Guides ·Food & drink

Cape Malay: bobotie, denningvleis and curries

Cape Malay cooking came out of the enslaved and exiled communities brought from Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean by the Dutch, and it is the deepest culinary layer in the city. Bobotie is its emblem: spiced minced beef or lamb with dried fruit and almonds under a set savoury custard, served with yellow rice, sambals and chutney. Denningvleis, a tamarind-sour lamb stew, is the connoisseur's pick. The curries are aromatic rather than fiery, built on cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric and masala rather than heat, and usually served with roti or rice.

Eat this in Bo-Kaap, where it comes from. Biesmiellah on the corner of Wale and Pentz Streets has been serving bobotie, denningvleis and akhni since 1974, mains around R120 to R160, no alcohol. Bo-Kaap Kombuis up on August Street pairs the same food with one of the best views in the city over the Bowl. For a walking version, several Bo-Kaap cooking classes run three-hour sessions in family homes for R700 to R900 including the meal. Samoosas from the corner shops on Rose Street are R12 to R18 and among the best value bites in Cape Town.

The braai, boerewors and the meat culture

A braai is not a barbecue; it is a social institution built on wood or charcoal, never gas, and it produces boerewors, lamb chops, sosaties, and whatever else the host bought. Boerewors is the coiled farmer's sausage, coarse-ground beef with coriander, cloves and vinegar, and a boerewors roll from a market stall costs R55 to R75. Sosaties are marinated skewers of lamb with apricot and turmeric, another Cape Malay contribution. Braaibroodjies — cheese, tomato and onion toasted between grill grates — are the sleeper hit that nobody tells foreigners about.

For the full communal version, Mzoli's Place on NY115 in Gugulethu is the famous one: you buy raw meat by weight at the butcher counter, around R150 to R200 a kilo, hand it over for the grill, buy pap and chakalaka on the side and bring your own drinks. Sundays are the big day and the music runs loud. Go with a guide or a local if it is your first time, and take an Uber. In town, Butcher Shop & Grill at Mandela Rhodes Place does dry-aged local beef at R300 to R450, and Hussar Grill on Kloof Street is the reliable mid-range option.

Fish: snoek, hake and the West Coast

Snoek is the Cape's defining fish — a long, oily, bony predator caught off the West Coast, traditionally braaied whole with apricot jam and butter, or smoked and mashed into a pâté with cream and lemon. It is a peak-winter dish and you will find it on chalkboards from May to September. Yellowtail, kabeljou and kingklip are the good local table fish; hake is what goes into fish and chips. Ask what is line-caught that day and follow the SASSI green-list guidance, which most decent kitchens now display on their menus.

Hout Bay is fish-and-chips headquarters: Fish on the Rocks at the end of Harbour Road sells hake and chips for about R95 in a paper box eaten on the rocks with seals below, and Snoekies at the harbour is the older institution. On the False Bay side, Kalky's inside Kalk Bay harbour is cash-only, plastic chairs, hake and calamari at R80 to R120, and better than half the restaurants charging triple. For sit-down seafood with a view, Harbour House in Kalk Bay does line fish at R220 to R280 with the waves breaking against the window.

The gatsby, bunny chow and township staples

The gatsby is Cape Town's own invention and a genuinely great sandwich: a foot-long Portuguese roll split and loaded with chips, masala steak, polony, calamari or chicken, doused in peri-peri and topped with achar. One costs R90 to R140 and feeds two to four people — ordering a quarter gatsby is normal. Mariam's Kitchen on Long Street is the central-city version at around R100 for a full one. Golden Dish in Athlone and the Wembley Roadhouse in Belgravia Road are where Capetonians actually argue about who does it best.

Bunny chow is Durban's contribution, adopted nationwide: a hollowed quarter or half loaf of white bread filled with bean, mutton or chicken curry, eaten with your hands, R70 to R110. Kotas, the township version, use a similar bread shell with chips, cheese, russian sausage and atchar. Then there is the everyday backbone of South African eating: pap, the stiff maize porridge, served with chakalaka, a spiced vegetable relish, and samp and beans, known as umngqusho. Mzansi Restaurant on Washington Street in Langa serves these as a set spread of eight or nine dishes for around R400 with live marimba.

Biltong, droëwors and the snack aisle

Biltong is air-dried, vinegar-and-coriander-cured beef or game, cut thick, and it is nothing like jerky — no sugar, no smoke, a deeper and cleaner flavour. Buy it sliced to order at a butchery rather than pre-packed: expect roughly R60 to R80 per 100g for beef, more for kudu or springbok. Droëwors is the dried sausage version, thinner and snappier. Both keep for weeks, travel well and are the single best thing to take home, though check your home country's meat import rules before you fill a bag.

Beyond that, the snack aisle rewards exploration. Rooibos, the red bush tea grown only in the Cedarberg north of the city, is caffeine-free and drunk everywhere; a good loose-leaf pack is R60. Mrs Ball's chutney goes on everything from bobotie to cheese sandwiches. Peppermint Crisp, Ouma rusks for dunking in morning coffee, and NikNaks are the childhood classics. Amarula, a cream liqueur made from marula fruit, is the standard duty-free purchase. Woolworths Food is the place to buy any of it without hunting.

Puddings: malva, koesisters and melktert

Malva pudding is the national dessert: a sticky apricot-jam sponge soaked in hot cream sauce straight from the oven, served with custard or ice cream, R70 to R95 in most restaurants. Melktert is the milk tart, a cinnamon-dusted custard in pastry that every Afrikaans family claims to make correctly. Koeksisters — the Afrikaans version — are plaited dough deep-fried and plunged into iced syrup so they stay glassy and crunchy. The Cape Malay koesister is a completely different thing: spiced, softer, rolled in desiccated coconut, sold on Sunday mornings from Bo-Kaap doorways for R8 to R12.

For a modern take, Gold Restaurant on Bennett Street in Green Point runs a 14-dish pan-African tasting menu at around R495 with drumming and face-painting; it is theatrical and tourist-facing but the food is real and the range is useful if you want to try many things once. At the other end, the Company's Garden Restaurant does a straightforward malva with a mountain view for under R80, and Charly's Bakery on Canterbury Street in the East City handles the sugar cravings with cupcakes and koeksisters until mid-afternoon.

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