When I arrived in Cape Town early one morning a few months ago, one of the things I was most excited about was getting a Spur breakfast.

Spur restaurants are a chain across Southern Africa, and they’ve always been a big part of my South African journey and my South African life. I think, like a lot of South African families, I’ve got a lot of really happy memories in Spur restaurants, especially when my children were small. They would be playing in the jungle gym while I was having a beer and a steak. It was just a really good time. I always enjoyed the energy of Spur. I was always excited walking in.

Now, you may have realised, or you might have read in some of my other blogs, that I don’t really eat too much red meat anymore. I’ve pretty much done my best to cut it out. But when I arrived in Cape Town bright and early and found myself at the V&A Waterfront, one of the first things I wanted to do was hit Spur and have breakfast.

I had never really found anything comparable to it in London.

The Spur at the Waterfront is in a beautiful location. It has wonderful views of Table Mountain, and you can sit and eat while enjoying the view. There was hardly anyone around because it was so early. I sat down, and was served pretty much straight away.

Everything was cool by the pool.

I was excited.

And then the food came.

Actually, first I had to wait for the best part of an hour for it, which was weird because there was hardly anybody in the restaurant. And when it arrived, it was ice cold.

I’m not the kind of guy who sends food back unless it’s really bad, but I was forced to send this back. It wasn’t nice. Everything about it was cold.

The waitress was very apologetic, although of course it wasn’t her fault. She’s not the one cooking the food.

Eventually, the food came back. And it felt like it had just been warmly reheated in a microwave oven.

I’m not saying that’s what they did. I’m saying that’s what it tasted like.

It was limp and slightly warm at best. It was actually so bad that I couldn’t really eat it. So I didn’t.

Because I was in holiday mode — and because it is generally my nature anyway — I just paid for it. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. I drank the coffee, had the orange juice and left.

But it did leave me thinking that something had changed.

The standard at Spur had always been really quite good. You always knew what you were getting. Spur was solid. Spur was dependable. A bit like Convoy Tours, you could argue.

I decided to write it off as a one-off. Maybe it was just a bad day. Maybe the chef had had an argument with his girlfriend that morning or something. These things happen. I just let it go.

It also wasn’t cheap.

That used to be one of Spur’s big USPs. It was affordable. It was good value. But this breakfast was comparable in price to eating at almost any restaurant at the Waterfront, where you could get something really sexy like an omelette with truffles grated on top of it.

I understand that everything is more expensive nowadays. Costs go up. Prices rise. I understand that inflation exists. Whether you blame government money printing, monetary policy or the expansion of the money supply, the reality is that things cost more than they used to.

So I wasn’t expecting it to be as cheap as it was years ago.

But I was expecting the food to be good.

A couple of days later, I felt I had unfinished business. So I went to another Spur, this time in the CBD.

It was better, but not great and for the first time I could remember, I left food on my plate.

I paid the bill and left.

And I really hope that I simply had two bad experiences. I hope this isn’t a reflection of what’s happening across the board at Spur.

Because Spur was always really good. It was always first class.

And I don’t think I’m simply looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses because I associate Spur with happy times. Yes, perhaps the energy was different when I was sitting there with my children when they were young. Perhaps those memories naturally make the experience feel special.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about the food.

Something about the experience had changed, and I hope I was simply unlucky and happened to have two disappointing meals.

Because Spur has always been important to me during my life in South Africa. It is a great South African business, and I hope it is still around for many, many years to come.

I just hope that next time I visit, I get the Spur I remember.