RETREATS
When the question is what comes next.
SEASONAL · COMMUNAL TABLE
Food at Bliss & Stars
The food at Bliss & Stars is made this way, from what the season offers, by hands that have learned to listen to ingredients the way you might listen to a person who has something interesting to say.
You will not choose what you eat. The chefs decide, and this turns out to be a relief you didn’t know you needed.
What arrives at the long table each evening will surprise you, and you won’t quite know how it was done, and it won’t matter that you don’t.
What changes is the season. What does not change is the passion and care brought to it, the same precision, the same refusal of shortcuts, the same understanding that there is no substitute for starting from scratch.
Daily Rhythm
Relaxed days. Mindful meals.
MORNING SNACK
SLOW BRUNCH
AFTERNOON SNACK
A harvest table with small tasty bites to explore.
DINNER
The long meal. A tasting menu that moves through the season and flavours.
A harvest table with small tasty bites to explore.
The long meal. A tasting menu that moves through the season and flavours.
Nobody comes to Bliss & Stars expecting the food experience. Many arrive a little apprehensive about three or more days without meat. And then our chefs put a beetroot ravioli on the table, and the conversation changes.
We created the cookbook because guests repeatedly asked for the recipes and tips for how to make plant-based dishes worth eating. One hundred recipes, created here in the Cederberg.
Weekday plates and slow weekend dishes. The breakfasts. The sauces. All plant-based, all made from scratch, none of it complicated in the way that puts you off before you’ve started.
It won’t replicate the experience at the communal table. But the food travels.
Chef Aphelele grew up in his grandmother’s kitchen in the Eastern Cape, watching her cook for twelve every night. He graduated from Cape Town Hotel School in 2012, competed internationally, and joined the South African Culinary Team in 2017. At Bliss & Stars, he loves pushing the boundaries and challenging your taste buds.
Chef Allan came to cooking sideways. He started helping in the kitchen, found he couldn’t stop thinking about it, and eventually decided to make it his life. He trained formally in plant-based cooking. It suits him. The discipline of working without meat or shortcuts turns out to be the part he finds most interesting.