Posh restaurant a 'cockroach haven'

Published Jul 21, 2004

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One of Cape Town's former top restaurants has been ordered to vacate its Camps Bay premises by the Cape High Court - after being described as a cockroach-infested "health hazard" by its former landlord.

Mr Justice Nathan Erasmus granted an order on Tuesday that the upmarket Vilamoura restaurant be ejected from its R138 139-a-month rented premises in Camps Bay's Promenade Mall, after an application from its former landlord, Momentum Capital Asset Trust company, Xtraprops 66.

Vilamoura made headlines in December two years ago after one of its umbrellas fell from a balcony and slammed into the back of British tourist Andrew Smith, who was eating lunch in a restaurant two storeys below.

The heavy umbrella and its concrete base left Smith, a property developer from Surrey, with head injuries and several broken bones.

Vilamoura Camps Bay is one of four top restaurants located in Sandton, Cape Town and Pretoria and owned by the Vilamoura Restaurant Group, solely operated by its executive chairperson, Cornelius Swart.

According to a liquidation application bought against the group by Diner's Club International last year, the company's debts exceeded its assets by R125-million.

The Vilamoura Restaurant Group did not oppose the order to vacate its Camps Bay premises.

It emerged in papers before the High Court that the Camps Bay Vilamoura restaurant had been closed since the end of May this year, but had not been cleared of perishable foodstuffs - much of which had apparently been left to rot.

According to Jeffery Solomons, director of Xtraprops 66, unpaid Camps Bay Vilamoura staff had attempted to break into the deserted restaurant in an apparent effort to "remove assets from the premises".

Solomons said Camps Bay Vilamoura had failed to timeously pay its rental costs between June and December last year and February and March this year and was summonsed to the Cape Town magistrate's court for failing to pay rent on three separate occasions.

In defence of its failure to pay rent in April and May this year, Vilamoura claimed it had suffered damages because its landlord had failed to fix a leak in its roof in an efficient and unobtrusive manner.

But Solomons claimed that the subsequent closure of the restaurant "had nothing to do with leaks, but had to do with its (Vilamoura's) financial position".

The restaurant's lease was cancelled on June 29.

Solomons claimed that Vilamoura Camps Bay manager Dale Turrell returned the restaurant's keys to Xtraprops 66 on July 2, after his phone messages to Swart were not returned.

When Solomons took prospective tenants to view the premises five days later, he said he was dismayed to discover "a considerable amount of food on the premises, some of which was in an advanced state of decay and was creating odours and attracting cockroaches".

While much of the "rotting and mouldy" food had been disposed of, Solomons said substantial amounts of seafood and poultry remained in the restaurant's kitchen - leaving his company reluctant to turn the electricity off for fear of "the effect it would have".

Other Promenade Mall tenants had also started complaining of a "sudden infestation of cockroaches", he said.

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