristers once felt like a characterful old grill room (even when it was new – that “Tudor” look is a clever and rather convincing fabrication) which happened to have a bar. It’s a switch of focus.

This is not to take anything away from it: we had a grand old evening, three of us, happy to be back in a space we had not been in for what could be as long as 20 years, or more.

Barristers was opened in 1980 by Peter Gordon, and run by him until Lance Chandler bought it in 2008. The difference in management style is plain to see. There are large TV screens here and there and when there’s a big match on, well, it might not be the best moment for your quiet dinner with old friends. A blackboard proclaims that you need to buy a ticket “to secure your seat” for the All Blacks-SA Test match coming up. That sounds like crowd control or a way of keeping a lid on things.

But don’t think this means it’s a rowdy sports bar. We were there on a sports-free evening and, even though we were in the smaller dining room just off the hallway and large bar next door, we were perfectly comfortable.

I had a bit of a wander and quickly found the much larger dining room to the rear, which was more like the Barristers I remember. The theme, if you don’t know Barristers, is Tudor, but obviously it’s faux-Tudor given that Cape Town had no buildings in the 1500s. So it’s a folly, in a sense. The period styling was achieved with some impact, and that the interior design has weathered nearly five decades says something about the workmanship.

I think the mood of the present-day spaces would be improved by more subtle lighting; the present lighting is a bit harsh. But nobody seemed to mind. There were groups of eight or more at tables nearby, and people traipsed through the room, to and from the larger dining room, all evening. The doors to the kitchen swung open and closed all the while, with staff kept on their toes. The service was excellent.

The fare is pub-come-grill. Okay, maybe a tad more grill than pub, depending on which section of the menu you’re reading. There are the sort of dishes on the menu that you’d find on an old South African menu, so it’s a throwback, and I like that. I don’t like the idea that everything must change for the sake of change. Because things are different now. Because tastes have changed. Well, have they really? Or will this sort of menu only really die when the last of the generation of adults that has lived through the last four or five decades is finally gone?

The menu goes on forever. Too much so, I think – it could be pared down by at least 20 dishes while still leaving you with plenty to choose from. And it would make the kitchen staff happier too.

The Foodie’s Wife observed that “most people were ordering burgers”. I hadn’t noticed. I saw that there are 10 burgers to choose from, if you include the Club Sandwich. Plates were large, heavy and piled high. 

Starters are mostly run-of-the-mill (buffalo wings, chicken livers, crumbed mushrooms, squid) but include baked Camembert in full or half portions, and escargots with bacon and garlic butter. There’s a house tomato soup. The three of us had the squid, escargots, and a half portion of baked Camembert for me. It was served in a ramekin with caramelised onions and pineapple preserve. I liked it.

There are salads (side, chopped, tossed, Roquefort and bacon, Newlands chicken salad), and a good range of steaks and grills. Headlined “the best of Barristers”, this is where they feel their greatest strength is, and I don’t think they’re wrong. I chose a 200g fillet but recoiled in horror when the waiter suggested smothering it in the “steakhouse sauce” he said they usually use as a baste. There was an olive oil and rosemary alternative, so peace was restored. Maybe it’s not the ubiquitous “steakhouse sauce” designed to destroy palates and steaks, but I wasn’t taking a chance.

My steak was perfectly medium rare as requested. Textbook. This was the “Barristers gavel steak”, and came with a ramekin of an orange-hued sauce of cream and masala spices with bacon, onion and chicken livers. It’s not up there with béarnaise or the pepper steak I could have chosen, but I wanted to try something unique to the place (yes, that is a rare correct usage of that word) and it was a pleasant enough sauce.

I chose chips and onion rings, which I generally avoid these days. The chips were okay – ish – if a tad on the limp side, while the onion rings were crunchy but dry and a tad overcooked.

“For the carnivore connoisseur”, the menu proclaims, there’s also an espetada steak on a skewer, pork ribs, or lamb chops. There follows a section on chicken and seafood (hake, calamari, Patagonian squid, sole in lemon butter; chicken schnitzel or Parmesan), and if all of the above might have seemed like more than enough to choose from, you’d be wrong.

Next up there are the “Barristers hearty meals”. Thai green curry. (Why, why, why must this be on every local menu?) Masala curry (chicken, beef or vegetable but no lamb or mutton – why, why, why?). Beef stir-fry…

And… a drum roll please for the Barristers Beef Burgundy.

It’s a Bourguignon without quite saying so. It’s served in an imposing potjie (three-legged pot) that’s not too tiny either. Both of the people at our table not answering to the name Tony ordered this, because Tony was having a steak, as we know by now.

Once everything on the table had been moved around to accommodate these two sizeable pots, they both tucked in and I was allowed a taste, and it was good, very good. Not your three-day Bourguignon, sure, but there was plenty of flavour in there even if the sauce was just a bit too much on the sweet side. A bit of panache at your local pub and grill.

But wait, there’s more…

Six pasta options. After which, surely only the desserts could follow?

Nope. Next we have the Barristers pub lunches, with masses to choose from. And after that, another large page of “Bar snacks and beer food”. 

And then… just kidding. That’s it. Well, there are desserts. The “pecan nut fudge pie” is big and sweet and hard to complain about other than it’s way big. Sjoe. We could have shared a portion. There’s a malva, a brûlée, a berry meringue and a dark chocolate cheesecake. I don’t doubt they’re all worth their price.

And prices at Barristers are really friendly. If you’re on a tight budget, all you have to do is choose from anywhere on the menu according to what you want to spend, and you’ll leave well fed and happy.

Which is how we all felt about this lovely evening in a place where locals, who are probably well-heeled and who can afford occasional meals at the faahn-daahning palaces nearby, seem to go when they just want a pleasant evening out with their friends. And that’s what I like too.

***

It’s been an adventurous week. Not content with having braved the Crème Fraîche Curtain, yesterday morning I took a deep breath and pointed the car towards the Matcha Frappuccino Curtain to meet a friend for … well, coffee, as it happened.

If it took an hour to drive to Camps Bay from my side of the Boerewors Gordyn, 20 minutes of that time was given to finding parking once I’d reached the beachfront.

The last time I’d been to the Bay Hotel (the Matcha Frappuccino Curtain is at the top of Kloof Nek if you didn’t know) must have been in the 1990s when there were food and wine pairing dinners in the restaurant upstairs. Back in the day, there were swish lunches and dinners at Blues just nearby, when it won award after award because it was like, so, you know, cool, but anyway. (Former owner Nicky Fitzgerald is most likely grinning on reading this.)

Then people with more money than taste turned the whole suburb into the “Camps Bay Strip” and timid folks like me fled, screaming, back past the Matcha Frappuccino Curtain to the relative sanity of the City.

Camps Bay is so excruciatingly cool now that there’s nowhere for uncool people like me to park any more, and I might have turned around and driven home had I not wanted to see my friend enough to keep trying until a parking bay appeared.

Driving home afterwards, my eyes reeled on sight of what is happening where John Caviggia’s house used to be. Three storeys of Tasteless Greed. I always knew it was coming.

We’ve missed John-John for 10 years since he left us. I’m glad he can’t see the monstrosity now going up where his family’s grand old house was. And the tree his mum planted has gone. DM

The bill for three was paid for in full. 

https://www.barristersgrill.co.za/