Fine Dining Restaurant

Prue Leith College’s fine dining restaurant in Pretoria, on the college campus, offers a truly exceptional dining experience. Be it an end-of-year function, a romantic date, birthday, or any other special occasion, the experience can always be made more memorable by an outstanding setting. An elegant and luxurious atmosphere, superb service and a beautiful setting are all things you have come to expect from a fine dining restaurant only 20 minutes from Johannesburg’s northern suburbs.

Students of the Prue Leith College are intimately involved in the Prue Leith fine dining restaurant. During the 18-month course, they will be responsible for every aspect of running the restaurant and kitchen. Continuous monitoring and assessment by professional chefs, tutors and managers ensures that the highest standards are maintained throughout. Prue Leith Restaurant exposes students to all the challenges and rewards of culinary work. Menu planning and costing and preparation, cooking and plating of meals are some of the tasks that are designated to students. Students are also expected to have a firm understanding of the type of service expected in a fine dining restaurant, which means that customer order taking, food and wine waitering services, serving at the bar and acting as maître d’ Hotel are all part of the skills required to complete the course. For any student thinking of starting their own fine dining restaurant in Johannesburg, Pretoria, or anywhere in the world, administrative functions such as stocktaking and preparation of weekly trading accounts form part of the essential skills that will be of immense value to them.

Designed to incorporate the theory covered during the week, Prue Leith Restaurant offer a table d’ Hôtel menu, made up of a choice of starters, a soup, main courses including a vegetarian dish, desserts, and coffee and friandise. The menu is changed seasonally, ensuring that fine dining at this restaurant will always offer fantastically fresh ingredients. Senior students are paired up and allocated one week to be in charge of the restaurant. During this week, they will be responsible for coming up with their own special dishes, which will be served in addition to the regular menu.

During the second and third semesters of the Diploma course, Prue Leith College places students for practical training in fine dining restaurants in Johannesburg and around South Africa. Here they will experience a variety of different environments and management styles and gain a deeper understanding of what working in and running a fine dining restaurant entails. Learning from different chefs and being exposed to other techniques will broaden the students’ frame of reference and increase the value that the diploma that they will receive upon completing the course is maximised.

Prue Leith restaurant does not promote itself as a training facility, but must compete with the many other fine dining restaurants in Pretoria and Johannesburg. The high standard of culinary offerings, as well as the outstanding service has earned Prue Leith its Blaizon from the Chaine Des Rotisseurs. Business Day has named the restaurant as one of the top twenty restaurants in the country, as well as one of the top ten in Gauteng, proving that Prue Leith truly is on of the top fine dining restaurants in Pretoria.