The results are in. Across 30 categories covering Cape Town and the Winelands, 30,000 diners chose their go-to spots for everything from a proper sit-down dinner to a mid-morning gelato. 17 of the 30 winners are Yoco merchants.

If you're building your Cape Town hit list, start here.

The Restaurants

source: Farro Food and Wine

Zuney: Best Restaurant (Cape Town) and Best Burger
69A Kloof Street, Gardens, and Time Out Market, V&A Waterfront

Two awards, one restaurant. Zuney took the top spot in the whole city and swept the burger category while they were at it. The story starts in the Eastern Cape, in the Zuney Valley, where two neighbouring farming families have been raising pasture-grazed Wagyu herds since 2014. Their sons, Henning Klopper and Devin Wells, built a butchery supplying Wagyu beef to restaurants across South Africa, then looked at the surplus cuts that didn't make the steak grade and asked the obvious question. The result: a cheeseburger with Wagyu beef, American cheese, Wagyu-infused onions, pickles, house sauce, and a light brioche bun. Fries hand-cut and twice-cooked in Wagyu tallow. The Wacon, for when you want Wagyu beef and Wagyu bacon in the same sitting. Three locations now, including Johannesburg. 

Farro Food and Wine: Best Contemporary Restaurant
30 Wandel Street, Gardens

Farro is run by husband and wife Alex and Eloise Windebank, who found a restored Victorian terraced house in Gardens and turned it into one of Cape Town's most quietly accomplished restaurants. They returned in October 2025 after a break, and the room filled up almost immediately. The format is a five-course set menu: modern European cooking that takes seasonal produce and local sourcing seriously. Handmade truffled agnolotti with Parmesan cream. Pan-fried kabeljou with pot-roast potato and caviar cream. Karoo Wagyu with mushroom, celeriac, and Bourguignon sauce. And of course, their famous beignets. 

VUUR Restaurant: Best Grillhouse
Remhoogte Wine Estate, R44, Stellenbosch

Shaun Scrooby spent 17 years as a safari guide before converting an old stable on Remhoogte Wine Estate into a restaurant. No formal chef training. Just 17 years of building fires, understanding heat, and knowing exactly what wood does to meat. At VUUR, he uses Mopane and Kameeldoring for their lasting coals and the flavour they give. The kitchen runs entirely on wood fire. His seven-course menu changes weekly, built around whatever local meats, fish, and seasonal produce is at its best. Every dish is cooked to order, plated in front of you, and explained by the chefs who made it. The result earned VUUR a place on the World's 101 Best Steak Restaurants list, ranked 52nd, the highest any African restaurant has ever placed. Set aside the evening, make the drive from Cape Town, and don't rush it.

VUUR sits on a wine estate outside Stellenbosch and has earned its place on the World's 101 Best Steak Restaurants list. Chef Shaun Scrooby runs a seven-course open-fire menu that changes weekly, built around local meats, fish, vegetables, and seafood, each course with a fire element. It's a slow meal. Set aside the evening, make the drive, and don't rush it.

Seven Colours Eatery: Best South African Restaurant
Battery Park, V&A Waterfront

Chef Nolukhanyo Dube-Cele grew up in Tsengiwe, a rural village in the Eastern Cape, where Sunday mornings meant time in her grandmother's kitchen. In fact, the seven-colour spread of beetroot, yellow rice, samp, and a full spread of vegetables and meat gave the concept its name. She went on to study hospitality in Cape Town and cook internationally in the UK and the US, then came home and started Seven Colours Eatery as a home-based catering service in 2016. The restaurant opened to the public at the Waterfront six years later. The menu is rooted in Xhosa heritage: umngqusho (samp and sugar beans), umfino (maize meal with spinach, cabbage, and potato), umleqwa (road-runner chicken), mogodu, vetkoek with mince and chakalaka. Real South African food, with a story behind every dish. 

LIBERTINO: Best Italian Restaurant
47 Napier Street, De Waterkant

LIBERTINO opened in December 2024 at the corner of Napier and Jarvis Streets in De Waterkant: a neon-lit staircase, lipstick-red walls, zebra-print stools, disco balls, and a soundtrack that moves between 70s disco and indie pop. The food is entirely veggie and pescatarian. Every strand of pasta is rolled by hand, pizza dough stretched from scratch, many cheeses made in-house. The menu rotates with the seasons. Expect things like aubergine rigatoni, truffle-mushroom fettuccine, charred artichokes with saffron aioli, grilled nectarines with whipped burrata, and lemony Sicilian prawns. And the focaccia arrives complimentary.

