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It’s not exactly an African experience in the sense that tourists so often expect (no bare-breasted dancing women, for example), but The Observatory is a pretty special dinner venue. And if you’re from the northern hemisphere it offers something you won’t get at home.

The restaurant is connected to an honest-to-God observatory with a 62cm (or 25 inch) telescope, a Newtonian/Cassegrain Bradford made by the Rand Corporation. It is apparently the biggest pro scope in private hands in this half of the world, and how exactly the restaurant came to own it has not been explained entirely to our satisfaction. Even if it did fall off the back of a truck, it’s a wicked-cool piece of equipment, and you don’t need to be an astronomy buff to appreciate it.

In fact, you don’t need to know anything about astronomy whatsoever. Between courses the resident astronomer will walk you through everything from the basic composition of the Milky Way to the nature of stellar nurseries. All you need to do is climb up the ladder and look through the eyepiece and see the pretty lights.

It’s not great for children under ten or so, and in mid-winter you’d better bundle up real good, but otherwise there just isn’t a downside. The limited menu offers great food at startlingly low prices, the venue is personal and the star gazing is unmatched. The restaurant is a little way outside of Johannesburg (but 45 minutes will still put you back at your city hotel) and is part of the Cradle of Humankind area, so it makes a nice end to a day outing.

If you like astronomy, use the opportunity to see the southern hemisphere skies. If you don’t normally look at the skies, consider it an educational opportunity. Just pick a cloudless night.

The Observatory
Aloe Ridge Hotel and Game Reserve
Zwartkop Gorge
Zwartkops
Tel: 011 957 2070
www.aloeridgehotel.com

Technically a mielie is an ear of corn and braai is a verb referring to the process of barbecuing (usually meat), so a braai mielie is simply a piece of corn prepared over an open fire. But sometimes direct translation fails, and this is one of those times.

The braai mielie is a South African phenomenon that laughs in the face of academic analysis and stubbornly refuses to make sense. In some urban areas, like Johannesburg, they are an infallible seasonal feature. Whenever mielies become available it’s like God’s own multifunction printer kicks into action to run off an infinite number of exact replicas of the braai-mielie lady: always black, always female, always friendly, always on duty no matter what the weather, always tending a fire fuelled primarily by a mixture of anthracite and soft, smoky coal, which is always contained in a modified big metal drum, and always stationed by the side of the road, anywhere the road shoulder allows a truck to pull over.

Mainstream retail has attempted to co-opt the braai mielie that seems so popular (given the high number of roadside sellers) but attempts have invariably failed. Nobody wants to buy a mielie over the counter after it has been carefully prepared on an industrial-grade gas-fired stove by a trained food technician in an environment certified to be hygienic. We want to pull off the road and buy a mielie which is carcinogenic and probably slightly radioactive from all the coal dust spread over it, and then eat it without so much as a pad of butter for accompaniment.

If you are not familiar with corn on the cob, it isn’t exactly easy to eat with one hand (or at all), so why it should be popular among drivers is yet another mystery. And the fierce competition among the sellers, sometimes located just across the road from one another Starbucks-style, mean that prices are rock-bottom low, so why they bother to do it is also not clear. Yet rain or shine you can find a mielie lady ready to serve.

We wouldn’t normally recommend them on a culinary basis, but if you are the kind of tourist who has a township tour on your itinerary, then don’t go home until you can claim to have eaten one.

Coffee culture hasn’t hit South Africa as hard or fast as it has the USA, but you can still find a decent single-shot decaffeinated skimmed-milk cappuccino with extra foam, if know where to look for it. Not from two identical Starbucks on opposite sides of the road so you don’t even have to cross the street for your fix, but it’s an improvement on where we were ten years ago.

As you would expect, the really excellent stuff is only to be found at small, one-off places hidden away in odd corners of Johannesburg and Cape Town, and you’ll need a local guide to find those and to give you the password you’ll need at the door.

But if you aren’t quite that discerning (but need your fix done right or else) there are still plenty of options. The three main contenders among the chain coffee outlets are Seattle, Vida and Lulu. The difference between the three are really a matter of personal preference; each has well-trained baristas and will serve you only the finest beans.

Seattle outlets are usually the easiest to find, as you would expect from a chain that is as direct a rip-off of Starbucks as they can get away with. Almost all are attached to Exclusive Books outlets, a chain of book stores, and you can find an Exclusive Books in any decent-sized mall.

There are some Vida and Lulu outlets in malls too, but many of them are in smaller, quirkier locations. Look out for the signs as you drive through the funkier parts of town, the ones with lots of restaurants and pavement cafes.

A fourth worthy contender, and your best friend in the slightly more rural parts of the country, are the Woolworths Cafes. These are attached to the larger Woolworths outlets, the ones that sell both food and clothes (not to be confused with Woolworths Food stores, which are smaller). Their coffee is as good as any of the other three and they’ll happily make a take-away. There is now, finally, one at OR Tambo Airport (Jo’burg International) that is open pretty much any time you’ll be transiting through there. And best of all, you can find these in places like Bloemfontein and Tzaneen. Any more rural than that and you are on your own.

A word to the wise, however. The most virulent retail coffee brand, the one you’ll encounter most often, is called the Mugg & Bean. Take that double G as a warning. They make a mean sandwich, but steer clear of the coffee.

It’s cured. Dried. Preserved using what is typically a closely-guarded mixture of herbs and spices in a vinegar solution. And it’s called biltong (pronounced with equal emphasis: the piece of paper that tells you how much you owe + the clamping device used in food-preparation, typically found in the kitchen). It is one of South Africa’s most universally enjoyed delicacies, and speaking ill of it in public will earn you derision at the very least.

Biltong has a long and splendid history; it kept many an early white settler alive as they trekked through the mountains in their ox wagons. But it hasn’t been a white thing for a long time (as long as black people have been able to afford it, anyway). You can find the proof at any sufficiently high-end corporate function, one with the little tables dotted everywhere with bowls of peanuts and whatnot on them. If one of those bowls contains sliced biltong then it will be mobbed and cleaned out within seconds of the guests being let at it. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to keep the staff from pilfering it before the doors are even opened.

South Africans have more kinds of biltong than you can shake a stick at, and arguments between aficionados of different types can easily flare up into holy war, so beware. The most common, and cheapest, is beef; the country is awash in cattle and red meat is cheaper here than anywhere outside of South America. In the race for national favourite, however, it is a close tie between Springbok and Kudu, with Gemsbok and Eland tied for third and fourth.

You can find biltong literally anywhere, thanks to the mass production of recent years and the distribution to 24-hour garage shops in convenient snack-sized packs. And you can trust those packets in the garage shops; those manufacturers are closely watched by the retailers, who know their stuff. But for the the best biltong you want to find yourself a specialty retailer. Almost any decent-sized mall will have a little biltong kiosk somewhere, with the goods sold by weight and open for you to make your own selection. Most have knowledgeable staff too.

The other variation, aside from the type of meat, is the form factor. You’ll find pre-prepared packs that are sliced, chunked or in what are known as “TV sticks”. At better retailers you’ll also find the whole slabs as they are cut and dried and velle or skins, which are big pieces sliced so thinly as to be transparent.

If you don’t love chilli in all its forms it may be best to steer away from the “chilli bites” or similarly named types, though. Those bastards can pack one helluva punch. Droëwors (dry sausage; don’t even try to pronounce it) may also not be your friend unless you like fatty stuff. It’s good, but it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.