South African Food?

I'm going to South Africa for 10 weeks starting at the end of March and I'm very excited to try all of the food, of course.

I started doing some searches for South African restaurants in Chicago, but can't seem to find anything. Do any of you know of any places I could find some traditional South African braai food, like frikkadels, koeksisters, toasties, braai potato bake, Boerewors, snoek braai, sosaties or Potjie Kos.

I know I missed out on Chef Jeremy Brewington's braai pop-up last year, which I'm bummed about. But are any of the African or contemporary restaurants in town serving these dishes or other South-African inspired food?

I know nothing. Please please post details and pictures!

Atlanta is where many of the direct flights from SA arrive, and there are a few grocery stores with SA beer and ingredients.

Trendy Atlanta restaurant website:
http://10degreessouth.com/index.aspx

Pie Lady wrote:I know nothing. Please please post details and pictures!

I definitely will post photos from my trip - don't worry! I'm looking forward to exploring Johannesburg and trying all kinds of yummy food.

I just returned from South Africa; I'm almost certain you won't find anything here but much of food in Cape Town is either Cape Malay (a type of Malaysian/Indonesian) and Portuguese influenced. Boerswors (South African spelling of the dutch words boers and worst--farmers sausage) is basically beef jerky. Lots of game and seafood on South African menus.

Thanks for the heads up

honestly, there are 4 real elements to South African food (if I can simplify)

1. modified ethinic foods - like the previously mentioned Cape Malay food, ethnic foods from other colonies that came to south africa. the most notable are indian (there is a very good interpretation of indian food there) and malay. cape malay is very differnt from malaysian, but is basically based on spicy meat and fish curries served over rice.

2. "african" foods - and not to be dismisive, but I tried a lot of these, and didn't find any of them very enjoyable. these are things like beans or corn meal, that are commonly eaten by the black african comunities.

3. Africaner/english comfort foods - these are sort of variations on dutch or english things - meat pies, casoroles, english style desserts. the one really best thing that I had in this group was pumkin - they make a fantastic baked pumpkin (and to be totally fair, I can't say for sure if that should be considered an afrikaner food or am african food).

4. produce driven food - here is the standout, the meat, wine, cheeses, fruits, are all spectacular. so there are a lot of places that basically serve plain steak with wine and a cheese plate for dessert. I have been to SA 10 times in the past 3-5 years, and after trying a lot of other stuff, I end up having meat, cheese, pumpkin and lots of wine.

by the way, bring back wine. that is the best souvineer of SA.

Tyrgyzistan wrote:Atlanta is where many of the direct flights from SA arrive, and there are a few grocery stores with SA beer and ingredients.

Trendy Atlanta restaurant website:
http://10degreessouth.com/index.aspx

I can't say much about the "authenticity" of 10 Degrees South and how South African it is, but their food is pretty darn good.

BTW, my first job out of college, now ~6 years ago, was at a nominally South African restaurant in Midtown Atlanta, that closed not more than 6 months after it opened. One thing I did learn there, though, was the joy of Rooibos (sometimes marketed as African Red Bush) tea. It has since become my favorite.