Mount Nelson restaurants: Amura, The Verandah, The Red Room and what dinner costs

Amura is the one with a name over the door. Ángel León, whom the hotel calls Spain’s «Chef of the Sea», founder of Aponiente and Alevante, has made it his first restaurant in Africa, in the hotel’s old Planet Room and former Cape Colony Restaurant; Tristan du Plessis designed it in the greens of a kelp forest around an open kitchen. The menu has a Chef’s Journey at R1,750 per person: oysters, a hot and cold scallop, plankton risotto with squid, langoustines in a clam sauce, dry-aged sea bass roasted over fire, a dish named Amura of mussel caramel, brown butter and seaweed, then petits fours.

À la carte, Amura’s small plates start with a natural oyster at R45 and an Amura Gilda of olive, anchovy, sun-dried tomato, smoked local fish and pickled pepper at R85 a piece. Yellowfin tuna «steak tartare» with cured egg yolk is R240, steamed kingklip with an algae pil-pil R280, hake tail in seaweed meunière R265 and the plankton risotto as a main course R495. 2 dishes are for sharing, a tuna schnitzel at R695 and a whole fried catch of the day at R595. Desserts are R100 to R180, among them a flan with spirulina cream.

The Verandah opens every evening at 6.30pm, with a pianist. Its dinner menu reads like a grill’s: starters from an aubergine charlotte at R185 to salmon gravadlax at R475, then duck à l’orange at R390, steak au poivre at R475, or a Beef Wellington for 2 at R850 that takes 30 to 40 minutes. The dry-aged ribeye and sirloin come on the bone, 400g for R400. The game list is the particular: springbok, blesbok, kudu and gemsbok loin, 250g each for R300, and ostrich fillet for R210, with sides at R90 to R150 and a sauce list that includes monkey gland. Pudding might be a Braai Alaska at R145.

The Red Room by Chefs Warehouse draws, the hotel says, on the chef Liam Tomlin’s travels in Asia, and its menu page names David Schneider beside him. The à la carte card is posted on that page as an image, which we read by eye on 11 October 2026. The plates are small and meant for the middle of the table: har gow at R160 for 2 pieces, pork and prawn siu mai in tom yum broth at R180, a Thai green curry at R240, bun cha for 2 at R280. The Red Room Roast Duck, with clay-pot rice and mandarin pancakes, is R600 for half and R1,200 whole, and the card marks it subject to availability. The hotel also describes a Chefs’ Choice menu of 12 small plates, which tables of 8 or more are given automatically; its price is not on the pages we read.

By day the hotel eats at Oasis, over the main pool. Breakfast is a buffet from 6.30am to 10.30am. Lunch, from noon to 3pm, follows an Italian menu, a nod to Aldo Renato, the Italian manager who had the hotel painted pink in 1918: caprese with local burrata R260, linguine with local clams R280, pea and prawn risotto R320, the line fish of the day R280, a tiramisu at R160. On Sundays lunch becomes a brunch with live jazz.

Planet Bar opens daily at noon, with a fire in winter and a terrace in summer. Its snack menu has Cape Malay daltjies and cheese and corn samosas at R80, an okonomiyaki prawn toast at R170 and a Nellie club sandwich at R275, and the house cocktails cost R175 to R225; Rose & Rosé, at R195, is made with Cape Town Pink Lady gin and the hotel’s own rosé. In the garden, The Fountain is the bar’s open-air kitchen, with flatbreads from the pizza oven at R160 to R270 and Saldanha Bay mussels at R250. It takes no bookings, and on 11 October 2026 its page said it was closed for the winter and would welcome guests back from 12 October 2026.

In the 2,000 Google reviews we hold, the Sunday jazz brunch is written about more than any dinner: on our count 18 reviews mention it, against 8 for The Red Room and 4 for Amura, all 4 from May 2026 onwards. A reviewer in July 2025 listed roast lamb, sirloin, beef shin pie and lamb curry on the buffet, with «free flow fizz», and put the cost at about £40 a head for 3 hours: one guest’s figure, in pounds, for a hotel that charges in rand. Of Amura, a guest wrote in August 2026: «don’t miss the hot and cold scallop or plankton risotto». A Cape Town couple on a 2-night stay, writing in June 2026, called The Red Room’s set menu «exceptional».

Mount Nelson’s restaurants sit in a garden under Table Mountain. One&Only Cape Town has Nobu, which it calls the only one in Southern Africa, and ROOI, a grill-room built on cooking over fire. The Silo has The Granary Café, The Willaston Bar and a rooftop it describes as the highest point of the V&A Waterfront, all of them by prior reservation only.

Cape Grace keeps one restaurant, Heirloom, beside a library lounge and Bascule Bar.