Smoke & Fire with Avondale Wine

26 SEP 2025 – Chef Louise Gillett and her team ignite the flames for an unforgettable farm-to-fire dining experience with Avondale Wine Estate, a family-run estate specialising in handcrafted premium organic wines that are a true reflection of our natural environment.

Experience the raw beauty of the Swartland as chef Louise Gillett and her team ignite the flames for an unforgettable farm-to-fire dining experience. This 14th edition of our celebrated pop-up restaurant takes place beneath the silos at Elandsberg Farms, where open-fire cooking and bold Swartland wines come together for a night of smoky flavours, fine craftsmanship, and true country hospitality.

In celebration of Swartland terroir and its passionate people, we welcome winemaker Alan Cooke of Yellowwood Winery, whose hand-crafted Aspoestertjie wines capture the essence of this rugged land. From vine to bottle, Alan’s approach is purely artisanal—every grape is hand-picked, every label hand-placed—resulting in wines that showcase the full intensity of Swartland’s unique soils. His lineup includes Chenin Blanc, Colombard, Grenache Noir, Mourvèdre, and Syrah, each one a testament to the region’s dry-farmed Rhône-style heritage.

Our November edition of Smoke & Fire took us to the enchanting almond orchards on the south-western corner of Elandsberg farm, just a five-minute drive from the Farmhouse in our game-viewing Land Rover. For the first time ever at this location, Louise, Lesley, and their team crafted mouth-watering dishes over open coals in this magical setting, paired with the exquisite wines of Oldenburg Vineyards. Spring in the almond orchard was simply the perfect backdrop for this collaboration. Once again, this proved to be a unique opportunity to taste Cape Winelands’ hospitality at its very best and finest!

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Chefs and winemakers join hands to tell a unique story of schist, smoke and the Swartland.

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Join like-minded crafters and jugglers of delicious experiences on an adventurous journey through the Swartland – the rugged, undulating lands around BK best known for their granite and schist-based terroirs. Lesley and Louise Gillett (from Bartholomeus Klip), Andrea and Chris Mullineux (from Mullineux winery), and Christo Pretorius (of Twelve Apostles’ fame) invite you to an evening at the farm filled with fun, fire, and floral fermentations.

A sensational fanfare of locally foraged flavours. Ten carefully-curated dishes, each paired with a perfectly-matched wine. An eye-catching and mouth-watering extravaganza of colours and textures. An unpretentious parade of generous portions, pours, and personal stories. Long social tables at an unusual farm location, dressed up and fully catered for the occasion.

For this latest edition of our Smoke & Fire food experience, host Lesley and BK resident chef Louise have turned to France for inspiration: vintage, unashamedly pretentious French cuisine, served at social tables around the lush Bartholomeus Klip gardens. As usual, guests shared a whirlwind of flavours, colours, smells, textures, and sounds – all connected somehow by the central African theme of smoke and fire – while the proudly Swartland-based wine-making duo David and Nadia kept the glasses topped up with some of their best locally grown and produced wines.

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What happens when you ask twin sisters with Italian and South African roots to throw a dinner party? Truth is, we never know. Will they attempt to braai ravioli? Smoke a pizza? Add jam to the prosciutto? What we do know is that they have announced an Italian/Mediterranean-themed “forest feast” in the Elandsberg Nature Reserve with a live opera performance. We also know that they have invited the good people from Quoin Rock Wine Estate & Vineyards to showcase their award-winning wines.

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Chef Louise Gillett invites Christo Pretorius – friend and like-minded crafter and juggler of delicious experiences – to cook local produce on open fires (“touched by fire”). Both chefs are inspired by flavours, textures and colours collected on their travels and various work experiences around the globe. This edition of the BK Smoke & Fire Experience is held at the silos and feed shed in the farmyard.

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It is now official: ‘FOMOPU’ is a thing … Fear of Missing Out on a Pop-Up 😉 When Lesley and Louise decide to throw a culinary feast to welcome autumn, it should come as no surprise that things got interesting. And abundant. And full of surprises. Oh, and a little late … Like any artist true to her passion, Louise is at her best when she’s left free to explore. When she’s in control of the dots and how to connect them. What she came up with this time was simply mind-boggling and tongue-waggling. Wagyu came in three radically different ways. A mussel arrived at the table, surfing on a newspaper. Duck was served on top of a flower pot filled with hot coals. Asian pork had to be chop-sticked out of a box. Of course, all of this would hardly make sense if it hadn’t occurred against the backdrop of a perfectly improvised tractor shed, supported by impeccable service and accompanied by top-class wines from the The House of GM&AHRENS. It was simply one of those nights …

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Lockdown was a challenge for all of us. We all had to accept being told to stay in our houses, stop seeing our friends and visiting our favourite places. But lockdown was more than that …

We also remember lockdown for feeling closer than ever to our friends, and for the creative solutions we had to come up with to face brand-new challenges.
Here at BK, we had a farm to keep up with. There was staff that needed to be kept busy, communities around us that needed our support and guests that we wanted to stay in touch with. When the hospitality team was asked to help out on the farmlands, Louise saw an opportunity to experiment with sarmie recipes. Providing soup to farm communities around us, allowed her to try out a whole range of new soup recipes. And for those that wanted a bit of BK at home, we came up with the BK Bites – quintessential BK recipes delivered at your front door.

