Where to eat in Hermanus

Lunchtime in the cave below Marine Drive. The table stands on bare rock, the waiter brings kingklip and a Sauvignon Blanc from up the valley, and then somebody at the next table puts down their cutlery, because thirty metres off the terrace a whale has surfaced. Nobody carries on eating. At a lot of tables in Hermanus you are paying for the position, and in season the position is worth every rand. Come for the cooking and you drive up the valley. Come for both and you plan two evenings.

At the Old Harbour and on the cliff

Bientang's Cave is the address everyone knows: a restaurant in a cave below Marine Drive, named after a Khoi woman said to have lived here in the nineteenth century. Fish, seafood, tables on the rocks, whales within calling distance. The reviews swing about, because the service cannot keep up on a full day, and it is still the place you should sit once in season. Book for lunch rather than dinner: the whales are there by day, and the cave is dark in the evening.

Up at the old harbour stand two places with a history: Burgundy, in one of the oldest buildings in town, with a terrace above the harbour and a menu that runs between fish and meat, and Fisherman's Cottage, in a fisherman's house since 1991, small and tight and therefore worth booking. A little to the west, in Westcliff, La Pentola cooks above the bay with fish, game and a long wine list; in the evening with the sunset in the window.

In the centre: breakfast and coffee

Main Road and the streets around Market Square are the breakfast quarter. Cafés with pavement tables, bakeries, a deli. This is where you eat in the morning before the Cliff Path, and where you pick up coffee on the way back. The places change, the streets do not; walk Main Road once and sit where the locals are sitting. On Saturdays from 09:00 to 14:00 the Hermanus Country Market at the cricket club is the better breakfast (as of August 2026): pancakes, bread, cheese, coffee, all of it standing up between the stalls.

The cave

Bientang's Cavebelow Marine Drive, book for lunch

Old Harbour

Burgundy, Fisherman's Cottagehistory and a terrace

Wine valley

Creation, Newton Johnsonlunch with wine to match

Beach

DutchiesGrotto Beach, feet in the sand

On the water: New Harbour and Grotto Beach

At the New Harbour, where the whale boats tie up, Harbour Rock sits above the mole: sushi, fish, cocktails and the sunset over the bay, because the harbour faces west. After a boat trip it is the nearest table. At the other end of town, on Grotto Beach, Dutchies stands right on the sand, serving from breakfast to dinner, with eighteen kilometres of beach in front of it and children running to the water between courses. Neither is a temple of cooking, and both are the right places for a day by the sea.

Up the Hemel-en-Aarde valley

The best kitchens in the area stand among vines. Creation Wines, in the upper valley, matches courses to its own wines one by one and opens daily (as of August 2026); booking is required, and weeks ahead at a weekend. Newton Johnson has a restaurant looking down the valley and a kitchen that puts fish from the coast next to vegetables from the farm. Lunch up the valley takes three hours if you do it properly, and afterwards somebody else drives. If you want to buy the wine afterwards, the estates and the bottles are on our sister site about Stellenbosch, which is in German.

What comes to the table

Fish, first. Kingklip, hake, yellowtail, snoek off the grill, with oysters from the chiller and abalone from the farm at the New Harbour, the one place you can legally eat the protected shellfish. Lamb from the Overberg, game from the Karoo, and a braai dish nearly everywhere for anyone who wants fire. The wine comes from the valley fifteen minutes away, and in most restaurants a bottle of that quality costs less than it would at home.

A few habits: a tip is ten to fifteen per cent, and for larger groups it is often on the bill already. You book in season and at weekends. In winter, hardly at all. Many kitchens close on Sunday evening, and Monday is the day off for the small places. If you want to eat at nine in July, ring ahead.

Our tipTake the cave at lunchtime in season, the wine valley on a day without whales, and the sunset at the New Harbour. Three evenings, three views, no restaurant twice.

And with no booking?

Then you walk down Main Road and look for a gap. A dozen places sit within two hundred metres in the centre, from the pizza oven to the steakhouse, and one of them always has a table. On a winter weekday you will get a seat at the Old Harbour without ringing. On an October weekend you will not get one even with.