Obi Restaurant: Best Sushi Restaurant
14 Long Street, Cape Town

Named after the traditional sash worn with a kimono, Obi opened on Long Street in 2016 under legendary Japanese chef Hatsushiro Muraoka (known as Papa San) and his long-time friend and chef Ben Bettendorf. The brief was simple: beautifully clean Japanese flavours, done with care and without shortcuts. Nearly a decade later, it's still one of the most sought-after bookings in Cape Town. The menu centres on sushi, tempura, and ramen, with signature rolls that regulars plan around: the Papa San Roll, the Sweet Kiss Roll, the Original Tempura Roll. And the bento box lunch special is one of the better deals in the city. 

Tambourine: Best New Restaurant
04 Harrington Street, Cape Town CBD

Tambourine opened in late 2025 in a renovated heritage building on Harrington Street. Small plates, open fire, everything made from scratch. Around 60% of the fresh produce comes from Moya weKhaya, their own regenerative farm in Khayelitsha, run by ten gogos and two men growing leeks, carrots, spinach, herbs, and edible flowers for the kitchen and bar. The rest of the sourcing follows the same logic: pasture-raised meats, wild-caught fish, family-run traceable dairy. The menu is where it all lands. Chicken wings stuffed with sticky bacon jam and glazed in bourbon and peri peri. Beef tri-tip. Smoked hay butter risotto with Jerusalem artichoke. Charred baby cabbage with chestnuts and blue cheese.

The Quick Bites

source: How Bao Now

The Melting Pot: Best Street Food
137 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant

Chef-owner John van Zyl and his partner Sage Fell built The Melting Pot out of wanderlust and a love for global flavours, starting as a pop-up in 2019. The menu is short: five or six dishes, Asian-leaning, rotated by season and mood. West Coast mussels on sourdough with fennel salad. Vietnamese pork skewers on rice noodles in nuoc cham. Tempura chicken wings with fish sauce caramel. If you can't decide, order the "One of Everything": it's designed for two and priced well. Start with sunset cocktails on the rooftop terrace for knockout city views, then head downstairs to the main dining room or take a table under the pepper trees on the street. 

Novo Pizza & Wine: Best Pizza
99 Durban Road, Little Mowbray

Novo is a family-run neighbourhood restaurant in Little Mowbray that opened in March 2024. The dough follows a Neapolitan method with a 48-hour rise before hitting a wood-fired oven. The menu is small by design, around a dozen options. Within a year of opening, Time Out Travel ranked 'The Fellini' number eight in the world, above pizzerias in Paris, Madrid, and Miami. Fennel sausage, caramelised red onion, fior di latte mozzarella are among just some of the flavours you can expect. 

How Bao Now: Best Grab and Go
375 Albert Road, The Old Biscuit Mill, Woodstock

How Bao Now started as a lockdown idea between two ex-Test Kitchen chefs, Matt van den Berg and Carla Schulze, who spent four months figuring out what to do next. The answer: a bao bar that applies fine-dining technique to street food. They launched at the Oranjezicht Market in 2020, and found a permanent home at the Old Biscuit Mill in 2021. The combinations are the thing: BBQ pork belly, crayfish Malay, brisket and kimchi, Szechuan fried chicken, beef short rib, and a jackfruit bao so meaty that regulars have come back to double-check it's actually vegan. 

The Focaccia Bar: Best Sandwich
113 Loop Street, City Centre

Cape Town's first focaccia sandwich bar opened in January 2026 and has had queues out the door since. The focaccia is made through a 24-hour fermentation process, baked fresh daily. The meats are imported directly from Italy. From there, eight sandwiches: Prosciutto Crudo Caprese with mozzarella and sun-dried tomato pesto, Truffle Prosciutto Crudo with whipped truffle ricotta and shaved pecorino, Mortadella, Marinated Veg with artichokes and ricotta, and a Breakfast option for the early crowd. There's a co-working space inside with free WiFi if you’re looking for a new midweek lunch spot.

Le Pickle: Best Comfort Food
Shop 2, Cape Quarter Lifestyle Village, 8 Jarvis Street, De Waterkant

Le Pickle makes everything from scratch, every day: the buns, the pickles, the sauces, the hand-cut chips, the patties. That commitment shows up in the food. The menu runs from Le Classic (double beef, cheddar, pickles, house sauce) to Le Onion (double beef, fried onions, garlic sauce), Le Godfather (mozzarella, smoked tomato aioli), Le Chicken with spicy sauce and slaw, and Le Lamb with lemon garlic aioli. Each one a double patty, each one built around the same principle: get the basics exactly right and nothing else matters. It’s Halaal friendly and open seven days a week.

