Rooitamatie Restaurant
Rooitamatie is the delightful restaurant of foodie chef and influencer, Renette Vosloo. After time in Cape Town building a career and a business in food, she returned to her small town roots in the Free State. Rooitamatie serves bespoke meals based on fresh ingredients and home cooking with a quirky French flair. Renette, who has a way with food, is the charming host of this hide-away spot in the heart of Rosendal, serving wonderful three course meals on weekends.
Mondays and Tuesdays she makes freshly baked quiches, scones, tarts and cakes for Teestoep Café that is a perfect spot to mix with friendly locals.
Rooitamatie and Teestoep are located in a quiet courtyard behind The Service Station Wine Bar in Rosendal.
Special bookings and menus on request.
Hours:
Wednesdays - Saturdays—three course dinner service; bookings on request, or at least a day before
Monday-Tuesdays Teestoep 10-1500
The Blacksmith’s Stables
The historic, comfortable and elegant Blacksmith’s Stables is located in the heart of Rosendal’s heritage district, close to shops, galleries and restaurants and directly behind the stylish Service Station Wine Bar. It is housed in a beautifully converted sandstone barn with a large open plan main living room, cathedral ceiling and flagstone floor.
In 2025 it became the personal residence and business premises of Renette Vosloo and her Rooitamatie restaurant.
History of the Blacksmith's stables
This is likely Rosendal’s oldest building, dating from before the town’s founding in 1908. A property deed was issued retroactively in 1912 when the town was first properly surveyed, and which is the first written record, although there are many other buildings in Rosendal from this year also. The design incorporates a long sandstone barn, typical of the rural Free State, and with gable end roof trusses added later. A blacksmith’s shop with livery stables is known to have operated from here at what was a prominent site in the town’s early years, next to the Senekal to Ficksburg crossroads at Kriek and Van der Merwe Street and between the Post Office and General Dealer store. Rosendal’s first Church services took place here, under wagon buck sails for additional shelter, before the present Dutch Reformed Church was built in 1914. Blacksmiths worked from this site until the 1950s after which the Service Station was built as a mechanic’s shop at the front of the property. The barn then became a grain store for the farmers cooperative at the old General Dealer building next door. A Mr Castelain was the last blacksmith to have worked from this building, and whose repute was for being a man who could not be crossed.
