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Every record on this site names its source and what could not be confirmed

The data was collected and checked on 2 October 2026. A record was included only when its key facts could be read from a named page. Where part of a record could not be confirmed, the third column says which part. Live wind, cloud, swell and sea temperature come from Open-Meteo at the moment the page loads and every 10 minutes after that.

What was left out, and why

• Wine estates without a five-star wine in Platter’s 2026 guide, because the lower star ratings are published only in the guide itself. Kanonkop, Haute Cabrière, Boschendal and Groot Constantia fall in this group.
• Tokara, Boekenhoutskloof, Le Lude, Holden Manz, Creation and Leeu Passant hold five-star wines but are missing: a current tasting price or a winery-level Vivino score could not be read for them.
• La Liste and Condé Nast Traveller. No current list of Cape restaurants from either could be found, so neither is in the score.
• Salon, Eike and ëlgr. All three hold 2026 awards and have since closed.
• East City Grill & Yakiniku, Arlecchino, Figo, Omri, How’s Your Yaki, Farro and Tannin. They opened between seven and twelve months ago, no critic’s list includes them and no public figures were found, so there is nothing to score.
• Burger and taco specials. Several were found, but none had both a 2026 price and a Google and Tripadvisor score.
• Paternoster restaurants. No fixed price for a crayfish menu could be confirmed.
• The Knysna Oyster Festival and Franschhoek Bastille Festival, which are held in July, outside the November to April season.
• The Postberg trail, which opens only in August and September.
• A live Shark Spotters flag. Shark Spotters publishes no public data feed, so the site links to it and gives its phone number.
• Cameras at Kite Beach and Victoria Bay, where none could be confirmed, and at Big Bay, where the Atlantic Surf stream was offline when checked. Only the Muizenberg stream is embedded.

How the recommendation is made

The recommendation is a fixed set of rules, in src/lib/capeDoctor.ts. Wind is read at 29 spots and trailheads, at each beach and wine valley, at Blouberg and on the Table Mountain summit. The wind at Blouberg sets the regime: southeaster for 100° to 185°, southwester for 185° to 270°, northwester for 270° to 20°, and light wind below 12 km/h.

• A kite spot is good when the wind is within 34° of a listed direction and inside the spot’s knot range.
• A surf spot is good when the swell is inside its height range and the wind is offshore or below 15 km/h. Above 25 km/h of cross or onshore wind it is marked as blown out.
• A beach is good when it is sheltered from the current regime, or when the wind there is below 18 km/h. It is marked to skip when exposed and the Blouberg wind is 28 km/h or more.
• A trail is marked to skip when gusts reach 55 km/h on a fully exposed route or 70 km/h on a partly exposed one. Routes that reach the Table Mountain plateau use the summit gust and are downgraded when low cloud covers 70% of the sky.
• A wine valley is good when the wind there is below 22 km/h.

The scenario buttons replace the live wind with a synthetic one scaled by how exposed each place is. They exist to show what the rules do in a strong wind and are labelled as scenarios wherever they are in use.

How a restaurant’s score is made

Each restaurant gets one score from 0 to 100: 70% from critics and 30% from public reviews. The rules are in src/lib/restaurantScore.ts.

• Critics. The highest award sets the critic part: Eat Out three stars 100, two stars 92, one star 84; JHP Gourmet Guide gold plate 100, three plates 97, two 91, one 84; a place on the World’s 50 Best list 100. Each best-of list from Time Out or Inside Guide adds one point, up to three. A restaurant with no award but on such a list gets 68, plus 4 for each further list, up to 80.
• Public reviews. A rating is first pulled towards 4.2 as if it had 150 extra reviews, so a 4.9 from 60 reviews counts for less than a 4.7 from 3,000. The adjusted rating is then converted to points: 3.8 gives 0, 4.5 gives 55 and 4.9 gives 100, so each tenth above 4.5 earns more than each tenth below it. Google carries 75% of the public part and Tripadvisor the rest, because Tripadvisor figures arrive rounded to half points.
• A restaurant no critic has listed gets a neutral 60 for the critic part. Its score then moves only with its public reviews and cannot exceed 72.
• For 26 guide-rated restaurants no public figures were found. Leaving the public part out would lift them above rivals that have one, so the typical public score of guide-rated restaurants (52) stands in.
• A warning appears when a restaurant holds an award and Google reviewers give it less than 4.3.
• New means opened within the last 6 months. New restaurants are scored the same way once they have 20 reviews; until then they show no score.

On the map, colour shows what a score rests on: guide-rated, public reviews only, or new. Symbol size shows review volume: large from 3,000 Google and Tripadvisor reviews together, medium from 800. For a new restaurant, size shows how many publications covered the opening: large from four, medium from two.

Which restaurants are listed: every restaurant in the four areas with a 2026 Eat Out star or JHP plate that is still open, every restaurant on four best-of lists (Time Out’s Cape Town, Winelands and affordable lists and Inside Guide’s 25 best), every opening since April 2026 found in the press, the venues that carry a deal, and places no critic has listed that have a Google score of at least 4.6 from 500 reviews (4.5 from 400 on the West Coast and Garden Route). Chains, hotels and wine-estate listings are left out of that last group.

Google and Tripadvisor figures were read from Wanderlog list pages, which republish both with review counts. They can lag the live figures. A first source, Restaurant Guru, began asking for a human check during collection and was dropped.

Surf, kite and wing spots (17)

Wine estates (17)

Trails (12)

Restaurants (203)

Food specials (13 deals, 46 day entries)

Events (12)

Map and elevation

Base map: OpenFreeMap vector tiles built from OpenStreetMap. Trail lines: OpenStreetMap route relations and foot routes from routing.openstreetmap.de. Elevation: SRTM 30 m through OpenTopoData. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.