• Cape Town’s Fyn restaurant was recently ranked 37th best in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
• The flagship “Experience” dinner there costs R1,575 per person.
• Compared to its global counterparts on the list, this is a bargain.
• For roughly the same price as a single dinner at many similarly ranked rivals, you can have one dinner at each of the local restaurants in the top 100 – and still leave with some change.
• Here’s how the cost of dinner at Fyn compares to those with similar rankings in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Cape Town’s fine-dining Fyn restaurant recently ranked the 37th best on the planet in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Also on the list were two other highly regarded local establishments in La Colombe at 56 and Wolfgat at 90.

The list is focused on gastro-tourism and seeks to highlight top restaurants in cities around the world. Fittingly, meals at the top 50 establishments are far from cheap.

The top-rated restaurant for 2022, Copenhagen’s Geranium, charges 3,200 DKK, or R7,260, per person, for its flagship dinner.

As restaurants drop down the list, some get cheaper – but given these are among the fanciest establishments in the world, it’s not uncommon to find equally pricey menus scattered throughout the top 50.

But by global standards, Cape Town’s top contenders, which placed 37, 56, and 90, represent remarkable bargains – particularly for intrepid foodies with foreign currency.

Unlike many restaurants on the list, Fyn offers a variety of options at different price points, including a winter lunch special at R575. But even its top-tier Experience Dinner, which costs R1,575 (without optional wine pairing or service charge), is cheap compared to rivals on either side of it.

Jordnær in Copenhagen ranked one worse than Fyn in 38th place and charges R7,260 per person for its premier dinner offering.

Sorn in Bangkok, in 39th place, charges R2,966 per person.

Prices at the restaurants a few places higher than Fyn in the list are equally expensive – they range from R3,800 per person for dinner at Hiša Franko in Kobarid Slovenia to R6,178 per person at New York’s Atomix.

For the same price as one dinner at Atomix, Odette, or Schloss Schauenstein, it would be possible to dine out at all three of South Africa’s top spots.

And compared to the most expensive restaurant in the 33 to 41 bracket, Jordnær, it would be possible to have four dinners – and a lunch – at Fyn before breaking even.

Here’s how the cost of eating out at South Africa’s top-ranked restaurants compares to those abroad.