Top restaurants in South Africa

What to Eat

When it comes to eating out, South Africa – especially larger cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban – caters to every taste and pocket. Thanks to the significant Portuguese and Italian communities, there are plenty of unpretentious Mediterranean-style cafés, which transplant ideally to this predominantly sunny climate. And in trendier suburbs such as Pretoria’s Hatfield, Johannesburg’s Norwood and Melville, or Cape Towns V&A Waterfront and Tamboerskloof, you’ll find a veritable United Nations of eateries, collectively representing almost every conceivable global cuisine, with something to suit all budgets.

Cape Malay Cuisine

Particularly in the Western Cape, there is also a growing culinary trend towards serving specialist Cape Malay cuisine or associated fusion dishes. This style of cooking is derived from Malaysian cuisine – a legacy from the 17th century, when Indonesian slaves imported by the Dutch were often used as cooks in white households. The result is a sweet-and-sour cuisine whose distinctive flavour results from the combination of mild Malay spices and fruit such as apricots and sultanas. 

Indian Influences

In Durban and the surrounding area, the cuisine has a distinctly Indian flavour. Indentured labourers imported from India to work in the sugar-cane trade in the 1860s brought with them their wonderful curries – spicy casseroles made of vegetables, legumes, lamb, chicken or beef on saffron rice. They’re accompanied by such condiments as bananas, tomatoes, chutneys, and particularly grated coconut, which is said to take away some of the bite of very hot curries. 

South Africa is also increasingly good as a place to sample various cuisines from elsewhere on the continent, whether it be spicy Ethiopian stews eaten with sour injera pancakes, deliciously tangy Mozambican chicken piri-piri, Swahili-style coconut stews or Arabian-influenced Egyptian dishes. 

Dining Out

A feature of South Africa’s better restaurants is that ingredients tend to be relatively organic. Meat in particular generally comes from large ranches whose cattle range freely by comparison to their European counterparts. 

Even the smallest towns in South Africa can be relied upon to have one decent grill-style restaurant. Medium to large towns will typically have a wide variety, ranging from fast-food outlets such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds and similar (as well as Nando’s, a local chain specialising in Mozambique-style spicy peri-peri chicken) to proper sit-down restaurants specialising in grills, seafood and Italian dishes. The restaurants in and around the main cities that are listed below reflect the rich diversity of cuisines available in modern South Africa.

Opportunities for dining out in most safari and wilderness destinations – a category that includes the Kruger Park, much of Zululand and the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg region, and the likes of Pilanesberg, Madikwe, Mapungubwe or Addo – are usually somewhat limited. This is because you’ll almost invariably be staying in a private game lodge whose package includes meals, or at public rest camps with a restaurant and/or self-catering facilities – and in either case you cannot leave the camp after dark, nor are there any standalone restaurants in the immediate vicinity. When you visit public rest camps in game reserves and national parks, it’s best to check ahead that restaurant facilities exist, or whether you will need to book for self-catering. 

Top restaurants in South Africa