The Service Station Wine Bar.
There is a new spring in Rosendal’s step that Bloemfontein residents who have visited over the years will now notice. Still a sleepy, but pretty, dorpie Rosendal has done well over the past two years, gaining new residents from Gauteng and Bloemfontein who are quite happy to be working from home where home involves safe streets where kids can play, views of the Witteberg Mountains and the rythyms of rural life in a working farming town and arts colony.
That new energy is not hard to find – more homes with good design being built, elegant guest houses, new art galleries, restaurants and bars and even a new boutique hotel, The Rosendal Country Retreat, operated by Pretoria’s esteemed Rosemary Hill.
The clearest and most unexpected example of Rosendal’s new punch is The Service Station Wine Bar.
Located in a beautifully restored former petrol station in the heart of Rosendal’s tiny downtown, visitors will be surprised to find a wine bar with drop dead gorgeous design, an unusually diverse selection of wines and spirits – including South Africa’s largest, and possibly only, collection of Canadian whiskys.
The Service Station is clearly not your typical small town bar. Rounding out the offering is a compact and tasty Asian fusion menu based on small and affordable tapas cum dim-sum plates.
Who would have thought that a far-flung corner of the Free State would be the place to launch an offering that can take on the best in Johannesburg and The Cape?
Even more surprising is to find this project to be the brainchild of a former Canadian journalist, coming direct from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and an international hotelier most recently employed at Radisson Hotels Rwanda.
Visitors wanting a weekend of respite just over two hours drive from Bloemfontein need to give Rosendal a second glance.
* The Service Station Wine Bar on 393 Van der Merwe Street, Rosendal.
Open: Fridays: 16:00 to 23:00 and Saturdays 12:00 to 23:00; Longer on public and school holidays.
