Come and enjoy country style cuisine in an intimate, comfortable yet stylish setting. Enjoy your delectable meal beside a cozy fireplace or the steeping sunlight in the rose filled garden. There is also a jungle gym for the little ones to play on. The country cuisine is generous and features the likes of French toast, Beer batter Fish or Slow Roasted Oxtail. The wine list supports mainly locally produced wine.

Coffee and cake, calamari and chips, lasagne and salads and home made pies are served with an assortment of beverages ranging from soft drinks to hard tack. A menu with light meals and snacks is available

This is the locals’ watering hole after work, the place where rugby, soccer and cricket games are viewed and a safe venue where fathers and mothers can teach their offspring how to play pool. Business hours are from 9h00 in the morning till late at night.

Darling's new, chic restaurant, Chicory Cheese Café, is about feeling good, enjoying life and establishing a foundation for healthy eating.

Catering for the intolerant to the indulgent, its intuitive, seasonal menu means meals are freshly cooked, juices freshly squeezed, coffee freshly ground and the service refreshingly friendly.

Join Chicory Cheese Café in sharing the love of good food. A treat for your stomach and your soul.

Monday to Friday:
08h00 to 17h00
Saturday & Public Holidays:
08h00 to 14h30
Sunday – Closed

Cloof produces intense, bold-flavoured wines from grapes grown under extreme conditions. Among its products are a Decanter 5 Star Award winner, a Champion Shiraz and numerous airline selections. The estate welcomes visitors for wine tasting (Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 16:00) and light lunches (Tuesday to Saturday 11:00 to 15:00). Details may be found on the Cloof website.

The estate also offers a superb venue for weddings and other functions.

Darling Brew Slow Quarter offers you the unique experience of our beer and food pairings. This growing trend highlights the variety in beers, for a variety of occasions with a gastronomy of flavours. One could try anything from our roasted, caramel native ale paired with melon and kudu bresaola to our spicey bone crusher wit beer paired with tempura prawns in a bone crusher and sesame seed batter. Beer is no longer the poor cousin, craft breweries are changing this one delicious brew at a time. Come be part of the movement.

Darling Olives is located just 3 km out of Darling towards Yzerfontein, nestled amidst vineyards, grazing cattle and olive groves.

Our 70 hectares of olives are all dry land and grown on the Alexanderfontein Estate. They get processed within 24 hours of picking, resulting in a superior product.

Farm bread is baked daily in a wood burned oven. Enjoy a picnic on the farm amongst wild flowers with our bread, olive jams, olive marmalade, Labneh cheese, olives and olive paste in the springtime. For desert you can sample our olive chocolate! During the winter months we always have fire burning in our tasting rooms to shake off the cold while enjoying an informative tasting.

Harvest time is April to June when you can experience the olive oil process with a guided tour through our olive press.

Experience a traditional approach to olives on a working farm where cattle are still herded by horse and a flock of sheep might cross your path. Darling Olives is a great place to start your education about how olives are grown, pressed and cured.

The Pienaar family has always been passionate about farming. Their dream realised several years ago when they established a 17 hectare olive grove at Het Bos, their farm on the outskirts of Darling on the Cape West Coast.

This region has a maritime Mediterranean climate which is ideally suited for olive growing; they chose to plant the well-known Frantoio Cultivar. The slight spicy and peppery character of this oil suits most palates. The high anti-oxidant count makes it one of the healthiest olive oils.

The 'little' grove at Het Bos is big enough to make a meaningful quantity, yet small enough for them to hand craft and create a superb product and present it with pride & joy.

Experience the magic of Darling - Where else in South Africa would you find Evita, a Voorkamerfest, and  both a wild flower show and an exotic orchid show, on the same day? As you will discover even the wines of Darling have something special about them, and the fact that many highly respected wine labels outside Darling either have a vineyard here, or choose to source their fruit from our soils, is indicative of this.

