10 things you want to bring home from South Africa

If you love good food and great wine, South Africa is probably high on your holiday wish list—or you’ve already been there. When you’re in the rainbow nation, you’ll discover that besides all that star-worthy food in the restaurants, there’s plenty more to enjoy. All that natural beauty is even better with something tasty within reach, right?

Chutney-flavored Simba chips

By far number 1! In South Africa, Mrs. Ball’s chutney is legendary, and fortunately the clever people at Simba chips realized they could make chips with it too. Spicy, a little sweet, a little sour, a little salty, and incredibly moreish: the green bags are empty again in no time. Really, these are the best chips in the world!

Chakalaka spices

A mysterious spice blend made mainly with chili, paprika, and onion powder. It’s used in stews, but really in just about any savory dish. Deliciously hot and sharp. Thank goodness, chakalaka spice blends can still occasionally be found in specialty food shops in the Netherlands. The very best memory: soft young goat’s cheeses rolled in chakalaka spices, with a cold beer in the garden of the Nieu-Bethesda brewery. Eleven hours by plane, ten hours by car, but worth every minute.

Biltong

It looks like leather sandals at the end of a hiking holiday, but it tastes… oh, heavenly. Biltong is meat—beef, for example, though it can also be springbok or eland—that is first marinated in spices and soy sauce and then dried. It’s cut into wafer-thin slices in a sort of green-bean slicer, and you get a bag of shavings. Open it in the car right away and start snacking, because biltong is absolutely delicious. It goes with (yet another) cold beer and a sports match, but it’s also great to nibble on during long drives.

Fruit rolls

A purée of dried fruit, such as apricot, mango, or guava. The purée is dried and rolled out, and who knows what other magic is performed on it, but the result is as chewy as liquorice sticks. You buy it as a kind of roll in the supermarket or at a farm stall along the roadside. Tear off a piece, put it in your mouth, and start chewing.

Appletizer

It’s deliciously sweet, carbonated apple juice, and it’s on almost every menu. It’s astonishing that this still isn’t available in the Netherlands: sparkling apple juice. Of course, you can mix your apple juice with sparkling water and drink it, but it’s just not the same. There’s also Grapetizer, sparkling grape juice.

Bunny chow

You want to eat this simply because of the name: bunny chow. What do you expect, rabbit food? Wrong. It’s a hollowed-out bread roll, filled with a deliciously spicy curry. The sauce soaks into the bread, making it a little soggy and utterly delicious.

Boerewors

Fresh sausage is available in pretty much every country, but South African boerewors is something else. These sausages can be up to a meter long and are coiled up with a few skewers. Naturally, you put them on the braai to get a deliciously crisp, browned crust. Sorry, call us cultural barbarians, but fresh sausage from the grill, wonderfully fatty and salty: heavenly.

Braaibroodjies

So brilliant that you’ll wonder why you never thought of it yourself: braaibroodjies are a kind of toasted sandwiches, but made on the barbecue. Of course, you eat them at a braai, but you can also shamelessly have them for lunch. The white slices of bread are thicker than ours, and you fill them with cheese, tomato, and onion. Tip from Flip: spread a little mayo and chutney on your bread instead of butter.

Koeksisters

Deep-fried cookies that are then dipped in syrup: these koeksisters are only suitable for people with a high tolerance for sweetness. You eat one or two koeksisters, then get very hyper and afterward very sleepy. And then you can try another koeksister.

Melktert

This is the original version of cheesecake, but considerably lighter and less sweet. A mixture of egg, milk, flour, and sugar is poured into a sweet pie crust. Bake it until the filling is set, then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Read also:

• South Africa has a wine surplus of 240 million liters—who can help?
• Beer? Cerveza? Bière? Know what kind of beer you’re ordering on holiday
• I’m going on holiday and I’m bringing…