18/07/2026
A SMITTEN ANNOUNCEMENT : “The Times They Are A-Changin’”
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two decades since Chris and I moved to Franschhoek. Increasingly I’ve been finding myself wondering, “Where did the years go?” I mean, one moment you’re embracing your newborn god-daughter in a delivery room and the next you’re sketching up the design of the evening gown she’ll wear to her school dance. Nineteen years. Fleeted by, seemingly in the blink of an eye. It’s left me feeling a little misty-eyed and philosophical all of a sudden. I hope you’ll indulge the following rumination…
So what of nineteen years, you might ask? Place them side by side: 6,935 sunrises, more or less. Certainly enough for a toddler to grow into a young adult standing on the threshold of his or her own uncharted life. Enough for a sapling oak to spread its first generous shade. Enough for a love to ignite, flicker, scar over and become one of a series of headstones you navigate by without lifting your eyes. Yet when you turn and look back at those living nineteen years, what do you see? A face in a mirror that is somehow both yours and that of a weathered, silver-haired stranger’s. The vertigo of realizing that the stretch of time separating you from some watershed moment—a graduation, a betrayal, a forgiveness, the last time you considered someone your best friend or hero — now fits inside the word “ago” with room to spare.
We are pattern-making creatures - and the number 19 has its own quiet poetry. It is a prime number, indivisible, stubborn, one of the lone wolves in the sequence of decades. It marks the last year of adolescence in some corners of the world. A frontier where childhood becomes mythology. To a parent, nineteen years is the terrifying speed at which a hand held on the first day of school releases into an achingly poignant wave goodbye at an airport. To the child, it is the slow, sedimentary build-up of selfhood - each year a layer of limestone pressed with tiny fossils of a myriad remembered moments, new revelations, boredoms, ecstasies, the first time the world broke your heart and the moment you realized you could survive it. Same nineteen years, two different cosmic clocks: one ticking with the frantic staccato of a sparrow’s heartbeat, the other with the geological patience of continents inevitably drifting apart.
The paradox is that those years feel long when we are inside them - yet once we step out, they collapse into the briefest of chapters. “Has it really been nineteen years?” we marvel. And the question is itself a form of mourning, an astonishment at the realisation that the river has carried us so far while we were busy being mesmerised by its ripples.
In the end, the relativity of time is a love letter written by consciousness to mortality. It tells us that what matters does not take up much space in chronology. It reminds us that a lifetime is not measured by the quantity of its sand but by the intensity of its light. Nineteen years, then, is not a measure of duration. It is a season of the soul—one that can feel like a thousand lifetimes when you’re in your twenties and like a single sigh when you’re in your mid-fifties. And the most beautiful, yet unbearable part is that every single one of those swift years once held a golden sunset that felt, while the bubbly was chilled and the light was warm, like it might never end.
But end it eventually, inescapably does…
Dear friends, neighbours, customers and found family,
Nineteen years ago Chris and I drove into Franschhoek with only our most treasured possessions and our hearts and minds wide open. We had met a year earlier, fallen deeply, madly in love and were ready to embark on a new journey together. By happy coincidence, we were both precisely at a point in our lives where a radically fresh start in a quiet, bucolic setting seemed like the most reasoned, healthy option. Chris from his self-imposed exile of a life of sworn singledom in the bush and me from having walked away from my post-burnout breakup with the soul-sapping world of public figure-hood and broadcasting in Johannesburg. Franschhoek, we’d decided, was going to be where we would begin life anew.
Yet what we found upon arriving here proved to be so much more than a picturesque location for a new beginning. From the moment we unpacked, we fell in love with this town and its serene yet soulful energy. It provided us with a home, a purpose and the greatest adventure of our lives.
In fact, we were so instantly inspired that we dreamt up projects that felt more like love letters to this charming hamlet and its community. In 2012 we put the Franschhoek Village Market on the map with our pop-up restaurant and champagne bar, the eponymous progenitor to the Smitten we know and love today. We later produced two national TV shows, “Geure Uit Die Vallei” (KykNet and SABC2) and “Cooking With Chris Smit” (SABC3), because we felt that the world needed to see the magic we experienced here every day — the kindness in your smiles, the way you showed up for each other in a crisis, the joy of our delightful traditions and the stunning beauty of our pastoral surrounds. During those 10 years of the shows’ run we watched the nation fall in love with Franschhoek week in, week out. It remains one of the proudest chapters of our lives.
