Eating South Africa: The Braai Is Not a Barbecue

The braai is not a barbecue

A braai is a social occasion built around a wood or charcoal fire, and the distinction from a barbecue is not pedantry. Gas is not merely uncommon, it is regarded by a large part of the country as disqualifying — the fire is the point, not the heat source. The fire is lit hours before anyone intends to eat, it burns down to coals on its own schedule, and the waiting is not dead time to be minimised but the substance of the afternoon. People stand around it with a drink and talk. Food arrives on the coals late in a process that started long before.

The word is a verb as well as a noun, the person tending the fire holds a recognised and slightly proprietorial role, and the whole thing is close to a national institution — there is a public holiday in spring that has been informally adopted as a day for it nationwide. If you are invited to one, you are being invited into something more like a Sunday lunch than a cookout, and the correct response is to arrive early and expect to eat late.

What goes on the coals is worth knowing. Boerewors is the essential item: a fresh beef sausage spiced heavily with coriander, made in a continuous coil rather than links, and cooked whole. Sosaties are marinated skewers, often lamb with apricot, carrying the sweet-savoury signature that runs through a lot of Cape cooking. Chops, steak and, at the coast, whole fish or crayfish complete it. On the side: pap, a stiff maize porridge, usually with chakalaka, a spiced vegetable relish that is far better than its supermarket versions suggest. In townships the same idea runs commercially as shisa nyama — you choose raw meat at a butcher's counter and it is grilled for you on the spot, eaten communally, and it is some of the best value eating in the country.

Several cuisines, not one

Cape Malay cooking came from South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean trade with people brought to the Cape from the seventeenth century onward, and it is the most distinctive thing on the South African table. Its signature is aromatic spicing used for fragrance rather than heat, and a consistent willingness to put sweet and savoury in the same dish. Bobotie is the emblem: spiced minced meat with dried fruit under a set savoury custard, baked, served with yellow rice. Alongside it sit breyani, denningvleis, and a range of pickled and preserved fish. This is not Indian food and it is not European food; it is a genuinely separate cuisine that exists only here.

Afrikaner farm cooking is the other old tradition, and it is built around preservation and long slow heat. Potjiekos is cooked in a three-legged cast-iron pot set directly in coals, layered and left alone for hours — the rule is that you do not stir it. Melktert is a milk tart with a cinnamon-dusted top; rusks are twice-baked dried biscuits designed to survive indefinitely and to be dunked in coffee, and they are a genuine national habit rather than a curiosity.

Indian South African food is centred on Durban and on the descendants of people who arrived from the 1860s, and it has developed for a century and a half along its own line. Durban curry is its own style — hotter than most Indian regional cooking, heavy on chilli and on a distinctive masala, often with the sauce reduced hard. Then there is the food of the African majority, which is where the everyday staples sit: pap or mieliepap as the base carbohydrate, umngqusho of samp and beans, morogo of wild greens, and chakalaka alongside almost anything.

Biltong is not jerky

The comparison is made constantly and it is wrong in every particular that matters. Jerky is cooked, usually thin, usually sweet. Biltong is cured and air-dried, never heated: strips of beef or game are soaked in vinegar, rubbed with salt and coarse coriander and pepper, and hung to dry in moving air for days. It is cut thick, the texture is closer to cured ham than to a snack, and the flavour is dominated by coriander and the tang of the vinegar cure rather than by sugar or smoke.

It exists because it had to. Before refrigeration, drying meat this way was how you moved protein across a country in a hot climate, and the technique long predates the name. It is now sold everywhere including at petrol stations, ranges from ordinary to superb, and comes in a spectrum from moist to bone dry — ask for what you want rather than taking the default. Droëwors is the same idea applied to a thin sausage, and kudu or springbok biltong is worth seeking out over beef if you see it.

Bunny chow, and why it has that name

A bunny chow is a quarter, half or full loaf of white bread with the crumb pulled out and the cavity filled with curry, the removed bread put back on top as a lid. It comes from Durban's Indian community, and the usual explanation for its existence is straightforwardly practical: it made a hot meal portable and containerless for people who needed to carry lunch to work, with the bread doing the job of both plate and cutlery. The name has nothing to do with rabbits and is generally traced to the community of traders among whom it appeared.

You eat it with your hands, tearing bread from the lid and the sides to scoop, and you do not get a knife and fork. Order a quarter unless you are very hungry — a half is a great deal of food and a full loaf is a challenge rather than a meal. The standard fillings are mutton, bean or chicken, and the bean version is both the original and, in many places, the best. It is the single most characteristic thing to eat in Durban and it exists across the country in various states of authenticity.

What to drink

South Africa is a serious wine country and the Cape's wine is the obvious accompaniment to almost everything here — that subject has its own considerable depth in the Winelands guide and this is not the place for it. Beer is the everyday alternative, lager overwhelmingly, with a real craft scene in the cities. Brandy mixed with cola is a genuinely national drink in a way visitors rarely expect, and the country's brandies are much better than that treatment suggests.

The distinctive one is rooibos, and it has a mechanism worth knowing. Rooibos is a shrub that grows commercially in one small mountainous region of the Western Cape and effectively nowhere else on earth — attempts to establish it elsewhere have consistently failed, because it needs that specific combination of soil, altitude and climate. It is naturally caffeine-free, low in tannin so it does not turn bitter however long it steeps, and it is drunk here as ordinary everyday tea rather than as a health product. Try it plain and hot before deciding what you think of it. Amarula, a cream liqueur made from the fruit of the marula tree, is the other thing everyone brings home.

Eating out, and the vegetarian question

Restaurant standards are high and prices are low by western European or North American measures, which makes eating out one of the genuine pleasures of travelling here — a serious meal costs a fraction of its equivalent at home, and the fine-dining end is internationally competitive at prices that seem implausible. Tipping is expected and matters: around a tenth of the bill is standard and more is normal for good service, and it forms a real part of what staff earn. In car parks you will also find informal attendants who watch vehicles for a small tip, which is a normal and functioning arrangement rather than a hustle.

Vegetarians should go in with realistic expectations. This is a meat-centred food culture at its core, and the braai in particular is organised around it. That said, the situation is much better than it was and better than the reputation: the cities have excellent dedicated vegetarian and vegan restaurants, the Indian and Cape Malay traditions both bring genuinely good meat-free cooking, and the everyday staples — pap, chakalaka, samp and beans, morogo, the bean bunny chow — are naturally plant-based and widely available. The trap is the same as everywhere: ask specifically about stock and fat rather than relying on a dish looking vegetarian. Tap water is safe to drink in the cities and major towns.