Sky High: Top of the Ritz spins to a halt

01 April 2015 - 02:54 By Herman Lategan

On Sunday evening a part of Cape Town's culinary life shut down. The Top of the Ritz in Sea Point, on the 22nd floor of the Cape Town Ritz, once known as the Ritz Plaza, closed. Since 1972, it had been the city's only revolving restaurant.The tall building covered with gleaming steel plates has a round UFO-type structure on top which looks like it might take off to faraway universes.On your left as you enter Sea Point from town, it towers like a retro-futuristic building from a 1940s space age movie.On Sunday, a recording of Nat King Cole singing Ramblin' Rose played in the cocktail lounge as a few regulars stared across the darkening city. The mood was like Bill Murray's in the movie Lost in Translation, as he sat alone at a bar in Tokyo.The restaurant was an intimate world with big views of city, sea and mountains. It rotated slowly, so that every hour you would pass the same spot.I've been going there since the early 1970s. In those days, men wore suits, women long evening dresses. The food was predictable, but nobody cared, because it was mostly good.Crayfish Thermidor, Avocado Ritz, Sole Veronique and ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce were on the menu. The highlight was Banana Flambé, done with pans, fire and great aplomb.The decor was a bit like the early interior of The Love Boat, with its sweeping Hello Dolly staircase from the bar area to the restaurant, dark wooden counters, old chairs with bright purple upholstery and a piano.Ah, that piano. There was always someone playing, softly, to add a hint of glamour.One pianist, a tanned dwarf in a white suit, was an aficionado of The Carpenters and would play We've Only Just Begun 20 times a night. There was also a blind woman, another one with a bush of wild red hair and glitter on her eyebrows, and a man with sleepy eyes who looked like William Burroughs.Sileno Sobreira, 65, a barman at the hotel for 30 years, was philosophical about the end. "It's like the horses. You win, sometimes you lose."But there is some controversy surrounding the final days. Marcel Schwab, the last owner of the Top of the Ritz, has been told that the owners of the hotel are shutting the venue.But Pieter van Eck, general manager of the hotel, denies this and says something new will open in its place...

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