The Cape A Culinary Cruise

If you're a foodie, then the Cape region of South Africa is nothing short of a Mecca on your gourmet trail, says Sheetal Wadhwa Munshaw

You may have often spotted hoardings advertising South Africa as a ‘World in a Country' and this can't hold more true than in the case of the Cape region's exhaustive variety of culinary delicacies.

From the more regular Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Swiss to the more unusual French, Belgian, Portugal, Spanish, Austrian, Turkish, Greek, and of course the indigenous Cape Malay cuisine, the variety is so vast that you could actually spend a fortnight in the Cape without once replicating your style of cuisine.

And making your gourmet experience an even more delectable one is the vast selection of South African wines. Incidentally, South Africa is one of the leading New World wine producers.

A virtual gourmet paradise, Cape Town and the Cape region offer a variety of seafood, exotic meats such as ostrich and the like. You could also eat a perfectly delicious vegetarian meal. For burger eaters you have chains such as KFC, Mc Donald's, the local Steers, Spur's steak houses etc.

However, the Cape is more inspired by European influence both in terms of its cuisine and culture, which is reflected in restaurant décor, ambience, cooking styles and service standards. Fortunately, it doesn't necessarily hold true when it comes to pricing. The average cost per meal for a salad, entrée, main course, dessert with a bottle of wine between two would be about 150-200 ZAR (South African Rand) at a chic café by the V & A Waterfront (the main tourist area) in Cape Town or even in some of the better restaurants in the wine growing areas. Quantities are fairly large, so unless you’re a GOOD eater, two could usually share a main course.

In Cape Town, tourists generally do not eat at hotels that they stay in because restaurants outside are very chic, have great ambience, are well located and give a feel of the city. Besides, they serve great cuisine. To give you an idea, along the V&A Waterfront itself you have Aldo's which is an Italian specialty restaurant. Extremely good food, great service and specially recommended to vegetarians. In the same line you'd find Greek Fisherman, a good choice for light dining. Further up towards the clock tower there is De Akker - a Belgian specialty restaurant that even features on the critics' list and serves an exhaustive list of great Belgian beers. And if beer is not your scene then just opt for some really exclusive wines. South African cheese is also renowned.
Moving from the placid to the piquant, a must-try among the plethora of cuisines available is the local Cape Malay cuisine. Very peculiar to the region, it is very close to Indian style cooking, in that there is extensive use of spices and aromatic ingredients. However, the preparations are not as fiery as Indian recipes. A good place to try out Malay would be at Willboughs café at the V&A waterfront (try the Prawns Curry) or a Malay specialty restaurant called Noon Gun within city limits.

‘The Restaurant’ is another prominent landmark in the city. Let me warn you though this one’s for the experience. The chef has visited India and stayed here for a long time and hence you will find Indian influences in his style of preparation as well as presentation. It's essentially fusion cuisine with great style. Not unlikely to have attendants greet you with a warm ‘Namaste’ and serve you pickled chillies or banana wafers as accompaniments.

You also find some great places to eat along the scenic Garden Route in the Cape region. A must stopover with regards to cuisine would be Knysna. At the Knysna waterfront itself there are some excellent restaurants including The Knysna Dockyard, J J's as well as 35 deg South. All of these sport a spunky ambience, live music, panoramic views of the lagoon and of course great food. For caffeine addicts, a very special café is ‘Coffee Connections’– it serves the exotic flavours like Sambucca coffee, Amarula Cream coffee, various liqueur based coffees and regular favourites Mocha, French Vanilla etc. You could even buy coffees here. These make great souvenirs and are easy to carry back home.

Further down the waterfront area is the Knysna Oyster Company, a landmark on its own you’d hardly even need directions to get there. The Oyster Company is renowned in all of South Africa as the best place to sample the finest oysters. The company actually cultivates oysters. They even have an oyster festival annually.

You could try cultivated or cocktail oysters served with lime, Tabasco and salt for taste or even have them as main course sautéed in wine and cheese. By the way if you're a seafood lover, don’t miss The Black Marlin - you can’t get a wider choice of seafood in one restaurant! It's at Boulders Bay on the way to Cape Point (a must-do day trip when in the region)!

Great restaurants pretty much dot the entire landscape of the Cape. But yet another interesting avenue for good food and wine of course are the wine regions. Some of the finest New World wines actually come from the Cape region. You could sample local cuisine and do wine tasting sessions in almost all regions at almost all wine estates. If the time is short, and you just want to get a taste of Cape wine, then dash in at the Spier estate, it’s popular but commercial. But you could do your bit of wine tasting as well as wine purchasing there as it’s just out of city limits.

Although, if you really are a wine lover and would like to do some serious tasting, then get yourself a wine guide and drive through the wine regions sampling from young produce to reserve collections to bubblys and of course sumptuous meals to go with it. The more important regions include Franshoek, Paarl, Constantia, Stellenbosch etc. I particularly enjoyed Franshoek partly because it’s also among the most picturesque regions apart from boasting great wines and partly because it’s quintessentially French. The region’s culture, ambience and cuisine are strongly by the French who migrated to this area. Most restaurants in wine country are nestled in the heart of wine estates and some of them even belong to wine estate owners. The cuisine is prepared to complement the fine wines.

Wines in the Cape are truly formidable, and an article dedicated to the subject would still not do justice to it, so we'll save it for another time. But whether you're a red wine person or not, you can't leave the Cape without tasting a Pinnotage. This grape, special to South Africa is only produced there and is a very fine red varietal.

For information on wine routes, restaurant listings and addresses and other tourism related information contact: -

Cape Town Tourism,
The Pinnacle, Corner Castle & Burs Streets PO Box 1403 Cape Town 8000.
Tel: +27 21 4264260 fax: +27 21 4265486,
Email: oz@cape-town.org,
Website:www.cape-town.org