Gavin, Elizabeth and family welcome you to our trattoria (family restaurant) — established 2021. This is the story of how we got here, and why family, community and tradition matter more to us than anything else.
From our years of international experience, we offer a mix of cuisine from our favourite spots around the world, with the emphasis firmly on traditional Italian trattoria cooking.
Although we're not Italian by blood, the family and community values of Italy are what we hold dearest — in everything we do. Family, loyalty, trust, respect and tradition give meaning to each one of us. Without them, we'd all be lost.
We met while working on cruise ships — Gavin as a Food & Beverage Manager, Elizabeth as a waitress. Four days in, Gavin proposed, and without hesitation Elizabeth said yes. We married six weeks later, delayed only two weeks by hurricane season in the Caribbean. Nineteen years on, we're stronger than ever — blessed with two great sons who now work alongside us in our trattoria.
After the financial markets collapsed in 2008, Gavin ended up in the Middle East, building and managing remote site camps for the oil and gas industry — starting in Iraq, ending up in Saudi Arabia. Quite the contrast from a life at sea.
After seven years in the sandpit, in 2017 Gavin finally got the chance to return home to family in Agulhas — and the rest, as they say, is history. We've since been blessed with an award-winning restaurant, with our family working alongside us, and a spot among South Africa's Top 100 Restaurants within our first two years.
The wood-fired oven your pizza comes out of wasn't ordered from a supplier — it was built here, brick by brick, by the same hands that now feed it wood every service. Everything that comes out of it carries a little of that.
It's not just the pizza dough that's made from scratch. The wine racks, the counters between the kitchen and the room, and the wood-fired oven were all built by hand, for this space, the same way we make the food.
Where furniture has needed replacing over the years, we've leaned on refurbishing and reusing rather than starting from scratch — it's how we like to do things.
Guests often ask about the woodwork before they ask about the wine list. We like it that way.
A trattoria is rooted in family and community tradition — casual service, wine poured generously rather than fussed over, modest prices, and a menu of plentiful regional dishes rather than haute cuisine.
Sometimes food is served family-style, at shared tables, with family and community eating together. That's the spirit we've tried to bring to Agulhas.
We don't run a kitchen with employees — we run one with family. Every person cooking, plating, and serving at Gavin's is treated with the same respect and warmth we'd want at our own table, and it shows in how they treat you.
From the kitchen to the floor, everyone here is treated as part of the family — not just a shift worker. That's not a slogan, it's how the place is actually run.
A clean kitchen isn't a bonus — it's the baseline. We hold our kitchen to a standard of cleanliness we'd be proud to show you, because we are.
A traditional trattoria, filled with love and passion for the business — not just for the food, but for the people who walk through the door.
We source our live oysters directly from Knysna Oyster Co. — South Africa's oldest oyster farm, established in 1949. What began in the Knysna Estuary has grown into a farm-to-fork operation on Algoa Bay, cultivating Pacific oysters in a HACCP-certified facility to international standards. When a supplier's been trusted with the job that long, you know what lands in our tank is good.
"Family, loyalty, trust, respect and tradition give meaning to each one of us. Without them, we are all lost."
— Gavin & Elizabeth