The Coffee Spots

source: Ground Art Caffè

Ground Art Caffè: Best Café
160 Strand Street, De Waterkant

Ground Art Caffè is a coffee bar and micro gallery: artisan coffee alongside a rotating programme of local art, in a neighbourhood that's been a fixture of Cape Town's creative scene for years. The brief is deliberate: a small, light, neutral space where artisan coffee and local art share equal billing. The menu is intentionally short, built on fresh ingredients from local producers and imported European delicacies. Quality over quantity, consistently. Come for the flat white. Stay for what's on the wall.

Hey Stranger: Best Coffee Shop
172 Long Street, Cape Town

On the iconic Long Street, right in the heart of the CBD, Hey Stranger has built a reputation for specialty coffee and excellent baked goods. The name might be casual, but the coffee and the craft are not. The beans come from Father Coffee, who produce around 52 single origins a year. Hey Stranger's aim is to put as many of those in front of customers as possible. The baristas have each spent more than ten years in the specialty industry and competed at barista level. The pastry counter is stocked by the family. The name says it all: walk in as a stranger, leave as a regular. 

The Sweet Stuff

source: Cake Canteen

La Cotte Franschhoek: Best Patisserie
24 La Cotte Street, Franschhoek

The Mill House Patisserie at La Cotte Farm is set inside Africa's oldest water mill, a beautifully restored 1731 stone building on a hillside in the Franschhoek Valley, with original wooden beams, views of the water wheel, and the smell of freshly baked pastry meeting you at the door. Everything is made on-site: warm sourdough loaves, buttery croissants, delicate cakes and pastries, served with expertly crafted coffee from a cosy corner inside or a table looking out over the farm and mountains. The drive through to the Winelands is part of the experience. Upon arrival, grab your morning pastry, and you’re all set for a day of wine tasting and exploring.

Tadaa!: Best Gelato / Ice Cream
17 Kloof Street, Gardens

Tadaa! started as a joke between founder Lena Sönnichsen and her sister. Then a summer scooping job in Berlin, a course at an ice cream school in Germany, and the right spot on Kloof Street all lined up at once. The result is a bright pink shop with melting tables, scoop-shaped tiles, and that disco ball in the window, serving up to 24 flavours made fresh on-site daily with no colourings, flavourings or additives. The menu swings from the familiar (pistachio, hazelnut, mango) to the genuinely interesting: marzipan pear sorbet with thick chunks of real marzipan, Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk, G&T sorbet, and a grapefruit sorbet with a cinnamon kick. It’s also vegan and halaal friendly. 

Cake Canteen: Best Cake
84a Upper Maynard Street, Gardens (and other locations)

Cake Canteen started as a concept by Jandri van Zyl, founder of The Velvet Cake Co, a Cape Town-based online bakery since 2012. The idea was simple: instead of competing, bring Cape Town's best cake makers into one sit-down space. The Gardens shop is housed inside the Hertex Fabrics showroom, which sounds like an unlikely combination until you're in it. The cake range pulls from multiple makers and changes regularly, with a Cake of the Month and crowd favourites like the rainbow cake and mint-chocolate cheesecake. One of their most popular products, cake nuggets, came out of a commitment to waste nothing: every off-cut and leftover gets repurposed into something worth ordering. 

Short & Sweet Chocolates: Best Chocolate
6 Ravenscraig Road, Woodstock

Short & Sweet is a boutique chocolatier in Woodstock working with Belgian, French, and African Couverture chocolate to make handcrafted bonbons, slabs, dragees, and hot chocolate bombs. The range goes well beyond a standard chocolate bar. Their seasonal drops are worth following: think Candied Chocolate Oranges, Citrus Season Bars, and the aptly named Snaccident Slab (a pretzel-studded slab that's exactly as dangerous as it sounds). If you want something completely bespoke, they collaborate on custom creations for weddings, events, and corporate gifting. The Woodstock studio is definitely worth a visit if you want the full range.

17 Yoco merchants in the top 30. None of them got there because of the payment setup behind the counter. They got there because the food, the coffee, and the craft are genuinely world-class.

And because we take care of the commerce stuff, they get to focus on what they love.

View the full Cape Town Luxe People's Choice Awards results.