Cape Town long ago turned power cuts into a private aesthetic. The good restaurants all have gas stoves and generators; the great ones have candles they were secretly waiting to light. A city that eats this well does not surrender to a schedule.
The move is to check the outage schedule the way you'd check a tide table, then book somewhere that treats the dark as a feature: a wood-fired kitchen, a courtyard under strings of bulbs on battery, a wine bar lit like a Vermeer.
Where the dark is best
Chef's Warehouse Beau Constantia as the vineyard lights fail one contour at a time; the fireplace room at Kloof Street House; and any braai — because the oldest South African cooking technology never needed the grid in the first place.
