Going With My Gut

Farm-fresh Food on the Garden Route, South Africa

Above: Drivers of too-fast cars while wearing their too-stylish shades are likely to zip right past Red Barn Restaurant and its delectable treats at Fern Gully Farm near Knysna. Lucky for you if they do.

Please don't speed when driving along the highways of South Africa's Garden Route.

This has got nothing to do with road safety. It's got everything to do with you potentially missing the quaint hand-painted signs and the tiny-lane turnoffs to some of the freshest, most delicious breakfasts, lunches and snacks you could hope for on a road trip.

Take Finebush Farmbush Farmstall and Country Kitchen, for example. Its address is listed simply as "Off the N2 highway, east of Stormsriver Bridge between Plettenberg Bay and Humansdorp". Go by too fast, however, and you would miss the treats from Carla's kitchen, such as this cheese and cured meats platter -- arranged as such if you're hanging out for a while, or packable into a picnic basket if you are on the run.

But really, why run when you've got such charming indoor and alfresco space to choose from?

If you time it right (or dawdle long enough) Carla might even offer you a pinch of whatever dessert she's making fresh that day. If it's a chocolate brownie (right), do not, under any circumtances, resist. Not that you'll be able to, because you'll have been smelling its maddening fragrance for about 15 minutes before it slides seductively out of the oven in the open kitchen right next to the dining room.

Over by Knysna, if you've had enough of the over-built up waterfront, drive towards the hills to Red Barn Restaurant, find a spot on its shaded patio, and tuck into meals where many of the ingredients are sourced onsite and from nearby farms.

Babs and I chowed down one morning on french toast with bananas and an English breakfast fry-up, with a couple of excellently made cappuchinos. The breakfast of chubby champions.

Finebush Farmstall and Country Kitchen
Off the N2 highway, East of Stormsriver bridge between Plettenberg Bay and Humansdorp
Tsitsikamma, South Africa
+27 42 280 3503

Red Barn Restaurant, Fern Gully Farm
Rheenendal, Knysna, South Africa
8km from N2 turn off
GPS coordinates: -33.978325, 22.96437
+27 82 739 0962

If interested, here's a longer list of farm shops, markets and kitchens on the Garden Route.

Ile de Pain, Knysna, South Africa

A brief break from delicious tales of Japan, to share a few more food finds in South Africa for those of you heading to the World Cup shortly.

My favourite meal while we were in South Africa last November was a tough toss up between lunch at Fynboshoek Cheese in Tsitsikamma and lunch at Ile de Pain in Knysna, the latter town a popular midway stop if you're driving the Garden Route as part of your trip.

A vibrant and breezy breakfast-and-lunch bistro started in 2002 by chef Liezie Mulder and surfer-baker Markus Farbinger, Ile de Pain is proof that ludicrously fresh, delicious, seasonal and local produce can be sourced and served up as sensational meals without breaking the bank.

For the commitment-phobic -- and there will be more of you than you think, once you take a gander at their menu -- I recommend the tasting platter, which includes a big dollop of melty mozzerella, bright-red tomatoes in various styles and a lovely duck rillette on an array of breads freshly-baked onsite.

Those in the know about South Africa's excellent beef will likely be pleased with Ms Mulder's steak sandwich. This is, in my mind, the best steak sandwich on earth (although I will revert after we've been through Argentina). Luckily Babs and I had a share-everything deal already agreed before he tasted it.

I am not kidding about the "best" bit.

We had resolved not to have dessert, but who were we kidding? Especially when a smiley waitstaff saunters up to every table with a 3-tier tray of tempting treats. We caved in to this chocolate tart, with no regrets.

No better way to finish than to sip on a coffee and soak in the earthy vibe of the place and watch the comings and goings and air-kissings of the mostly preppy white patrons.

I could stand to be shipwrecked on this island of bread for a while.

Ile de Pain
10, The Boathouse
Thesen Island, Knysna, South Africa
+27 44 302 5707

Open Sunday 9am - 1.30pm
Open Tuesdays - Saturdays 8am - 3pm
Closed on Mondays, May and August

Game to Meat Up in Cape Town?

Let's face it. I'm lousy company on a safari or a dive trip.

Mostly because, in the group chat afterwards, when all the wildlife lovers are cooing "Wasn't that majestic... wasn't that just soooo cute..." I will inevitably blurt out "I wonder what that tastes like."