This is what we want to celebrate at this edition of our Smoke & Fire Pop-Up Restaurant: the friendship we all felt when facing lockdown challenges, and the creativity the challenges brought out in us.

Four times a year, the twin power team behind BK – Louise and Lesley – celebrate what they love best: to treat friends and guests to the best food, the finest wine and the most heartfelt rural hospitality. There are no rules. Lesley finds and decorates a unique location somewhere around the farm – in the past, these have included farm sheds, lawns and a rusty old shed in the reserve – while Louise juggles, pampers and teases local produce in pans, pots and grids on big roaring fires. This edition’s theme is “heritage”, and wines are provided by Delheim Wines from Stellenbosch.

For our pop-up anniversary, we’ve turned our farmyard’s Big Tractor Shed into a time machine, with an EPIC banquet of ancient, home-made, traditional and locally foraged ingredients. Recipes and flavours of days gone by with handcrafted dishes and proudly Wellington Welbedacht Wines, with captains of hospitality and culinary delight, Lesley and Louise, at the helm, joined by guest chef Christo Pretorius – from 12 Apostles fame.

Welcome to another edition of the BK Smoke & Fire Food Fanfare. On the water’s edge this time. A starlit dinner with a view, with a long table, long stories and bold flavours. Louise and her team have created a unique menu to be paired with incredible wines made by Chris and Andrea Mullineux. We will be serving what you’ve come to expect from our unique pop-up affaires: sensual, unusual culinary compositions of crackling taste, honest ingredients and startling combinations alongside the award winning wines from Mullineux Leeu Family Vineyards.

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A warm summer evening. A lush garden. Soft grass invites bare feet to meet. Stars peep through an darkened night sky. The exhilarating perfumes of food and nature mingle in the air. Welcome to another edition of the BK Smoke & Fire Food Fanfare. On the lawns behind the main house this time. An old-style garden dinner, with long tables, long stories, bold flavours. Lesley and Louise have invited charcutier Gil Ferreira from The Flying Pig cureSmiths in Darling to join the ranks and serve what you’ve come to expect from our unique pop-up affaires: sensual, unusual culinary compositions of crackling taste, honest ingredients and startling combinations.

Snacks served on arrival Sourdough breadboard with baked pears, bacon jam and spiced lamb medfouna with olive oil foam | Free-range confit Guinea fowl from the farm in a dumpling, rhubarb purée, cider, pickled onions, crispy skin, XO sauce, pink flowers | Free-range Elandsberg Springbok loin smoked, natural jus, caraway seeds, ash gnocchi, parsnip purée, candied beetroot, protea, wild grass seeds and a touch of gold | West Coast hake deep-fried on an open fire, Yuzu lemon purée, canola flowers, canola seed, crispy pumpkin, lemon cells | Wild Boar belly brined, dry-rubbed and smoked for 8 hours, salted puffed rice, broccoli purée, pine nut risotto, rosemary butter, ham hock jus, oxalis, pea shoots, basil leaves | Home-grown Elandsberg Wagyu calf (7 months), cooked over charcoal in the earth, potato terrine, bone marrow butter, carrots, caramelised beer jus, cacio de pepe crunch, spring onion root, mushroom emulsion, charcoal wafers | Burnt farm honey soft serve, toffee snaps, marigolds, white pepper oats, buffalo yoghurt drizzle Fire pot coffee with petit fours. Sesame seed snaps and salted caramel profiteroles.

Fennel Mosbolletjies, Ouma se Mieliebrood, Cape Seed loaf served with plaasbotter, beef drippings and wild boar rillettes | Wild boar scratchings with salt and vinegar salt Smoked snoek doughnuts & oyster mayo & marinated trout roe Beer puffs, beer and onion dip, wild thyme salt | Smoked buffalo ricotta, home rolled pasta, jersey milk butter, West Coast nori powder, cured egg yolk, crispy ricotta paper | Seaweed butter, cauliflower puree, spiced tadka, coconut jelly, coriander yogurt | Pressed neck, wild sorrel ,crispy bits, local mushroom emulsion, crisp celery leaves, mushroom powder, almond, spekboom | Smoked ribs, sous-vide then braai loin, fermented root vegetables, barbecued carrot purée, burnt apple chutney, crispy puffs, roast pig bone jus | Brined in oak smoked water, slow cooked for 12 hours on a charcoal fire, ravioli of green oats, lapsang tea jus, juniper oil, marigolds petals, saffron emulsion | Dark chocolate torte, milk chocolate crémeux, honey comb from the hives in the bluegums, parsnip mousse, honey ice cream | Lemon and Apple paper | Chocolate Marshmallow | Pâté de Fruits (black berries and thyme)