South African Cuisine

For the more adventurous diner, South Africa has FANTASTIC culinary delights from crocodile sirloins to fried caterpillars to sheep heads. All these are reputed to be delicious. For the not-quite so brave, there are lots of other of indigenous delicacies such as biltong (dried, salted meat), bobotie (a much-improved version of Shepherd's pie) and boerewors (hand-made farm sausages, grilled on an open flame).

Those who prefer to play it altogether safe will find that most eateries offer a familiar global menu - anything from hamburgers to sushi to pad thai to spaghetti bolognaise. And you can drink the water.

On a single street in a Johannesburg suburb, one finds Italian restaurants, two or three varieties of Chinese cookery, Japanese, Moroccan, French, Portuguese and Indian food, both Tandoor and Gujarati. Not far away are Congolese restaurants, Greek, even Brazilian and Korean establishments, and, everywhere, fusion, displaying the fantasies of creative chefs.

It's not that much different in the other major centres, such as Cape Town or Durban. Restaurant guides that categorise eateries by national style list close to two dozen, including Vietnamese and Swiss.
 

Those in search of authentic South African cuisine have to look harder for those few establishments that specialise in it - like the justly famous Gramadoelas in central Johannesburg, Wandie's Place in Soweto, the Africa Café in central Cape Town or smaller restaurants in that city's Bo-Kaap, in Khayelitsha and Langa.

Or one can watch for glimmers of the real thing. There are varieties of biltong in every café, in big cities and little dorps. Every weekend there wafts from neighbourhoods rich and poor the smell of spicy sosaties being grilled over the braai. Steak houses may specialise in flame-grilled aged sirloin, but they also offer boerewors.

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