And then a "whoompf" of silence will descend, and everyone will wonder with raised eyebrows wondering "Who brought her?"

Eventually one of the more sociable ones will play along, and the group will discuss what they would and wouldn't eat, and someone will always end up saying "Oh but I couldn't eat that, they're just too cute!"

I've never understood this not eating cute animals business. What does that even mean? They'll eat only ugly schmugly animals? How would animals qualify for the life-saving cute category? If they've done enough Disney roles to qualify for health insurance with SAG?

I tend to think this out loud. More raised eyebrows.

If you're still reading this, and chuckling along, I think we understand each other. Read on. Otherwise, you might want to read some other post. And probably not the one about the Kenyan Goat Feast.

===

So I decided that while we were in Africa, we had to try some game meat. The farmed, rather than endangered variety. (Yes, I will eat cute, but not endangered)

The first and most obvious lead was Carnivore in Nairobi, Kenya, but we found out that Kenya had banned the sale of game meat. (Research suggests that Carnivore also has a branch in Johannesburg, South Africa, which still serves a rotation of game meats.)

Luckily, Long Street in Cape Town, South Africa -- the city's backpacker and entertainment ground zero -- offers 2 delicious and affordable options for those game for game.

Royale Eatery

Hipster-chic Royale Eatery also serves pizzas and very impressive salads, but it is first and foremost a gourmet burger joint, with offerings of beef, chicken, fish and -- what I came for -- ostrich.

South Africa pioneered ostrich farming over 150 years ago, and posh neighbourhoods in ostrich central Oudtshoorn are said to be built upon the feather fortunes. Today, vehicle manufacturers still buy ostrich feathers to be used in the late stages of the vehicle-painting process. Ostrich hides are turned into an array of leather products, eggs are made into monster omelettes and their shells painted and sold as decorations.

Ostrich meat, as it turns out, is a red meat. The best way to describe its taste? You know how Diet Coke tastes like a subtly different version of regular Coke? Ostrich -- similar to kangaroo but with a different twang -- tastes like diet beef. Lovely flavour and bite, with much less of the heaviness afterwards.

The beetroot chutney was a lovely lift to the taste and colour of the well made burger platter. The sweet potato fries were superb, especially with aioli, and sweet chili sauce.

Do also sample Royale Eatery's formidable milkshake menu. I took a shot at the Jack Daniels and Peanut Butter shake. Geeeeeenius. Even more genius than the time I chucked some JD into my 7-Eleven Coke slurpee. I should experiment with chucking JD into more stuff. Recommendations?

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)

Khaya Nyama, which specialises in game meat, is open only for dinner and describes its ambience as "bushman cave". I guess that means this.

To sample a range of game without committing to an expensive steak portion of something you might not like, try the venison carpaccio platter, with a slice of crocodile, ostrich, springbok and kudu (2 kinds of deer).

The 3 red meats, while very tasty, posssibly had too much spices and brine to really bring out the differences between the different meat flavours. The more interesting experience was the crocodile. It looks mostly like a slice of smoked chicken or turkey, but has that slight translucent sheen of fish. Its taste had the same unusual fishy-chickeny combination.

I followed with a whopping serving of grilled warthog ribs. As somewhat expected, it tasted like a more full bodied version of pork (a beefier version of pork?). Lovely. The sides -- maize mash, broccoli, and rice, were hearty but could probably do with slightly prettier plating to match up with the restaurant's fine dining pitch.

Overall, a successful savoury safari. Thanks for keeping me company!

Royale Eatery
273 Long Street
Cape Town, South Africa
+21 21 422 4536

Khaya Nyama (House of Meat)
267 Long St
Cape Town, South Africa
+27 21 424 2917

Discovering Gold at Fynboshoek Cheese, Tsitsikamma, South Africa

"Cross the bridge... follow the detour for 4km... look for the church and the school... look for the turnoff 1.2km from the school... go 1.5km... past the neighbour's farm... left at the fork... then go to the end of the road."

We were on a treasure hunt for Fynboshoek Cheese, a South Africa Garden Route locavore haven by award winning cheesemaker Alje van Deemder, who has been personally serving lunches for more than a decade, with just about everything served being grown and / or made onsite.

I trust this is the right way...

Success! We drive up to a mustard house garlanded with many a flowering tree, and get ushered into a breathtaking sunroom, where classical music is softly playing. If they had divans here I could dawdle with a book for many afternoons on end.

