A chilled bottle of Chenin arrives, pulled from Ongetem's cellar. Chef Bertus Basson looks at the label the way a man reaches for his favorite record. He pours a splash, watching the cold liquid fog up the glass, then takes a sip as he leans back in his chair. Radiating a relaxed authority, he sports a baseball cap and a collection of bracelets wound around his wrist. He dresses for his mood, and today, that's the hip hop emanating from the speakers inside. He surveys the Longkloof neighborhood, spread out around him. For years, Basson worked on embracing his South African identity in the kitchen, and his most recent restaurant is the latest expression of that journey.

Ongetem, which opened on June 25, 2025 as the anchor restaurant of Hilton’s first Canopy property in South Africa, takes its name from the Afrikaans word for untamed. Situated in the Longkloof district of Cape Town’s CBD — a revitalized 112-year-old historic precinct now home to boutiques, offices, and a tech startup hub — the restaurant was conceived not as a hotel dining room but as a neighborhood gathering place.

The numbers bear it out — a significant portion of Ongetem’s covers aren’t hotel guests at all. Locals come for the open-fire cooking, the shared plates, the wine list, and local vibes.

Rediscovering South Africa by Way of London

Basson was born in Belleville, a suburb of Cape Town, later lived in Polokwane in the Limpopo region, then returned to the Cape. The son of an Afrikaans family, shared meals were integral to his upbringing. "My mother was a great cook, my grandfather was a great cook," he says. "It wasn't so much a decision as a progression," he says of his professional pursuit of food.

At age 19, Basson left for London to work in restaurants. London opened his eyes to the diversity of cuisine and ingredients. Growing up in the apartheid era, he had limited access to products. "We had two yellow cheeses — Gouda and yellow cheddar," he says. "When we finally got a white cheese on the market, people lost their minds because we didn't know that cheese could be white."

Basson would land a job at Chez Bruce, the Michelin-starred Wandsworth restaurant. "You arrive and the mushroom man drops off four different kinds in the morning — girolles, pied de mouton, morels — and you've just never seen it before. It forces you to learn and to be inquisitive."

Basson returned to South Africa in 2002 and opened Overture. When he launched, he served what he calls "a finer European style of cooking." However, after spending four seasons as a judge on Ultimate Braai Master, a competition series that took him across South Africa's provinces, he changed his perspective. "I could sense a change within me that said put more South African into your menu, and that's what happened."

Today, Basson runs ten restaurants, among them Overture, Chorus, Acre, Eike, and Spek & Bone, plus burger joints and a catering operation. For it all, he won the 2025 Eat Out Woolworths Trailblazer Award. The thread that binds: South African ingredients, South African suppliers, and an unflinching embrace of a cuisine the world is only beginning to take seriously.

"I came to realize that although I'm white European, I have nowhere else to go," he says. "I don't even know where my family is from in Europe. My roots are South African. I'm African. I need to embrace the place where I'm from." His customers and critics initially viewed the pivot with skepticism. "People expected something else. How dare you cook South African? But that's who I am. You have to stick with your guns."

Though South Africa has fantastic ingredients, the remote location of the country limits variety. But Basson sees that as an opportunity that makes him work harder. "I believe creativity is much more powerful when it comes from a place of limitations," he says. "We don't have the ingredients Europe has. We can't just reach for foie gras and truffles and fresh scallops."

The same geography that constrains his pantry offers a compelling upside: access to one of the world’s most exciting and diverse wine regions. Basson, a true wine lover, brings his critical eye for characterful wine to both his home cellar and his restaurants.

He rattles off all the great wines he’s tasted like a memory of great loves. The Series C and M wines from Mike Ratcliffe of Vilafonté, to the crisp Chenin Blancs of Swartland and Stellenbosch. "Oh, and don’t forget the Cabernets," he adds. His fondness for the bottle extends to the people behind it. "They make such complex wines, but if you speak to them, they're super down to earth," he says of South African winemakers.

Helping Community In Crisis

When South Africa's lockdown hit — among the strictest in the world — Basson lasted two and a half weeks before restlessness won out. He called a neighbor in Jamestown, the mixed-race community outside Stellenbosch where he and his wife, Marley, live, and asked whether people were going hungry. The answer was yes.

He fetched a burner and a pot from his catering company, started cooking soup from the vegetable garden, and had volunteers distribute it. The operation quickly outgrew the house, so they took over a restaurant space, brought back a few chefs, and donations of produce arrived from nearby farms. At its peak they were producing 1,000 liters of soup a day, distributed by taxi operators across the region.

A local variety show heard about it, invited him on, and a television series was born: In die Sop — Afrikaans for in the soup, meaning roughly in trouble — in which Basson helped struggling restaurants rebuild post-COVID. "We did it with a bit of kindness," he says.

That community soup kitchen still runs today, feeding 200 people a week. "You can't give with a closed hand," he says. "If you give, you also receive."

Building a Neighborhood-Forward Experience

That neighborhood-first ethos is baked into Canopy by Hilton’s DNA. The brand, boasting nearly 50 properties across 15 countries, aims to function as an extension of its surroundings rather than a tourist bubble apart from it.

Explicitly in South Africa, the Canopy by Hilton Cape Town Longkloof features local art in common areas, South African textiles and prints, and a lobby anchored by a towering giraffe sculpture by a local artist. Staff come from the surrounding community and have the opportunity for promotions and a true career track. Rather than fill nearby restaurants and shops with chains, local cafes and independent designers occupy the commercial spaces, a reflection of the neighborhood-focused vision.

The opportunity for Basson to partner with the property came during a holiday in Mozambique. He received a cold email from a Hilton representative named Reese. His first instinct was skepticism. “When you think of big hotel brands, you think of men in gray suits with mustaches who have great set ideas of what hospitality is.”

After meeting the team, he changed his mind. "I found a group of kindred spirits — people who love hospitality and food and drink, and were quite open to new ideas and to doing things differently."

The menu has seen a few iterations, but what hasn’t changed is the core philosophy — focusing on what and how South Africans eat. That means shared plates like curried mussels, a nod to Cape Malay spice traditions, or spatchcock chicken and braised yellowtail in peri-peri butter. And for the meat lovers, a selection of locally sourced, wood-fired steaks, including a massive 1kg T-bone and of course, excellent french fries and malva pudding.

Thinking about his menu, Basson references an old Afrikaans saying: bloei waar jy geplant is. Flower where you've been planted. "You can't always choose the place you're going to be," he says, picking up his Chenin Blanc. "But you can choose to thrive there."

Ongetem is located at the Canopy by Hilton Cape Town Longkloof, De Lorentz Street, Cape Town CBD.