Lupo’s, Wynberg, Cape Town: Restaurant Review

Lupo’s
19 Wolfe Street
Wynberg, Cape Town | Map

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Specialty: Italian buffet and cooking school
Contact: Tel: +27 (0) 21 762 3855, Fax: N/A
SA Blog recommends a look inside? If you happen to be passing by.

Further Insight & Opinion
It’s not that I have anything against Lupo’s in particular, it’s just that I hold fast to the conviction that only restaurants with an eastern theme – Chinese, Indian, etc. – should offer buffets.

For a buffet is what Lupo’s does offer, spread out on the counter at the back of the cosy interior. At the counter you’ll find – an odd assortment of dishes, deriving from what I assume to be Italian influences. Eggplant parmesan, for instance, is readily identifiable. On the other hand – what’s that apricot doing in that fish dish? I think I detect a smidgen of Cape Malay hereabouts!

The long and the short of it is – I ordered the buffet, and my Lovely Assistant chose a chicken pie from the a la carte menu. (You can also order buffet and a la carte dishes in combination, which makes you a glutton, if you didn’t know it before.) Her chicken pie was fine – light and flaky on the outside, hot and chunky on the inside – but my choice saw me hovering over the buffet counter, tentatively picking out edibles, for far too long.

What you want at a buffet is some interior trigger of yours to be pulled, so that you spoon huge heaps of food on to your plate with unthinking abandon, and speed yourself to an almighty stomach ache. What I got was a plate that looked like it belonged in a nouveau cuisine mag – twice. OK, thrice. Still no stomach ache, though.

The whole shebang cost about R120 apiece, including wine and tip.

Verdict: Lupo’s is not a disaster, but it’s not a miracle either. That Italian bistro ’round the corner from you is likely to be just as good.