There's no menu at Fynboshoek. (The set lunch costs ZAR 110 per person. Drinks are extra.) So we wait, soaking in the view. Then the opening act arrives, with quite a bang: Fried goat cheese canapes, with a dab of jam and sprigs of fresh thyme.

Next, salad caprese, with a sunny homemade mozzerella. And rosemary focaccia, fresh from the oven. Combine with a giant bowl of vibrantly coloured salad leaves for a soul-cleansing gorge.

The headline act: The Fynboshoek cheese platter, with 3 goat cheeses of varying maturity, a couple of cheddars, a smoked provolone ball, and my favourite (on the far left) a cow's milk cheese with cumin. Not being a class-A curd nerd, I sometimes find the taste of goat cheese to be too overwhelming, but the ones put forward here were gentle and gorgeously creamy.

I've never had a meal of cheese, bread and leaves this satisfying.

You can read about the health and environmental merits of eating locally -- where ingredients are grown and sourced from as close to the dining table as possible -- but it's so much more seductive to experience the difference with all five senses.

Out bread was finger-singeing hot, with salty dough and rosemary wafting about the table. The salad leaves were surprisingly sweet, having been spared nitrogen and that awful bitter plastic infusion that comes with supermarket packaging. If you have time after lunch, you can go stroll on the grounds outside the house, and say hello to the goats and cows that provided the milk for your cheese.

The other diners in the sunroom and at a long table outside were quite uniformly of the pastel shirt and shoulder-slung sweater and posh leather loafer variety. So Mr van Deemder -- possibly pleasantly surprised by the diversity of a scrubby Chinese and Indian couple -- tarried over expressos, asking what we were doing way out here in Tsitsikamma.

He was quite amused with our casual quest of eating our way around the world, and he visibly perked up when we said we focused especially on eateries that showcased local ingredients and traditional recipes. We shared laments about how so much of South Africa's best produce (especially seafood) is sent overseas while locals lap up cheaper but lower quality imports. I told him about our frustrated quest to sample Knysna oysters, and he rejoined: "Our squid and cuttlefish is top quality, so it all goes to Europe and Asia. All the squid you find here is from South America."

Tragedy! How does one hijack a South African squid boat I wonder...

The music switches to a jaunty ragtime jazz tune. Do we really have to go?

But I take heart. Fynboshoek is that kind of treasure trove that is more likely to keep keeping on if you spread, rather than hoard, the word. So go. Off-map, off-GPS, to where cheese marks, and hits, the spot.

Fynboshoek Cheese
Off the N2 Highway across from Tsitsikamma Lodge
Calling ahead for reservations and directions is essential
+27 42 280 3879

Top 10 Eats in Europe, Middle East and Africa -- My Guest Post for Guardian UK's Been There

I was delighted when Guardian UK's Been There approached me about writing a guest post about my top 10 eats so far, after 5+ months on the road.

The list in my post "Eating Her Way Around the World" covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and hopefully suits a range of budgets. (Well, except the uber-posh / silly expense account bracket, given my own financial limitations.)

Above all, I focused on a list of eateries that for me captured a sense of place and local flavour.

I hope it's helpful and enjoyable list for all you hungry travellers out there!

Hunting the Elusive Knysna Oyster in South Africa

Hemingway hunted big game in Africa. I went hunting last week too. For oysters.

I realise, to "hunt" something that spends only the first 3 weeks of its spratty life swimming around before finding a rock to attach itself to for the rest of its days, sounds ridiculous. Even to me.

But I was on the trail of a very specific oyster. The Knysna oyster. Mentioned in every South Africa Garden Route travel and restaurant guide we got our grubby food-stained hands on. The raison d'etre of the Knysna Oyster Club, set up in the 1920s. Farmed by the Knysna Oyster Company in the Knysna lagoon since 1949. Celebrated by the town at a festival each July for the last 26 years. The flashpoint for selling 65,000 bednights at last year's festival, raking in 60m ZAR for the local economy and -- through sporting event-charity partnerships -- raising over 1m ZAR for charities, according to Knysna Review, a glossy municipal marketing magazine. Described by the same publication as "famous for its fresh nutty taste, unique to oysters in this area".

And, as it turns out, now much more elusive than Knysna's other marine celebrity, the Knysna seahorse.

