BEST INTERIORS
A Taste of Japan

By Hilary Prendini Toffoli

Do you crave peace, space and tranquillity? A Cape Town couple turns their home into a Japanese-style haven

‘It’s amazing what people are prepared to do. They thought we were crazy—it’s lots of personal involvement, you can’t just give instructions!’

‘“Most people just do a little bit, not all of this,” declares a visitor. “I got quite a shock. I thought I was in Japan.”’

THIS IS NOT YOUR AVERAGE double-storey house in Rondebosch. But then this is not your average couple. The Bresselschmidts are the sort of high-energy, high-profile, cross-cultural, no-kids pair you’re more likely to come across in an achievers’ melting pot like New York than in safe, slow-paced Cape Town. 

Harald Bresselschmidt is the master chef and owner of Aubergine, the much-acclaimed Dunkley Square restaurant that has just celebrated its 10th anniversary—in a town where restaurants have a famously short lifespan. His wife Sudeshni Naidoo is a professor in the Community Oral Health Department of the University of the Western Cape. Her working life involves considerable overseas travel. Yet neither of them would live anywhere else.

“Harald can ride his mountain bike out of the house and be on the mountain in a few minutes,” says Su. “We love the simplicity of life here.” 

Life has got even simpler since they opted for the uncluttered lines of Japanese décor in the upstairs renovation of their English country cottage. 

The elegant spare-ness strikes you as soon as Su slides open the fusuma doors and reveals this tranquil little piece of Japan in Lovers’ Walk, and asks you to please take off your shoes before you step on to the straw tatami mats.

It’s at the irori—a pit fire that can be covered or open, in the centre of a low square wooden table—that Harald and Su have Japanese meals, particularly on special occasions. Today it’s the visit of a Japanese friend in the wine industry who helped Su with the renovation but hasn’t seen it yet. Midori and Hans Schröder are partners in Neil Ellis wines, and have an interest in two boutique labels, Conde and Stark.

- The irori, in the centre of a low square wooden table that you sit around on zabuton cushions on the floor, is a brilliant solution for space-strapped Japan. It doubles as both a stove and a table at which to eat, or drink tea.

Midori has only a Japanese bath and a Japanese-style garden in her Cape Dutch house in Stellenbosch, and so immediately declares herself blown away by the Bresselschmidts’ remarkable Japanese set-up. “Most people just do a little bit, not all of this,” says Midori. “I got quite a shock. I thought I was in Japan.”

Although they still have to create a wooden deck upstairs, and a Japanese garden—Su has already met with the Imperial palace gardeners who created the Oppenheimer’s Japanese garden at Brenthurst—the couple is thrilled with having pulled off this difficult interior. 

“We’re both total perfectionists, so a challenge like this suits our personalities,” says Su. “I think what we’ve done fits with the house, which was built in 1907 and has character. It had been turned into two semis before we bought it ten years ago. Then last year the other side of the house came on the market, so we bought it and broke through upstairs to make it one house again.”

The area is open plan. For living, sleeping, and even bathing. Furniture and decoration are minimal. Excluding the construction work, Harald estimates the whole thing cost about R350 000, including the sauna in what was previously a bathroom.  

Harald’s concern was practical. “We’ve been planning this for years, and my biggest worry was where we would find the craftsmen to produce the individual items. But it’s amazing what people are prepared to do. Of course they thought we were crazy—it’s lots of personal involvement, you can’t just give instructions—but in the end the only things we had to get from Japan were the tatami mats.”

- The floor in the bedroom section is covered only by tatami mats, and the futon that Harald and Sue sleep on. 

“Tatami is an art,” says Su. “They stuff each mat with layers of fine straw. Even Andy couldn’t make the tatami mats. He’s the guy in Kommetjie who made our shoji screens, the tokonoma, irori and the o-furo bath.” 

Why take off your shoes? Because of the custom of both sitting and sleeping on the floor, on tatami mats and futon’s, footwear is removed to keep the house clean. Shoes are discarded in the genken (entrance), which is always a step lower than the rest of the house. Slippers are then used throughout the house, except on tatami mats because this can scuff and damage the mats.  

Su is the Japan expert. She’s the one who over the past few decades has gone totally bananas over Japan. She has it all. The beautifully illustrated books on traditional Japanese homes. The cupboards full of collections of crockery for every imaginable occasion. The spoons, chopsticks, chopsticks holders and so on—endlessly. 

She was even doing quite well with the language until her teacher insisted she learn to write it. “I have six degrees including a Ph.D and that’s more than enough,” she says wryly. 

It was their mutual love of Japanese food that brought them together. Harald had just arrived in South Africa as head chef at Grande Roche, and Su was eating there with her sister. 

“I complained about the food,” she says, “so the maitre d’ called Harald and he joined us for a glass of sparkling wine and mentioned a Japanese restaurant that had just opened in Cape Town …” 

Two years later they were married in the biggest wedding ever in the Catholic Church near Su’s family home on the Natal South Coast. “Everyone in the community said to my mother ‘We know we’re not invited but we’re coming anyway …’” 

Su does Indian cooking at home, and Harald’s Aubergine menu has an Asian touch that includes dishes influenced by Indian, Thai and Japanese cuisines. 

“I’ve cooked Asian food since the beginning, though my background is European Continental,” he says. “When I do Japanese I’m not competing with authentic Japanese chefs. I stick to the idea of the dish, but for me it’s important to put my own interpretation on it. When you’ve cooked for 27 years you become creative, yet I always know exactly how the dish will taste in my head.”