Zest Restaurant

The brand new wood-fired Grill at Zest Restaurant is a highlight of the new kitchen of Chef Pavel Dimitrov, owner and operator of Zest, and also co-owner of Utopia Cape Town. The coals of the Kameeldoring wood give a wood-smoked aroma to the meat, fish and vegetables prepared on the grill. Chef Pavel believes that Fresh is best, and that Less is more. He does not use smoke, gels, foams, or smears in his dishes. He does not use more than three ingredients per dish. Ingredient sourcing is important, buying the best quality at a good price, to make the dining affordable to his clients. Chef Pavel holds values of honesty and trust, a person with soul and no ego.

To run the two restaurants, Chef Pavel has appointed Executive Chef Scott Melvin at Zest, originally from Scotland, working at Gordon Ramsay’s maze in London, and then followed Chef Jason Atherton to Shanghai for most of his career, recently moving to Cape Town. Chef Pavel has surrounded himself with staff that have worked with him at previous restaurants such as Pigalle and NV-80, including GM Nelson Ferreira. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Cocktails, Oysters, Teas and Coffees, and other in-between meal treats are served. Zest Restaurant Interior Designer Landy Walker explained the collaboration of the hotel and restaurant as follows:

We were extremely privileged to collaborate with Chef Paul (Pavel) Dimitrov, and over a lot of passionate dialogue, Zest was born. My partner Romao and I ran with the decor and styling while Chef Paul focused on his culinary vision. We felt drawn to carefully layering a space and inviting a mood that was earthy, contemporary, raw, yet still polished. Our choice of colours was inspired from the earth, natural, neutral, strong and bold, yet always with a little splash of green. We love the organic and masculine signature of rusted, aged metal which was the canvas we built on. Our recycled copper wine racks and door handles were another important choice of metal. Our bar counter top was made from Namibian teak. We introduced a granite stone wall finish to specific walls. We chose overd, metal, Moroccan style pendant lights for our main dining areas, with knitted, black mesh shades outdoors. The wood fired grill is new to the culinary Industry. Our 'Piece de Resistance' is our super imposed, tribal face wall art, capturing serenity, calm, youth, Africa’.

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