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If you hang with middle-class natives for any significant amount of time you will, inevitably, be invited to a braai. At that point you want to be very, very careful. One misstep, one unfortunate remark, and you will be branded as a filthy, ignorant foreigner and driven out of polite society forever.

On the surface a braai may seem like a casual outdoor gathering of friends and family that just happens to be centered on the preparation of food. In reality it is one of the most sacred rituals of South African life, one that comes with its own language and attitudes and requirements. You will be expected to be familiar with all of these, because every South African is born with an instinctive understanding of what is required and cannot conceive of anybody who isn’t similarly equipped. In other words, your inadvertent mistake will be read as a deliberate insult.

To start with, you’d better have a very good excuse indeed if you wish to decline an invitation to a braai. You must also express extreme gratitude at being asked, and complain bitterly about how this job interview/quest to save the world/birth of your first child will perforce keep you away.

Do not, at any point, refer to the event as a “barbecue”, “picnic” or “lunch”. It is none of those things, and equating a braai with any of them is disparaging.

Do not arrive at the braai with your own utensils or meat unless specifically asked to do so – preferably in writing. A bottle of wine, your own beer or any traditional dinner-party type of gift is fine, but the implication that your host isn’t fully prepared or has inferior hardware will cause deep hurt.

In a similar vein, make no attempt to help with the lighting of the fire, the cleaning of the grill or the actual handling of the meat unless explicitly invited. If you are so invited, follow all commands and suggestions to the letter without question or variation. Unless your host is a pre-teen he has his own unique method of doing these things, which in his eyes is superior to any conceivable alternative. You are welcome to visit the kitchen and pitch in with the washing of lettuce (or whatever it is that happens in there), but when it comes to anything on or around the fire, defer absolutely to the designated alpha male.

Have an answer ready in case you are asked how you prefer your red meat. It need not be restricted to rare, medium or well done; the more detailed your requirements, the better. “Well done on the outside with just a hint of pink in the middle,” for example, will mark you out as refined. Saying you have no preference or leaving it up to the braaier will show you up as an imbecile and raise suspicions that you may be a crypto-vegetarian.

You must – and this is an absolute – effusively praise your host and/or the primary braaier on the end product and the unrivaled skill that produced it. Regardless of whether you had to gag it down with a glass of water per swallow. A willingness to learn, such as by asking questions about the process (either during or after) will earn you extra credit. Just be careful to frame those questions so that they can not be inferred as doubt or judgment. Self-deprecation is also a good idea, and pointing out that your home country has no similarly advanced method of meat preparation is perfect.

Other than that you’ll be fine. There is no dress code for a braai (you can wear a tie or a little black number if you like, but everybody else will laugh at you) and there is nothing resembling table manners (failing to eat with your hands will mark you out as fastidious, but even that is allowed). Enjoy.

If you’re coming to South Africa and you don’t visit the coast you’re a damn fool. The wild animals are mostly inland, this is true, but the coast has a lot to offer. Some like the windblown desolation of the West Coast, some prefer the ruggedness of the Wild Coast. The downright tropical waters of the South Coast are always a big drawcard; here at Howzzzt we have a particular fondness for the Garden Route and its always-perfect weather.

Each of these areas – as well as any even nearly habitable inland city – comes with a selection of fish you’ve never heard of. Sometimes that’s just because we use different names for species you’ll find elsewhere in the world, but we also have a couple of fairly exotic ones that you need to try out. Thus we present: the Howzzzt Guide to the Fishes of South Africa.

If you’re roaming on a local cellular telephone network, or if you are using a local SIM card, then you don’t need us. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) offers a great SMS service as part of its sustainable seafood initiative. The idea is to tell you whether the fish on the menu is endangered or not, but it will also give you alternative names and a short blurb about the fish. Just SMS the name of the fish to this phone number: 079 499 8795.

If that doesn’t work for you, this is our list of what you absolutely must know, in order of importance.

Snoek: A local favourite to the extent that you can sometimes buy it from roadside vendors, even inland. Stunning when smoked or roasted with apricot jam, although there are entire books full of recipes for it. You may as well eat it with your fingers right from the start because the numerous, small bones are impossible to remove any other way. Tagged entire guilt-free and sustainable by the WWF. Australians and points east of there know it as Barracouta, Barracuda or Sea Pike.

Kingklip: Sought-after and considered a luxury fish (and priced accordingly), Kingklip is appreciated for its firm texture and rich taste. It’s more common than Snoek on the menus of upmarket restaurants, possibly because there is no polite way to eat Snoek with a knife and fork. Rated orange on the WWF sustainability scale because stocks have been somewhat over-fished. Known as Ling or Pink Ling in the waters of South America and New Zealand.

Sole: Very common on menus and typically prepared very simply so as to not spoil the delicate flavour. This is a bony fish you can actually eat with a knife and fork (you’ll catch on to the method right away) and worth the relatively high price you’ll probably have to pay. These are plentiful and breed like rabbits, but conservationists are worried about the impact on Kabeljou (see below), which is caught by the same trawling method. Similar-looking (and named) fishes are found in many parts of the world; ours are more tasty. Really.

