You may recall a review of Pigalle in Melrose Arch from a few months back, in which I tried hard to rise above the distraction of 'District 9' star Vanessa Haywood, and focus on the food; I failed fairly miserably, and spent the ensuing weeks telling everyone I encountered — petrol attendants, Jehovah's witnesses, the lady from Standard Bank asking hopefully if my credit card might be paid off any time soon — that I'd been out to dinner with a bona fide movie star. A fleeting brush with a dazzling celebrity who'd never remember my name, certainly, but who would remain an enduring claim to spurious fame nonetheless.

And so I spent many hours in cheerful delusion: Vanessa had fallen in love with me, could think of nothing but her suave and eloquent dining companion (and had completely forgotten just how much of my starter spent the evening on my shirt), and was already imagining our first Hollywood project together, involving me single-handedly defeating several hundred Russian villains to save the planet from imminent destruction, and carrying the breathtaking blonde off into a Universal Studios sunset. And then, mid-delusion, she called...

Well, actually, she didn't; her agent did, said that Vanessa had loved the review, had an evening in Cape Town, and would I like to have dinner with her again. Granted, there was a certain suggestion of dinner-with-gay-best-friend rather than dinner-with-man-I-want-to-tear-the-shirt-off, but dinner nonetheless. Cue a hurried, stuttering yes, an earnest search for my most heterosexual, come-to-bed-with-me outfit (a navy shirt from a boutique in Madrid; the shop assistant had sworn blind Antonio Banderas had three of them, and then charged me a fortune), and a booking at the most expensive restaurant I could find in Cape Town. Which, having been to Nobu and spent the GDP of Malawi on dinner, had to be its neighbour at the One&Only: Gordon Ramsay's Maze.

The Gordon Ramsay empire continues to surge forward with Napoleonic intent, the little general replaced by a foul-mouthed chef orchestrating a manic global invasion. Cape Town was never going to have to wait too long for a touch of Ramsay, and Maze is now duly open, one half of the city's celebrity eating duo at Sol Kerzner's Waterfront hotel. Star chef-patron, in a designer hotel, with astronomical prices: where else to take a film star for dinner?

Read the next page to get the juicy details of Dan's date.

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