As does our COVID-era feeding scheme, “Haleem For Hunger”. In collaboration with my sister, Saira Essa, and brother-in-law, Mark Corlett, it was our contribution to communities most devastated by the pandemic, starting with the kids of Wes-Eind Primary School. The expression goes, “you can’t teach a hungry child” or “you can’t feed a hungry child with words”. Stripped of sentimentality, they’re not merely proverbs, they are an indictment. They draw a hard, uncomfortable line between good intentions and meaningful action - between sympathy and sustenance. Something many of our fellow Franschhoekers understood all too well as a rallying cry during those dark times. We were not unique. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and did their part.
Each morning, the children would come, not in a disorderly scramble, but with a quiet dignity that cut straight to the soul. The reward came in the form of a child’s whispered “thank you” or “baie dankie” and the palpable glow from a full tummy, as many kids often came back for seconds and thirds. But it wasn’t just about nutrition. It was about preserving the very fabric of community when the world told us to isolate.
Speaking of a vision of hope, it was also deeply gratifying to have arranged comprehensive eye screenings for the same students, delivering what experts say is one of the most direct ways to fight educational inequality: a simple pair of glasses. In many resource-strapped families in Groendal the need for eye-glasses is profound. Yet the means to address it, a luxury for families in financial survival mode.
Of course, we are equally proud of being one of the annual sponsors of one of the Franschhoek Hospice’s most popular fundraising initiatives, “Franschhoek Fabulous” aka “Smitten Lunch”, organised by the indomitable Colleen Douglas and her extraordinary team, who are truly doing the Lord’s work.
And then of course, there’s Smitten as we know it today. It started off as a two-fold idea: A passion-project to revive a beloved brand still fondly remembered from its humble beginnings at the FVM and a carefully considered strategy to steward and safeguard the value of our commercial investment at The Yard during the COVID crisis. And yet it grew into something much greater. Before we opened Smitten’s doors, we imagined a spot where people would come for a good meal, warm service and an inviting ambience. We never imagined it would become the beating heart of so many celebrations, first dates, family lunches, late-afternoon tête-à-têtes over cocktails and leisurely Sunday desserts that felt like a warm hug of comfort.
This restaurant isn’t just a business. It’s become the proverbial town square for locals and a living scrapbook of our time here. I’ve stood in this kitchen and watched Chris’ face beam as he plated dish after dish that he was ever so proud of. I’ve walked the floor and witnessed your children grow up in the corner booth, year after year. I’ve watched people enthusiastically Shazam tracks from my lovingly curated music playlists and took further pleasure in introducing them to even more artists that they’d never heard of. I’ve wept with some of you after a loss and I’ve popped more champagne corks here than I can count to toast your victories. This place breathes because you breathed life into it. Smitten stopped being ours years ago — it became yours. It became the heartbeat of our life here.
That’s what makes this announcement so difficult.
After many long walks and even longer conversations whispered late into the night, Chris and I have made the heavy-hearted decision to begin a new chapter of our lives - one that is now calling us beyond this beautiful town. Life, as it often does, is nudging us toward a different horizon — an invitation to pursue a quieter pace on the coast and to write a few more stories while we still have the energy to chase the sun. It’s a bittersweet truth. We know it’s time, but knowing doesn’t make leaving any easier.
And, as a sad and unavoidable result, when Smitten closes for our annual winter break at the end of this month, it will be for the last time. This was the part that broke our hearts the most. As many of you know - after five gruelling and demanding years as fully hands-on proprietors - our plan was to take a step back and gradually relinquish the reins to a floor manager and exec chef. Indeed, we began planning that transition in earnest, but we soon realised that the truth is that the soul of this place was never in the bricks, the recipes or décor — it was in the two of us being here in person - greeting you at the door, pouring our hearts onto every plate, buttressing our amazing team and ensuring consistency of quality. The thought of passing it on felt like asking someone else to love your child exactly the way you do. We just couldn’t.
And recent volatile geopolitical developments and global events have only added to our reservations and resolve.
So, we’ll share one last meal here together on Friday, 31 July and let this space become a wonderful memory we carry with us forever. And while the doors may close, the love that was cooked into every meal, every conversation, every clinking glass…that stays. That is forever ours.
Chris and I are not leaving because we stopped loving Franschhoek. We’re leaving because life is inviting us, yet again, to grow, to stretch, to trust the next unknown path the way we trusted the one that led us here nearly two decades ago. And just like then, we are trepidatious and hopeful all at once. But we will carry you with us—every kindness, every friendship, every lesson in what community truly means.
Thank you for nineteen years of pure heart and magic. We are the luckiest so-and-so’s in the world because of our time here.
This isn’t an ending. It’s simply the next chapter…
And this town—and every one of you, our friends, neighbours, regulars and seasonal guests—will be written into every page.
With immeasurable love and gratitude,
Imraan, Chris & The Smitten Team