Butterfish: A handful of what fishermen know as oilfishes are sold as Butterfish in South Africa. After preparation they are very soft and flaky, and if the job is done right they can all taste quite pleasant. Another plus is that they are rated highly sustainable, because all these fishes are by-catches. On the negative side is the fact that they can rapidly cause sudden and violent diarrhoea in some people. Don’t risk it. Also don’t confuse it with the very different species that go by the same name across the globe.

Kabeljou: AKA Silver Kob, Dusky Kob, or just Cob on occasion. These turn out to be three closely related species, all of which are delicious enough to be specifically targeted by recreational fishermen. Somewhat tricky to prepare, so look for a specialist seafood chef or other trustworthy cook. Rated orange because of depleted stocks but not considered in danger of extinction.

Galjoen: Sports fishermen love this beast, spear-fishers especially, because of its speed, strength and perceived wiliness. Doesn’t taste bad either. But be aware that it is only allowed to be caught recreationally, and not at all during the summer months. If it is offered in a restaurant it’s almost certainly illegal.

Dorado: Sometimes also called Dolphinfish (though rarely on menus, presumably because it wouldn’t sell well if it were). Another game fish that requires pretty hard work to land. This one, though, is legal – and worth the price if you find it.

It’s as fake as a very fake thing indeed, but that is the perverse charm of the Mama Tembos restaurant – and the whole reason why we point photo-hungry tourists there.

See, not everybody is cut out for a real township tour. And that’s okay, really. Most of us don’t go to Europe and then seek out the poor and dirty neighbourhoods either. Many of us don’t even visit the site of a former Nazi concentration camp, because on some holidays you don’t want to be weighed down with the miseries of the past. You just want Disney World: sanitised, mindless, and ever-so-superficially happy.

That just about sums up Mama Tembos. It’s right in the heart of Linden, an upper middle-class suburb where the cars are shiny and the gardens filled with trees. It’s actually right across the road from a small television production facility. But it pretends really hard to be straight from the township, at least in terms of decor.

The decor is, of course, fake. So is the the menu, which features items with names that reference popular soccer teams and not-so-popular politicians, except the average township tavern has never heard of prawns (and doesn’t sell a lot of premium steak either).

All of which is just perfect. There isn’t a single thing on the menu that is even exotic, never mind gross. The service is good, and in English, and the kitchen is free of gut-rotting bacteria and the stench of the final bowel movements of freshly slaughtered animals. The bathrooms have running water. And you know what? Your friends back home will never be able to spot the fake decor in the background to your awesome pictures. To all intents and purposes you’d have been on that mandatory township tour, at least as far as any of them will ever know. It can be our little secret, promise.

Think of it this way: when you go to the medieval-themed castle in Disney World you don’t have skewered heads on display or diseased men pissing in the corners. Sometimes sanitised is good.

Mama Tembos
Cnr 4th avenue and 7th street, Linden
Johannesburg
Tel: 011 912 7770
www.mamatembo.co.za

Potjiekos is one of those dishes that started out as utilitarian and developed into an art form that now has a life of its own, long after the original constraints were removed. A lot like one of our other favourites: biltong.

With potjiekos the constraints were fire and cooking containers. The introduction of the three-legged cast iron pot, the potjie, was a boon for all kinds of South Africans. These pots are virtually indestructible, which is handy if you are semi-nomadic like the early Afrikaners and a lot of local tribes. They are relatively easy to clean (if not by modern, teflon-tainted standards) and they can be used to make a wide variety of dishes.

They were also just expensive enough to keep the average family from coveting more than one or two. Also, as you’d know if you’ve ever roughed it for more than a couple of days, keeping a fire going takes work. When you have to gather your own fuel you don’t want to make for of it than is strictly required, especially if you’re stuck on the savannah where you are bang out of luck once you run out of cow dung to burn.

These two factors created a preference for one-pot cooking. Traditional Afrikaners and groups from just about every black tribe can make an amazing number of things in a single potjie. Potjiekos is simply the most impressive.

So what is it? It’s stew, if you want to be impolitely harsh about it. Potjiekos is the combination of a meat (beef, chicken or venison, traditionally) with a hefty dose of onion, potato and assorted other vegetables of your choice, although the use of broccoli is frowned upon.

The secret, or the open secret at least, is that you never, ever, ever stir a potjie. When it comes off the fire it should be perfectly layered so that you need a long spoon and good technique to dish it out properly. Stirring before completion is a sin punishable by raised eyebrows and a generally cool demeanour.

That is why a good potjie is such an art. It requires the perfect choreography of fire (not too hot, not too cold), ingredient selection and absolutely exquisite timing.

The end result is something that straddles stir-fry, boiling and steaming, with distinct individual notes contained within an overall harmonious symphony. Basically, you have to try it, especially as it doesn’t contain anything you haven’t eaten a million times before and therefore requires absolutely no culinary adventurism.

In theory you can buy decent potjiekos from a select few restaurants, but for the genuine article, cooked for at least four hours with constant vigilance, you need to find a male Afrikaner, preferably over the age of 45, who has developed his own unique take on the preparation – including some secrets that he will not share with his own mother.