Discover Klein Jan: Exceptional Fine Dining in Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa

Discovering Klein Jan in the Kalahari Desert

The restaurant appears out of nowhere. One moment you’re driving in a safari vehicle, scanning the scrubby, red-earth landscape of South Africa’s Kalahari Desert for aardvarks, pangolins, and wild dogs. The next moment, a chalky-white building appears under a boscia tree. A terrace juts out from the 100-year-old farmhouse, with tables draped in pressed white cloths and waiters carrying crystal glasses on silver trays. It’s as though you’ve stumbled upon a movie set.

This near-mirage is the first of many surprises that await diners at Klein Jan, which opened last summer at Tswalu, a privately owned game reserve near the Botswana border that’s also home to two safari camps. No one would have thought a star chef would open a restaurant in such a remote setting— not even the chef himself.

Chef Background

Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen grew up on a farm in Mpumalanga Province, east of Johannesburg, but moved to France after graduating college. He opened his first restaurant, Jan, in Nice in 2013. It took him less than three years to become the first South African chef with a Michelin-starred restaurant. While he is still based primarily in France, he sees the opening of Klein Jan as a homecoming, bridging his heritage with innovative cuisine.

Menu Experience

The menu is a celebration of his Afrikaans grandmother’s Dutch-influenced farm cooking. Diners can expect innovative versions of humble favorites such as mieliepap (corn porridge), presented here as fritters, and bobotie, a curried minced-meat dish made vegetarian by substituting lentils. The menu also features lesser-known South African ingredients like wild, bitter tsama melons and hyperregional homemade cheeses, all sourced nearby— a challenging endeavor in this arid landscape.

Dining Journey

However, a meal at Klein Jan isn’t just about the food; it encompasses the entire journey to the table. Diners begin on the patio for drinks and hors d’oeuvres, then transition through the old one-room farmhouse, which is adorned with antique chairs and decorative hanging tumbleweeds. Subsequently, they descend a spiral staircase into an underground brick cellar stocked with honey, fresh produce, and various pickles. Finally, diners emerge into the lofty dining room, carved into the hillside, that offers breathtaking views of a landscape so serene it resembles a painting. “Creating this experience,” van der Westhuizen remarks, “is my style of storytelling.”

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of iBestTravel under the headline Back on the Farm.