Cape Town Food and Travel Guide: Bobotie, Braai and Bunny Chow

Wedged between Table Mountain and two oceans, Cape Town is one of the world's most scenic cities, and its food tells the story of many cultures meeting at the tip of Africa: Cape Malay spice, Dutch settler dishes, Indian influence and a deep national love of cooking over fire.

What to Eat in Cape Town

The signature Cape Malay dish is bobotie, spiced minced meat baked under a savoury egg custard, sweetened with dried fruit and chutney and usually served with yellow rice. It is comforting, fragrant and uniquely South African.

Central to the culture is the braai, more a barbecue ritual than a single dish, where boerewors (a coiled farm sausage), lamb chops and steaks are grilled over wood coals. From the Durban-Indian tradition comes bunny chow, a hollowed half-loaf of white bread filled with curry, eaten with your hands. And no road trip starts without biltong, air-dried, spiced cured meat that is the local answer to jerky.

• Bobotie — spiced baked mince with custard
• Boerewors — coiled farmhouse sausage
• Bunny chow — bread loaf filled with curry
• Biltong — air-dried cured meat
• Gatsby — overstuffed sandwich roll

Where and How to Eat

Start in Bo-Kaap, the photogenic Cape Malay quarter of brightly painted houses on the slopes of Signal Hill, where small restaurants serve home-style curries, samoosas and bobotie, often with no alcohol in keeping with the largely Muslim community. For seafood, head to the harbour at Kalk Bay; for a market vibe, the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock buzzes on Saturdays.

A useful tip: if you are invited to a braai, it is a genuine social honour, so bring your own meat and drinks, a custom locals call "bring and braai." Menus may mix English with Afrikaans terms like vleis (meat) or pap (maize porridge), so photographing a menu to translate the unfamiliar words helps you order the right thing and discover dishes you'd otherwise skip.