Santé Spa – a little less than expected

Santé Spa

Sante Spa

We visited Santé Spa in the Franschhoek Valley for their Sunday buffet lunch. Unfortunately, we should have known not to visit a health spa for a Sunday buffet! The food wasn’t very exciting – in fact, it was pretty extremely bland-tasting, the type that health-nuts would go crazy over. Minimal salt, little flavour, and no yummies. :)

Do you may recall J Arthur Brown and the Fidentia asset management scandal of a few years ago? As far as I know, Santé Spa was (or is) owned by by Mr. Brown’s wife and I can only assume that Santé was somehow negatively effected by scandal. The hotel and spa seemed extremely quiet – almost dead. In fact, I swear that I saw a tumbleweed pass us in the courtyard!

The only thing that we really enjoyed about our visit was the drive and the beautiful views of the spectacular Simonsberg Mountain Range. Hopefully with some tender loving care they’ll step up their game and become one of the great resorts of the Franschhoek Valley, but as for now, I can’t say that we were overly excited.



  1. 1Jonathan Carter

    s/quite/quiet/

  2. 2carelj

    “extremely quite”? Quite what? ;-)

  3. 3Paul

    Oh dear… thanks guys…

  4. 4nazrana

    Hi, Sante was part of Fidentia and was closed by the liquidators. It has since been re bought. I have been there since they re-opened and the Spa is fantastic as always. I totally agree that the restaurant needs some serious work but the spa itself is a well kept secret.

  5. 5Paul

    Hi Nazrana, that’s great news. Is the swimming pool that I showed my follow-up article part of the Spa, or is it an the hotel separate?

  1. 1Indoors at Santé | Cape Town Daily Photo

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