Ashley's Family Restaurant / Goodwood

This place is highly recommended on Social Media, so we definitely had to check it out. The name alone suggests that it is a good fit for our website. But what follows is an honest review from our point of view and we always encourage you to make your own (unique) experience.

The Good Things:

We arrived there early enough on a Friday evening to get a table straight away. We were greeted by a friendly bouncer who is waiting at the door to meet the guests (and later on keep the queue under control). Yes, you’ve read correctly. People are actually queuing outside in order to get a table and they are patiently waiting on plastic chairs in front of the restaurant.

We were led to a nice table at the back of the restaurant and absolutely all waiters were extremely friendly and helpful. The level of service really is exceptional and the staff makes sure that you are happy and quickly attended to. We got yummy (and warm) buttered rolls as a free starter and had to take our time to go through the very large menu. They really have a great variety of all kinds of food and also daily specials. What you’ll read a lot on social Media is that this place is serving the “best pizza in Cape Town”. So we had to check it out and, of course, ordered pizza along with a daily special – chicken schnitzel. Besides that they really do have a little bit of everything: salads, pizza, pasta, seafood, from the grill, combos, kiddies meals… It’s almost too much to be good! You can find their full menu on their website: MENU

The portions are quite generous and a medium sized pizza is definitely enough for one person due to the plentiful toppings.

This place has no dedicated kiddies area or entertainment facilities. However, they do hand out cute little play kits that include some crayons, a colouring paper, sweet treats and lego. So the kids were happy during our stay and we could keep them entertained at the table thanks to the goodie bag.

The Not So Good Things:

As mentioned before, the menu is huge and there is a great variety of everything. However, we personally found it too much as there is this saying: the more food on the menu, the lower the quality. I don’t know if we were unlucky with our choices (pizza and schnitzel) but we can only describe it as very average. Many restaurants claim to serve the “best pizza in town” but this one (pizza “SMOG”) was pretty unspectacular and bland in spite of the toppings. It somehow reminded us of a frozen pizza with added extras. The wine which we ordered (a rosé by the glass) tasted “cheap” and was almost undrinkable for us. Again, it might be bad luck and due to the choices we made on that day.

The place itself is super busy, but prices are relatively high compared to other restaurants in town and we didn’t expect those kind of prices in that particular area. The restaurant has more the vibes of a cozy pub and hence, it was rather dark and got very hot (with all the people in there).

Our Experience

We have a very mixed experience as the staff there was really friendly and helpful and doing everything to keep the guests happy. We just expected something else when we read “Ashley’s Family Restaurant”. I guess we were expecting a play area, special kiddies entertainment or something else for the kids. I’m not exactly sure myself. But we were quite disappointed by the food and would rather not recommend it to any of our friends. But there seem to be many, many other people out there who have a completely different experience of that place and you might be one of them. When we left Ashley’s there was a queue outside and many customers and regulars seem to be quite fond of this restaurant. So if you are curious to check it out, go there and see it for yourself. If you do, please let us know how you found it!

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️