Hartbeespoort to show off its gourmet side at fun Spring festival

Anyone who still thinks of Hartbeespoort cuisine as an oxymoron - or the Harley Davidson Club at the Wimpy on a Sunday morning - should think again. Less than an hour’s commute from both Johannesburg and Pretoria, this tiny North West town has reinvented itself as a gastronomic hot spot for cool people.

Embraced by the Witwatersberg and Magaliesberg and surrounded by agricultural abundance, artisanal food producers are everywhere. Coffee roasters, cheese makers, olive farmers, sourdough risers, craft brewers, gin distillers and two American Express Platinum Fine Dining Award-winning restaurants. You name it, Harties has it. 

This superb seasonal produce will take centre stage at the Hartiwood Food and Film Show night market, which is taking place on Spring Day, September 1, at Hartiwood Films.

The owner of Hartiwood Films, director Paul Kruger, built a fully functional set of ye olde cinematic streets (complete with a milkshake serving diner and a bioscope with velvet chairs and a restored 16mm vintage projector) for his hugely successful 2012 Afrikaans-language movie, Pretville.

The set has subsequently been converted into a theme park where visitors can play and stay inside their favourite film. It is literally as pretty as a picture – which is why Pretville is so popular with Instagram-obsessed millennials. 

And pictures don’t get much prettier than Pretville after dark. On the evening of the Hartiwood Food and Film Show night market, the streets of Pretville will be bedecked with twinkly fairy lights and lined with fabulous food stalls.

Now in its fifth year, the event offers everything from preserves and pickles to puddings and pannekoeke. Brilliant brioche and marvellous macaroons compete for customer attention with startlingly spicy samosas and fabulous falafel.

Interested in indigenous offerings? Baobab ice creams; marula nut butters; foraged marog; mabele (sorghum) salads; tepane leaf teas; slow cooked, meltingly tender Pedi lamb potjies and msoba konfyt celebrate traditional regional tastes.

Fruit and spice laden Moroccan tagines, buttery croissants and deliciously deep-south American barbeques are included among the international orders of the day.

Boozy bliss awaits in the beer garden, where real ales galore join impressively stiff, locally distilled, botanical-infused gin and tonics, every imaginable incarnation of mampoer, rum cocktails and bling bottles of bubbly. 

Street performers and musicians will weave their way through the evening.

For more information, visit hartiwoodfoodandfilmshow.co.za