*****

Babs and I had been walking in circles on Thesens Island in Knysna this mid November afternoon, cross-checking our various maps and restaurant guides. There is no sign of the Knysna Oyster Company tavern to be found. No building backyards filled with racks or little boats or grizzly men in wellies, or any other telltale sign of an oyster farming operation. Just a slick restaurant and retail arcade and a swathe of shiny and shuttered waterfront housing developments that our hostel proprietor described (bang-on) as "very Truman Show meets Stepford Wives".

I ask a convenience store cashier for directions.

"They're closed," she said.

I was crestfallen, but asked what time they would reopen for dinner or the next day.

"No, I mean they closed about 3 months ago," she said.

I started squawking in my head. I asked what happened. She shrugged.

I spent the evening trawling the news. Surely given the Knysna oyster's position in the town's marketing message such a closure could not have come and gone quietly?

Finally, a Nov 2008 report in the Herald said "South African National Parks (SANParks) will not renew the lease of the Knysna Oyster Company restaurant next year and is still deciding on the future of the 12,5-hectare oyster farm in the lagoon."

The site was being tendered out for redevelopment. Plans included "a boutique hotel, possibly incorporating a pier-mounted café, seven retail shops, the existing SANParks offices, space for a flea market, a houseboat marina, marine filling station and restaurant".

In SANPark's tender process information memo dated April 2009, it stated that the winning bidder for the restaurant site was not obliged to continue running an oyster restaurant, and even if it chose to do so, the winning bidder -- even if it were the Knysna Oyster Company -- would not be awarded automatic rights to farm oysters in the lagoon.

I trawled for the results of the tender, which was to be decided at the end of June 2009. The only update I managed to find was a post by a South African Hotel and Restaurant industry website dated Oct 2009, stating that SANParks was (still) looking for an operator for the restaurant site. This particular round of proposals are due on Nov 25.

The next morning I checked in with out hostel proprietor to see if she had the latest local news.

"Oh jaaaaaa. They lost their lease," she said. "They moved in with the Oystercatcher, which they also own. Thesens Quays. Behind the railway station."

A fresh lead! I noted the location on the map. What about the oyster farm?

"Oh jaaa they still farm Knysna oysters."

We zipped over, and there it was, a classic seaside boardwalk structure complete with a giant tobasco bottle as a roof-top adornment, with signages from both The Oystercatcher and the Knysna Oyster Company on its front exterior wall.

It's mid-afternoon, but the indoor dining room is full (a good sign, I thought), so we sit outside, and order 18 oysters -- 9 cultivated (i.e. farmed), 9 coastal (wild).

When our waiter brings out our platters, I ask him when and why the tavern moved. His face fell and he sighed.

"A lot of stuff happened. A lot of politics. We had to close everything. The restaurant. The farm. Everything. Right after the festival this year at the end of July," he said.

I looked down at my platter. So where are these oysters from, then?

"Well, Chile. The sprats are from Chile. Then farmed in Port Elizabeth. The same as always. Before they would start out in Port Elizabeth then spend some time maturing in Knysna, then finish maturing in Port Elizabeth, then get back here for processing. Now they just do it all Port Elizabeth."

And the coastals?

"Well...they're South African, if that's what you mean."

But where in South Africa, I persisted, recalling the unique-flavour-of-this-area-bla-bla-bla schtick.

"Well, maybe here, maybe Mossel Bay... I don't know. Anywhere they can find them, really."

Not an alum of the terroir-ist school then.

What about the festival? Was there going to be one next year?

"There's always going to be a Knysna Oyster Festival. It's a big thing for this town. Look, it's no different. It's exactly the same oysters as before," he said in that tone of voice that suggested that even though it was his job to be nice to me, I had reached the point where I was acting like a Stepford wife throwing sparks and smoke and asking too many questions, and it was time to slurp down and shut up.

So. There will still be Knysna Oyster Festivals, it seems. Supermarket chain Pick n Pay has already signed on to sponsor the festival right through till 2013, according to the Knysna Review. And next year is likely to be a bumper one, what with South Africa hosting the World Cup.

But a little semantics for those whom these niggly details matter. Until further notice from South Africa foodies, it's the festival that Knysnan. Not the oyster.

Knysna Oyster Company / Oystercatcher
Thesen's Quays (behind the railway station)
Knysna, South Africa