Gordon Ramsay has a dangerous gleam in his eye as he brandishes a sabre while, only yards away, Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa clearly means business with his hammer.

Neither is aimed at the other ... at least not yet; Ramsay slices the top off a champagne bottle while the Japanese chef batters the lid of a saké barrel, each different good luck ceremonies to mark the opening of their latest ventures.

But because both restaurants are in the newly opened One&Only Cape Town in the buzzy waterfront area, there is more than a whiff of friendly rivalry.

“We are in competition, of course we are. I want to make sure we have more customers than Nobu,” Ramsay says with a grin.

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Even for the hotelier Sol Kerzner, whose properties - from Dubai to the Bahamas, Mauritius to the Maldives - include an impressive collection of celebrity chefs, the idea of two top-level culinary maestros in one hotel is, in Ramsay's words, “very clever and very bold”.

Actually, make that three chefs, because Ramsay's restaurant is Maze, run by his protégé, Jason Atherton, who has a Michelin star in his own right.

“It was a fortunate coincidence,” Kerzner says, relating how he signed Ramsay late in the day after they sat next to each other at a charity dinner. “I think I got really lucky.”

He isn't the only lucky one, I realise as I stand in the hotel's magnificent lobby and, with a restaurant on each side and a triple-storey glass wall looking on to the full grandeur of Table Mountain.

Turn right and I'm in Nobu, with its huge ebony wooden rings between columns separating an upper-level saké bar and lower-level dining area with sushi bar.

A procession of dishes awaits me: salmon follows scallop, sushi follows sashimi as my taste buds dance under jalapeño peppers on yellowfin tuna, and delight in “beef new-style sashimi”, seared and coated in sesame seeds.

Turn left from the lobby and I'm in Maze, which I know must be good as I enter via the tri-storey wine loft holding a Bacchus-bursting 5,000 bottles.

That's followed by the walk of death past the array of French-style patisserie with its macaroons and chocolate creations, then past a visual feast of crayfish, lobster and giant Mozambique prawns (“there's nothing like them”, Atherton says, and I agree).

Like Nobu, Maze uses local fish and seafood - oysters from Namibia, Cape salmon, and kingklip, which is akin

to a meaty cod. But that's not all: at breakfast, my wonderfully creamy porridge is made from corn, rather than oats; later, the tapas-style tasting dishes include bobotie, a spicy mince with rice and raisins, as well as spinach and pap (cooked maizemeal), while main courses include grain-fed local Karan beef, Karoo lamb, ostrich and springbok.

“It is very important to me to use local produce and to keep the local identity,” Atherton says, describing a search that led him through plenty of plastic-wrapped cheese and salami in the “sleepy” South African food scene to source the best ingredients for Ramsay's first outpost in Africa. “I don't want to be in South Africa and feel as if I'm eating in the United States.”

Ramsay agrees. “I am not here to change Cape Town. I am here to show off Cape Town,” he says. “It reminds me of Australia. The scene is rapidly developing but it is unpretentious, with good, simple ingredients, seasonal produce and a perfect setting. And the South African wine list is one of the best-kept secrets in the world.”

He's not kidding, and you don't have to travel the hour to the winelands to find out; here, you can sample 100 wines by the glass. I'd like to say I tried them all, but I can certainly vouch for the little-known Warwick Three Cape Ladies and the delicately structured Kanonkop Paul Sauer.

The best thing is that neither the wine nor the food is going to make much of a dent in your bank balance. In Maze, generous but exquisite dishes of salt-and-pepper squid and soft-shell crab come in at under a fiver each, while my ostrich steak - a perfect medium rare, served on a wooden platter made from wine barrels - costs only £7.

Much of Nobu's fare is half the price it costs in London, with a sashimi dinner at £14.50 compared with £32.50. Eat enough sushi and your air ticket pays for itself.

It isn't all about eating. I find the same sort of standards that Ramsay sets in his kitchen throughout the hotel, despite a few teething problems. Perhaps that's because Kerzner can be intimidating, even to Ramsay.

“I suppose I see a little bit of me in him,” the chef says, adding that a bit of intimidation is healthy. “He is incredibly ambitious, very tenacious, and he never accepts second-best. He is passionate and assertive and his attention to detail is extraordinary. And when he flips his lid, he flips his lid.”

Perhaps it's also because Cape Town means so much to Kerzner; for South Africa's equivalent of Donald Trump and the former owner of the notorious casino resort Sun City, it represents a big bang of a homecoming after almost two decades away.

The hotel very much echoes its surroundings - modern and sexy but with an African twist. In the words of the interior designer Adam Tihany, it “whispers but doesn't shout Africa - there isn't a zebra skin in sight”. Instead there are expanses of dark wood to represent Africa's ebony, complemented by dark furnishings in wine reds and browns.

Those colours are echoed in my “standard-sized” bedroom, one of 91 in the main building, which at 63sq m is easily large enough for me to swing several cats around the two queen-sized beds before I go for a swim in the egg-shaped bath.

There is no need for swanky art when the star attraction - Table Mountain - is just outside the floor-to-ceiling window that is a feature of every room. That view does, though, come at a price. On the other three sides of the old harbour where the hotel stands, modern flats owned by the Cape Town elite also share the scenery.

This means that the two artificial islands holding the hotel's spa, pool and 40 “resort” rooms and suites feel more than a little overlooked. There may be a relaxed Caribbean feel as you sit in the poolside restaurant of this two-part hotel - summer resort on the islands, winter urban property in the main building - but it's a claustrophic Caribbean.

You don't have to limit yourself to merely looking at Table Mountain, of course - you can ascend in the impressive cable car with its revolving floor, then walk around this sandstone formation that is said to support the same number of flora and fauna species as the British Isles.

From the plateau, which has an altitude of 1,000m, I can pick out the hotel among the waterfront buildings, with its San Francisco Pier 39 feel and African bands strumming and drumming everywhere you go. Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of his life, is in the distance.

Then I shake off the tourists and head off on one of the recommended walks to enjoy some solitary gazing over the humps of hills known as the Twelve Apostles and the curving coastline of Camps Bay.

I'd like to venture farther but don't have time. Later I realise that that was a good thing, because you really need a guide to do so; a Dutch tourist slipped to her death only the week before, and the mountain is hot with tales of lurking robbers.

Back at the hotel I reason that my mountain walk coupled with a gym session has earned me the right to devour one of Nobu's delicious lunch-boxes - the same as in London, except for the black cod, which, I'm assured, is being sourced as I eat.

Perhaps it's the relaxed setting, perhaps it's that it's such a bargain, but I swear that the food is better here than I've tasted in Nobu London.

When I later go into food rhapsodies with the great chef himself, he smiles, then leans conspiratorially over the table: “But do you think it's better than Gordon Ramsay's?”

Need to know

Getting there ITC Classics (01244 355527, www.itcclassics.co.uk) offers five nights' B&B at the One&Only Cape Town from £1,605pp. Price includes economy flights from Heathrow, but not transfers.

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