Eat out Awards: Food you can swear by

The surprise for the guests at this year's Eat Out Restaurant Awards was chef Marthinus Ferreira's Tourette-style, incoherent acceptance speech.

Amid sentences peppered with cuss words, his loud exclamation of "f***ing c***" was followed by a collective gasp.

It is widely known that chefs have potty mouths, but general consensus was one of being unimpressed by the DW Eleven-13 chef's peculiar outburst. Despite this "glitch", the winners of the top 10 best restaurants in South Africa did not surprise anybody.

The event was held on Sunday night at Thunder City, an aeroplane hangar in Cape Town. Chefs and restaurant staff ditched their uniforms and aprons for heels and lipstick or bow ties and cummerbunds. More than 800 guests attended.

Clever food installations had been set up by Caro de Waal of Eat Design , which included peach-flavoured vaporisers for Bellinis and a porcini mushroom and truffle popcorn "cloud" (bags of popcorn suspended from the ceiling).

Now in its 17th year, the format of the awards has changed over time. This year the public were invited to nominate their favourite restaurants. The list of candidates was narrowed to 500 and assessed by an editorial panel of 32 reviewers. Based on input from the editorial panel, five judges - Eat Out editor and chief judge Abigail Donnelly; chef, consultant and producer Arnold Tanzer; magazine editor and food writer Kate Wilson; chef and restaurateur Reuben Riffel; and cookbook author, designer and entrepreneur Andy Fenner - composed a list of the top 20 nominees.

The judges then had the laborious task of eating at each of the 20 restaurants and scoring them on food, service and ambience. Those with the highest scores are ranked as the top 10 best restaurants in South Africa.

Being the biggest and possibly most popular restaurant awards in the country, event organisers wanted to give attendees a taste of what some of the top restaurants have to offer. Each of the five courses was prepared by a different chef. This was unfortunately not entirely successful, as certain courses were disappointing in terms of flavour or texture, probably due to the scale of the production.

The favourite courses of the evening were a charcuterie starter by Neil Jewell of Bread and Wine Restaurant with bread by Fritz Schoon of Oude Bank Bakkerij, and the street-food style main course by chefs PJ Vadas (The Hog House Brewery) and Bertus Basson (Overture Restaurant), which consisted of smoked and pulled meats, salads and sides.

As the list of nominees was a reliable mix, it was anyone's guess who the top 10 finalists would be, and most recognised a top 20 nomination as an accomplishment in itself. When all was said and done, and considering the subject matter, knife-wielding was kept to a minimum.

And the winners are...

Top 10 Best Restaurants In South Africa

1. The Test Kitchen, Cape Town

2. Five Hundred at The Saxon,Johannesburg

3. The Tasting Room, Franschhoek

4. Restaurant Mosaic at the Orient, Pretoria

5. Jordan Restaurant, Stellenbosch

6. Overture, Stellenbosch

7. Rust en Vrede, Stellenbosch

8. DW Eleven-13, Johannesburg

9. The Restaurant at Newton Johnson, Hemel-en-Aarde Valley

10. Terroir, Stellenbosch

Chef of the Year

Chantel Dartnall, Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient, Pretoria

Rising Star Award

Kobus van der Merwe, Oep Ve Koep, Paternoster

Service Excellence Award

The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français, Franschhoek