A Klein JAN Experience Lets You Dine Where the Wildebeest Are

I’VE BEEN DRIVEN from my private tent via open-sided Land Cruiser through the Kalahari Desert to reach a fine-dining restaurant in the most unlikely of places, and the very first thing to touch my tongue is water. But not just any water. It’s faintly floral, poured by a leather apron–clad server from what appears to be a decorative arrangement of desert grasses in a Baccarat cut-crystal vase.

As I sit with my husband on the front porch of a 106-year-old farmhouse, Ricardo, our server, explains that this water has been boiled with seeds and leaves from a lavender fever berry plant. Coincidentally, that’s the very species that, moments before taking our seats here at Restaurant Klein JAN—the wildest gastronomic experience of my life thus far, in South Africa’s largest private game reserve, Tswalu—I’d watched getting nibbled on by a graceful crew of female kudu on a rocky hillside.

The fawny antelope had accidentally hinted at what was to come, as our many-coursed dinner unfolded at this ode to the Northern Cape by South African star chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen, whose Restaurant JAN in Nice, France, boasts a Michelin star. It’s apt that Klein JAN is set within the context of a safari, since the word in Swahili means “journey.” As the wildlife viewing takes us across unique ecosystems and habitats within the Kalahari, this meal is a movable feast inviting us into a series of rooms and structures around the property.

Starting on the charming porch, our first bite at Klein JAN arrives stealthily atop a platter full of dates: it’s a soft, super-savoury twist on a lamington, featuring date paste and coated with venison dust so rich that I close my eyes and lick my lips. Two more amuse-bouches follow, including a tart of orange and tender goat that makes me wonder how goat could possibly be so delicious. Then Ricardo asks us to follow him through the kitchen and out the back door. White linen laundry blows in the wind on a line and a vintage windmill rotates. The smell of wet earth fills my nostrils as he opens a rusty corrugated metal door into a mysterious rabbit hole of sorts, filled with the dim sound of falling water.

In the dark, my senses are heightened, like those of the rare wildlife of our safari. My tastebuds tingle with each new texture, flavor and sight. There’s corn soup that’s simultaneously hot and cold—made on van der Westhuizen’s grandmother’s actual stove, the one at which he learned to cook—and that we eat in the so-called Room of a Thousand Delights. Then we move to Klein JAN’s infinity “room,” which opens to the Kalahari Desert. We devour impossibly thin breadsticks hidden amid silky bushmen grass; edible butterflies; melt-in-my-mouth local beef with foraged wild sage; coffee made from mesquite wood served with gemsbok “droppings” (brandied raisins); and quite possibly a billion different cheese-and-unexpected-accompaniment combinations.

The adventure unfolds like a James Bond film—at one point an African wildcat starts prowling around at one end of the infinity room, and this has even the chefs whipping out their phones to take videos. After a return drive surrounded by stars, we tuck into bed in our Loapi residence and I drift off gazing at Scorpio shining brightly through the glass wall, wondering if it was all a fever dream.

janonline.com/restaurantkleinjan

Photos by Adriaan Louw/Courtesy of JAN.

Written By