Cape's new spice route
Monday, 26 November, 2001
Graham Howe
A menu for all seasons
‘Local is lekker’ proclaims Graeme Shapiro, one of a new generation of great chefs who are reinventing the cuisine of the Cape kitchen by giving traditional fare a distinctly modern twist. Making his point in style, he serves two delectable dishes - warthog in honeybush and redcurrant jus and ostrich with sour fig. Where else could you be but in South Africa?
The talented chef's turn of phrase may be colloquial but he cooks up a storm on a contemporary plate that is helping to shape the future of what the critics are calling ‘modern South African cuisine’. Inspired by the return to regional cuisine, a new breed of younger chefs is going beyond the traditional boundaries of South African cuisine while drawing on the eclectic culinary influences of the global village.
Shapiro, the chef-patron of The Restaurant, draws from East and West while celebrating what makes Cape cuisine so unique. Highly original dishes that showcase local fare, using indigenous herbs, spices and ingredients to tantalise your palate with the flavours of the new world. Try fresh black mussels from the Cape's west coast with chilli jam and coconut milk, loin of rare springbok in a rooibos-gooseberry jus and confit of duck with Hanepoot wine and guavas.
Few would dispute the legitimacy of the Cape’s claim to be the culinary epicentre of the region if not the continent. Founded as a refreshment station for the Dutch fleets on the fabled spice route to the East, the legendary vineyards, gardens and orchards of the Cape of Good Hope have made the region a gastronomic destination that attracts visitors from around the world today.
Spice is the common thread in Cape cuisine. A culinary tour might start with exotic fare such as fish masala or crocodile and butternut curry at De Waterblommetjie, a new restaurant set in the exquisite herb garden of the old Castle of Good Hope. Or sample Jonkershuis on Spier estate, a restaurant which serves a buffet that celebrates the traditional fare that the early settlers brought to the Cape from around the world, including Cape Malay, Cape Dutch, ‘boerekos’ (‘farm fare’) and Cape country cuisine.
The Cape offers many cultures on a plate. Cass Abrahams, a culinary guru of the Cape, maintains ‘indigenous South African cuisine is the first fusion cuisine’. A direct descendant of those traditions, her philosophy is that, ‘South Africa is here because of its position on the spice route. Today, our cuisine is a fusion of all cultures – Khoisan and Dutch, the slave cuisine of Bengal, Java and Zanzibar …’.
Those recipes are showcased at the Cape Malay Restaurant at The Cellars-Hohenort on the historic Constantia wine-route. Chef Martha Williams will tantalise your tastebuds with Cape Malay specialities such as snoek chowder, smoer snoek (a fish pate), frikkadels with tomato smoer (spicy meatballs), denningvleis (lamb flavoured with tamarind and cloves) and a wide range of boboties and bredies (spicy casseroles).
Corli Els and Dawn Smith are the young chef-patrons of the Fusion Café, an innovative restaurant with branches in the bohemian student quarters of Observatory and Stellenbosch that locates Cape cuisine at the culinary crossroads of the continent. They say, ‘We unashamedly borrow from a melting pot of cultures from around Africa and the world.’
Signature dishes combine robust flavours like panfried springbok fillet with pawpaw and vanilla jam cream sauce and rare ostrich served with salsa. At the Fusion Café, you could lunch in Mozambique on oven-roasted prawns in a light curry sauce served with a mango and chilli salsa. Or dine in Africa somewhere between North and South over a robust platter of Cape Karoo lamb served on Moroccan cous cous with piquant preserved lemon.
Tokara, a stunning new restaurant located in a new-age wine cellar, is another new landmark in the evolution of modern Cape cuisine. Etienne Bonthuys, one of the Cape's most renowned chefs, combines old-world classicism with new-world innovation. The master saucier showcases local ingredients in sublime combinations - sample west-coast mussels with banana and apple, calamari with oxtail in red wine, oysters in Cap Classique, quail in saffron sauce, asparagus in strawberry vinaigrette, duck with gooseberries or springbok with peppercorn and walnuts.
Last but not least, Garth Stroebel, the executive chef at the Mount Nelson Hotel, a gourmand widely credited as the founder of contemporary SA cuisine, concludes that, ‘Modern South African cuisine is enhanced by different cultures. We’re exploring a diversity of spices inherited from our forefathers.’
Many visitors to Cape Town sample his award-winning menu at the Cape Colony, declared one of the world’s top ten restaurants by Hotel magazine (USA). The stylish fare blends Asian, continental and Cape traditions with a strong Cape Malay influence in signature dishes like tempura of kingklip with lemon-grass broth, tea-smoked springbok with pawpaw, ostrich carpaccio and smoked crocodile. If you're visiting the Cape this season, eat South African in the modern mode.
Graham Howe
Graham Howe is a well-known gourmet travel writer based in Cape Town. One of South Africa's most experienced lifestyle journalists, he has contributed hundreds of food, wine and travel features to South African and British publications over the last 25 years.
He is a wine and food contributor for wine.co.za, which is likely the longest continuous wine column in the world, having published over 500 articles on this extensive South African wine portal. Graham also writes a popular monthly print column for WineLand called Howe-zat.
When not exploring the Cape Winelands, this adventurous globetrotter reports on exotic destinations around the world as a travel correspondent for a wide variety of print media, online, and radio.
Over the last decade, he has visited over seventy countries on travel assignments from the Aran Islands and the Arctic to Borneo and Tristan da Cunha - and entertained readers with his adventures through the winelands of the world from the Mosel to the Yarra.