Cape Town Travel Guide
What to Eat in Cape Town
The dishes, drinks and food experiences that define Cape Town, from bobotie and koesisters in the Bo-Kaap to a braai, fish at a harbour, biltong, rooibos and long lunches on wine estates, with practical tips on booking, tipping and BYO.
Cape Town is one of the best food cities in the southern hemisphere, and one of the best value for visitors. Its cooking is a layered story of the people who made the Cape: the indigenous Khoekhoe and San, Dutch and French settlers, enslaved people and exiles from Indonesia, India, Madagascar and East Africa, British colonists, and Xhosa and other African communities from across the country. Add the Atlantic's fish, the Winelands' vineyards and orchards, and a generation of creative chefs, and you have a city where eating well is easy at every budget. This guide covers what to try and how to do it.
Cape Malay cooking. The most distinctive cuisine of the city comes from the Cape Malay community of the Bo-Kaap and beyond, descendants of enslaved people and exiles from South-East Asia and elsewhere. It is fragrant and gently spiced rather than fiery, built on cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, turmeric, cumin and chilli, often balanced with sweetness from dried fruit and chutney. Try bobotie, spiced minced meat baked under a savoury egg custard and served with yellow rice and raisins; mild, aromatic chicken and lamb curries with roti; bredies, slow-cooked stews of meat and vegetables, of which the tomato bredie and the waterblommetjie bredie, made with a Cape water flower in winter, are classics; samoosas and dhaltjies, chilli bites made from chickpea flour; and, for dessert, koesisters, the spiced, coconut-dusted doughnuts that Cape Malay families make on Sunday mornings, not to be confused with the plaited, syrup-soaked Afrikaner koeksisters. The best way to understand this food is a cooking class in a Bo-Kaap home, which usually begins with a walk and spice shopping and ends with a shared meal.
The braai. A braai, the South African barbecue, is less a meal than a social institution, and if you are invited to one, go. Expect boerewors, the coiled spiced sausage; lamb chops; sosaties, curried meat skewers with apricots, a Cape Malay influence; steak; and snoek, a long, oily fish grilled with apricot jam glaze, a Cape classic. Side dishes include pap, a stiff maize porridge, with a tomato and onion sauce, and braaibroodjies, toasted sandwiches of cheese, tomato and onion cooked over the coals. Many restaurants and wine estates serve braai-style food, and some township restaurants and shisa nyamas, where you choose your meat at a butcher and it is grilled for you, are lively places to eat, best visited with a local guide.
Fish and seafood. The cold Atlantic gives Cape Town excellent fish. Line fish, the catch of the day such as yellowtail, kob or kingklip, is the thing to order, grilled simply with lemon and butter. Snoek and chips is the local fish and chips, and the harbours of Kalk Bay and Hout Bay are the places to eat it, fresh off the boats, ideally outdoors. Mussels, oysters from the Knysna lagoon and the west coast, and calamari are widely available; crayfish, the Cape rock lobster, is a seasonal treat. Ask whether fish is sustainably caught, as many restaurants follow the local seafood sustainability guidance and some species are overfished.
Street food and snacks. The Gatsby is Cape Town's great street sandwich: a whole long roll stuffed with hot chips, sauce and fillings such as steak, polony or chicken, made to share between several people. Bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf filled with curry, comes from Durban but is easy to find. Biltong, the air-dried spiced meat, is the national snack, sold by weight at butchers and delis, alongside droëwors, a dried sausage. Rusks, dunked in coffee or rooibos, are the breakfast of road trips. Malva pudding, a warm, sticky apricot sponge with custard, and milk tart, a cinnamon-dusted custard tart, are the classic desserts.
Drinks: wine, rooibos and more. South Africa is one of the world's great wine producers, and Cape Town sits on the doorstep of the oldest vineyards outside Europe and the Mediterranean. Chenin Blanc is the country's most planted white grape, often superb and remarkable value; Sauvignon Blanc from Constantia and the cool coastal areas is fresh and crisp; Pinotage, the local red cross created in Stellenbosch, divides opinion but is worth trying from a good producer; and Cape blends, Syrah and the Cabernet Sauvignon of Stellenbosch are world-class. Méthode Cap Classique is the local bottle-fermented sparkling wine. Rooibos, the red bush tea grown only in the Cederberg region north of Cape Town, is naturally caffeine-free and served everywhere, including as a rooibos cappuccino. The city also has a thriving craft beer and gin scene.
Markets. Saturday mornings are market time. The Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock is the original, with food stalls, local produce and design, and the Oranjezicht City Farm Market at Granger Bay, near the Waterfront, sells produce, breakfasts and street food with views of the ocean. The V&A Waterfront has permanent food markets, and many wine estates and Winelands towns run their own weekend markets. Go early, as they are busy by late morning.
Wine estate lunches. One of the great pleasures of the Cape is a long lunch at a wine estate, at a table under oak trees or on a terrace facing the vines and mountains, with a bottle from the estate's cellar. Constantia, twenty-five minutes from the city, is the closest wine region; Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, forty-five minutes to an hour and a quarter away, have the greatest concentration of estate restaurants, from casual deli lunches to tasting menus that rank with the best in the country. Book ahead, especially at weekends and in summer, and arrange a driver or a tour so nobody has to drive back.
Fine dining and the restaurant scene. Cape Town has a celebrated fine dining scene, with chefs cooking ambitious menus built on local produce, foraged ingredients and indigenous flavours, at prices that are often far below their equivalents in Europe or North America. The streets around Bree Street and Kloof Street in the city, the Woodstock area, the Atlantic seaboard and the Winelands are the main dining areas. The top tables book out weeks ahead in season, so reserve before you travel if you have your heart set on one.
Practical tips. Tipping of ten to fifteen per cent is standard in restaurants and is usually not included. Many restaurants allow you to bring your own wine for a corkage fee, so ask when booking. Portions are generous and prices are good value for most visitors. Tap water is safe. Restaurants are busiest from about seven in the evening, and many are closed on Sundays or Mondays, so check. And always save room for one more koesister.