Few restaurants have a building story as interesting as their menu.

Mike's Heritage House in Parktown occupies Eikenlaan, a grand old house built for photographer and property investor James Goch in the early 1900s.

Its name means “lane of oaks”, a reference to the oak-lined driveway planted by Goch. The original house had 12 rooms, along with a coach house and stable.

But the reason it's still here is perhaps the most interesting part.

The house that almost disappeared

Parktown lost a number of its grand old houses as Johannesburg developed and major roads were built through the area.

Eikenlaan nearly joined them.

The Johannesburg City Council wanted to demolish the house in 1978, but the Parktown and Westcliff Heritage Trust stepped in.

A campaign to save it gathered more than 12,000 signatures. Public opposition worked, and the house survived. Johannesburg Heritage Foundation archives still record that petition as part of the campaign to protect the property.

Today, Eikenlaan is formally protected as a Provincial Heritage Site.

From family home to restaurant

The house has had several lives.

After the Goch family, it became a residential hotel in the 1930s and later housed the Overseas Visitors' Club during the 1960s. It eventually became home to Mike's Kitchen in 1982.

Today it operates independently as Mike's Heritage House.

And unlike many historic houses, this isn't somewhere you can only admire from the pavement.

You can actually go inside.

Come for the history, stay for lunch.

The restaurant serves breakfast through to dinner, with a menu that still includes the steakhouse favourites you might expect, alongside burgers, chicken, fish, lighter meals and more contemporary dishes.

There's also garden seating, and the restaurant says its outside area is dog-friendly.

But perhaps the best reason to visit is to look around.

More than a century after the house was built, you're eating inside one of Parktown's surviving historic mansions, a building that might not have been here at all if thousands of people hadn't objected to its demolition.

That makes an ordinary breakfast or Sunday lunch a little more interesting.

Before You Go

Where: 15 St Andrews Road, Parktown
Hours: Monday to Saturday, 08:00–22:00; Sunday, 08:00–18:00
Bookings: 011 484 2688
Good to know: Walk-ins are welcome, but booking is recommended for outside seating or groups larger than four. The garden seating is dog-friendly.

The Bottom Line

Sometimes preserving an old building doesn't mean turning it into a museum.

Eikenlaan survived because people fought for it. More than 120 years later, we can still sit inside it, order something to eat, and enjoy a small piece of the city's history.