What to Eat and Drink in Cape Town

Foreign visitors quickly notice how far the South African rand stretches at the table. Multi-course tasting menus at top kitchens cost roughly what a casual neighbourhood dinner costs in London or New York, while some of the city's best meals come wrapped in paper on a harbour wall or hot off a roadside grill.

Local dishes worth seeking out

• Cape Malay cooking: born in the kitchens of the Bo-Kaap, blending Indonesian and Indian spices with Dutch baking. Look for bobotie (minced beef or lamb baked with curry spices, dried fruit and a savoury egg-custard topping, served with yellow rice and chutney), denningvleis (sweet-and-sour tamarind lamb stew), crisp triangular samoosas, and Sunday-morning koesisters, cardamom- and aniseed-spiced doughnuts boiled in syrup and rolled in coconut.
• The Gatsby: Cape Town's heavyweight working-class sharing sandwich, invented in the Cape Flats in the 1970s. A foot-long soft roll is split and stuffed with hot slap chips (vinegar-soaked fries), masala steak or fried calamari, cheese, salad and piri-piri sauce, then cut into four hefty quarters.
• A traditional braai: wood-fired barbecuing sits at the centre of weekend social life across every community. At weekend shisa nyama spots and open-fire kitchens, meat, especially coiled spiced boerewors sausage and lamb chops, is grilled over open coals and eaten with pap (maize porridge) and spicy chakalaka relish.
• Fresh linefish and snoek: order yellowtail, kingklip, Cape salmon or smoked snoek along the Kalk Bay or Hout Bay quays, and end with malva pudding, a hot caramelised apricot sponge soaked in cream sauce.

Wine without leaving the city: Constantia

You do not even have to drive out to Stellenbosch or Franschhoek to visit historic vineyards. Just 20 minutes south of the City Bowl, tucked behind Kirstenbosch on the cool, sea-facing slopes of the peninsula, sits the Constantia Wine Route, where grapes have been pressed since 1685. Spend an afternoon between estates such as Groot Constantia (the oldest, with a Cape Dutch manor house museum), Klein Constantia (known for Vin de Constance, the sweet Muscat once shipped to Napoleon on St Helena), Buitenverwachting and lofty Beau Constantia. Take an Uber so nobody has to drive.