The wines of Darling are blessed with the consistency of quality due to their viticulture location and yet a diversity of style that makes them all so different. With scarcely half a dozen producers there is a lot to explore!

There is however a practical side to a visitors “route of exploration” in that in typical Darling diversity, the vineyards are located in four different directions from the centre of the town. To visit all the Vineyards in one-day is possible but not always practical, and this is what has inspired Darling négociant  Charles Withington to come up with the idea of the Darling Wine Shop - a one-stop shop in the centre of Darling where one could buy virtually the entire range of any of the Darling wines, and at cellar door prices.

The Darling wine shop also provides the opportunity for the many, many visitors to Darling who come to see Evita, explore the flowers, and experience the Voorkamerfest, and who are invariably lovers of good wine and fine food, to be able to source these delights right here in the centre of the village, saving them time and travel.

The Darling wine shop also provides a host of other possibilities :

1. Mixed cases like the “summer stunners” with a selected white wine from the six producers, or the “winter warmers” where the same exercise is done with red wine.
2. An opportunity to purchase all the areas wines in different combinations.
3. To taste the “wine of the day”.
4. To make use of a very efficient freight delivery system both locally and internationally to have Darling wines delivered to your doorstep.
5. In these days when delivery costs are expensive, to be able to have goods from different suppliers all arrived in a single consignment.

And so there we are - we urge you to come and visit us and see and experience the delights of Darling.

Being a unique and trendy hotspot for locals and tourists alike, the Marmalade Cat, is everything its names suggests! The small marmalade-coloured building is easy to spot on Darling’s main road and as one walks past bougainvilleas to enter the yellow, white and blue polka-dotted shop, one is greeted by smiling faces, freshly baked scents and a kaleidoscope of gifts and collectables individually selected by the owner, Sandi Collins.

The Marmalade Cat is the perfect place for a bustling atmosphere, freshly prepared, flavour-filled breakfasts, lunches, morning and afternoon teas. Specialties such as the fluffy bacon and feta omelets for breakfast, or the designer chicken pies will have you desperate to return for more! The Marmalade Cat is also open on Friday nights for their famous pizzas, which include a complementary salad to start and an atmosphere that is sure to have you dancing by the end of the night. The Marmalade Cat is also the perfect place for birthday or business functions, which must be booked in advance.

So with its flower and fountain filled courtyard, good-mood music, delicious food, treasured gifts and a real-life marmalade cat to top it all off, you’re likely to have a spring in your step for the rest of the day.

The lodge affords you comfortable, private accommodation in one of four double en-suite bedrooms, each tastefully furnished with hand-embroidered linen and goose-down duvets.

Modern country cuisine is served in the restaurant or on the patio overlooking the swimming pool under an old Oak tree. Trinity Lodge is the perfect functions venue, ideally suited for weddings and parties.

Come and experience for yourself the wonderful wines from the Darling area at a series of wine tastings and gourmet dinners held periodically throughout the year. Wine tastings usually hosted by the wine makers or owners of the labels and will be followed by a four course dinner with specially selected wines to complement the menu.

Please contact us for dates and details of these special evenings.

Home made jams, cordials and chutneys all made on the owners farm between Darling and Malmesbury . Well known for our homemade pies and bread. Large and safe playground for the kids. Tables outside , if you want to sit outside .Lots of animals to feed. There is a fireplace in the cosy coffeeshop as well as in the Winehouse. The wines that we sell come from our own farm, Nuweland, the local Darling cellars as well as the smaller cellars from the Swartland area.

Our farm is situated on the Darling Rd (R315) and can be reached from the N7 or the R27. We grow 95 hectares of wine grapes on dry land.

Juan Louw jnr. is the winemaker on the farm and also the manager and co-owner of Vygevallei Farmstall. .
He is the only winemaker in South Africa that makes a fortified wine with sun-dried grapes that is not fermented.

We want to share our experience of making wine and preserves using the methods of years gone by with our customers and friends.

Share with us the winemakers motto "As long as I can enjoy a good wine, I`ll be a rich man."