It seems fitting that there’s a grand piano being played as you enter the Crystal Court for breakfast at The Palace of the Lost City at Sun City Resort. More like a world than a destination, The Palace was born out of the fevered dreams of hotel tycoon Sol Kerzner in 1992, at a time when restraint appears to have had little place in conversation.
The visit was prompted by Lost Ingredients, a culinary project led by South African chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen, the country’s first Michelin-starred chef. His idea is deceptively simple: rediscover indigenous and overlooked ingredients that once formed the backbone of local food traditions but have quietly slipped off modern menus.
Drive towards the hotel from the Sun City gates and the theatricality begins almost immediately. Monkeys chatter in the trees. Mongoose dart across pathways. Birds call from hibiscus and palms in a carefully engineered “jungle”. When we visited, a jacaranda stood in outrageous bloom, its purple canopy mirrored in the still pools surrounding the monumental hotel.
Move over Four Seasons. The Palace could easily be the next location for The White Lotus – that deliciously unhinged television series set in gilded resorts where things unravel in the most spectacular ways.
Submerged in its own mythology, a stay here feels less like a holiday and more like a suspension from reality – and time. If we arrived in critical mode, two days later we had surrendered completely to the guilty pleasure of it all.
Walk past the gushing Las Vegas-style fountains – complete with life-size trumpeting elephants – and the scale of the fantasy becomes clear. The mammoth palace doors open and you’re greeted by Langa, the doorman, upright, and composed, carrying himself with the quiet authority of a prince in command of his kingdom.
Inside, the hotel is staggering in scale. Setting aside matters of taste – remember one person’s kitsch is another’s masterpiece – the sheer audacity of the vision is hard not to admire.
And yet beneath the spectacle, something more grounded is quietly unfolding. Van der Westhuizen’s Lost Ingredients project, developed with the Palace’s executive chef Gino Fortune, is reimagining the hotel’s culinary identity through indigenous and often overlooked African ingredients.
Breakfast at the Crystal Court is the crown jewel, and strictly for residents. An infinity buffet that feels closer to a 20-course dégustation than a morning meal. You move from station to station. A massive elephant-carved block of butter anchors the bread station, where every imaginable loaf and pastry waits in orderly abundance. Elsewhere, delicate dishes reinterpret familiar flavours with surprising finesse.
Sunlight floods through towering windows, illuminating carved columns and the operatic theatre of the interiors: animal heads sculpted into the backs of chairs, elephant motifs everywhere, silverware heavy in the hand. Everything is designed to impress, and it does.
We arrived at the beginning of the story. The lost ingredients shift over time, with each season focusing on something different. At that moment, the hero ingredient was corn. A humble staple, here it was elevated, explored, and reframed – from delicate corn and blinis topped with smoked trout and amasi to melt-in-your-mouth lemon tartlets topped with caramel popcorn. The project intertwines invention in remembrance in the most palate-delightful ways.
Fortune, who grew up in the Cape, said the team approached the project cautiously. The Palace, like so many hotels, had been shuttered during Covid. Staff were let go. Hospitality emerged shaken and reinvention felt risky. Instead of a dramatic overhaul, the collaboration with Van der Westhuizen’s team evolved slowly with weekly calls, small changes, and constant conversation. Launched in July 2025 after a year in development, the project was less a menu overhaul than a careful recalibration.
The latest chapter centres on spekboom, a succulent plant with remarkable powers. Spekboom is drought-hardy, carbon-hungry and beloved by elephants, the totem animal of The Palace. It also quietly repairs landscapes where little else can grow.
It’s bright and citrusy, with a crisp acidity that puts it somewhere near lime and green apple. In signature Jan-style it shows up on the latest menu in mini Pavlovas topped with Chantilly cream and kiwi-spekboom compote, macaroons filled with spekboom buttercream, and olive-oil cakes with spekboom-walnut candy crunch. On the savoury side frikkadels arrive with spekboom chutney, potato rostis with zesty spekboom salsa. Poached prawns are dressed in spekboom pesto. There’s even a spekboom lemonade – made with lime, honey and soda.
Long prized as veldkos (edible plants and ingredients gathered from the wild) by Khoekhoe and San communities, its tart leaves once refreshed travellers on long journeys before urbanisation pushed it from everyday kitchens.
There is something quietly poetic about introducing this resilient, water-wise plant into a place built on fantasy excess. Kerzner imagined the Palace as a mythical African kingdom rediscovered beneath the jungle. Now, a humble indigenous succulent anchors the plates.
By day two we were waving at Robert while he played the piano. Breakfast was an extended affair. We read the newspaper between courses, the sunlight streaming across the table while The Palace staff glided between the tables.
We heard talk of game-tracking experiences, the Valley of the Waves, padel courts, and Segway Tours, but faced with the Crystal Court, our luxury suite, wild gardens, a spa and pools, the carefully constructed paradise held us tight.
The Palace remains dramatic and excessive. But beneath the carved animals and heavy silverware, beneath the spectacle of another era, a quieter story is unfolding. In a hotel built to astonish, it is a small leaf that now tells the story.
The Palace of the Lost City at Sun City Resort, Rustenberg, is approximately two and a half hours drive from Joburg. Make a booking here.
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