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Introduction

"Rainbow Cuisine" defines the food style in South Africa. It's a term that reflects the cultural depth, creative spectrum, and spiritual unity of a diverse people. With 40 million inhabitants speaking 11 different languages, the country offers a fascinating potpourri of fresh, delectable, eclectic fare.

The food depicts a blend of many cultural societies -- European, Asian, and African -- with a tantalizing table that has evolved over centuries. It showcases the varied, European food traditions of the Italian, Portuguese, Greek, English, French, and Dutch. It presents the fruity sweet, and sweet-sour tastes of the Malay, a people from the East Indies who came to the Cape as slaves by the Dutch colonials. It includes the spicy curries from India and China. And it encompasses the indigenous fare of the African tribes. Alongside, the superb wines complement the special dishes.

For the tourist, it offers exciting dining opportunities with such a vast variety of tastes and restaurants at hand.

It is also fascinating to discover strong parallels to fresh, California style dining in such sophisticated dishes as vegetable carpaccios, fish tartars, smoked salmon salads, venison and berry-sauced entrees, hot gratineed tropical fruit desserts, and flavorful creme brulees.

The creative chefs enjoy great freedom in presenting a unique food style that reflects their ethnic background. Many are European trained and on a par with the Continent's best talent.

At their fingertips is a land blessed with abundant seafood; plentiful, wild game; extraordinary wines; and a bountiful harvest of orchard and sub-tropical fruits and vegetables.

The country grows virtually everything it needs. The Western Cape has an abundance of fruits, grains, and grapes. The Eastern Transvaal supplies tea and subtropical fruits -- lush mangoes, bananas, and papayas. Natal produces sugarcane and avocado. Excellent lamb comes from the Karoo along with low-cholesterol game meats such as venison, ostrich, and impala, come from wild herds or from farming. Seafood is regional, ultra-fresh, and plentiful -- crayfish, prawns, tuna, mussels, oysters, mackerel, and snock are caught in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Rock lobsters populate the bays near Cape Town, although poaching is decreasing the surplus.

Most Western Cape restaurants of note feature French or international dishes prepared from local ingredients. Yet, the diverse, European food traditions have bestowed a vast range of cooking styles and they borrow spices and seasonings from other lands.

Among the Malay, a renowned dish is bobotie, a custard-topped minced meat pie seasoned with onion, curry, and fruit chutney. Other dishes include pickled fish; sosaties, curry-marinated pork or lamb kebabs; and bredie, a meat or fish stew with vegetables and chilies.

The Indians introduced their curries. The Afrikaaners have their succulent potjies, or stews of maize with tomato and onion sauce or rice, and braais of grilled seafood and meat. The Dutch contributed their fried cruller, or koek sister, and milk pies. These classic ethnic dishes are often intertwined in a continental-style menu.

The French Huguenots, who fled from France in the 17th century with grapevines, were key to launching South Africa's wine industry. Now the heart of the vineyards is around Paarl in lush beautiful country. Stellar wines are awaiting discovery at about one-third the prices of comparable California wines. Pinotage is a strictly South African hybrid varietal with a luscious full bouquet. A Hermitage crossed with Pinot Noir, it was developed in the thirties to provide the elegance of Pinot Noir in a vine that can take heat.

Restaurants

To savor this wealth of cuisine on holiday, here is a sampling of restaurants that offer this varied splendor.

The Africa Cafe
213 Lower Main Road, Observatory
telephone (021) 479553
Portia and Hector De Smidt, a black and white couple of mixed marriage, opened The Africa Cafe in their home in Cape Town in 1992. A thriving success, they have moved to a colorful, two-story building . Here, amid a gaily-painted decor with whimsical Zulu fertility dolls hanging from the ceiling, they offer excellent real Afrikkaner fare. Served family style, the tab is 50 rand per person, or about $12 for platefuls of appetizers, entrees, dessert, and coffee or tea. The menu includes Ethiopian white curd cheese, a tantalizing couscous and date salad, sweet potato balls with sesame seeds, ostrich in a paprika sauce, chicken curry, Egyptian kasha with brown rice and lentils, pea and potato patties, phyllo pastries of spinach and peanuts, fruit kebabs, and coconut ice cream.

L'Auberge du Paysan
Somserset West
telephone (024) 842 2008
Frederick Thermann runs the elite French restaurant, L'Auberge du Paysan. Dining on tapestried chairs in the elegant restaurant set with bouquets of enormous red roses, the service, wines, and food are superb; the tab is $39 per person with wine. The menu features a petite salad of seafood: smoked salmon, crayfish, and mussels accented with grapes and green salad; grilled springbok in red currant sauce with huge Portobello mushrooms, red cabbage, and potato balls. Dessert showcases individual ice cream-filled pavlova with raspberries, adorned with nasturtiums. L'Avenir Chardonnay/Riesling 1994 and Bertrams Pinotage 1990 is poured.

Bientang's Cave Seafood Restaurant
Hermanus
telephone (0283) 23454
Whale watching from June to December is great sport at Bientang's Cave Seafood Restaurant, an open stone cave in a seaport about an hour's drive from Capetown. In a breath-taking setting above the sparkling sea, whales cavort 10 meters away. The staff serve a seafood buffet commencing with bouillabaise, followed by grilled white salmon, yellowtail, and king klip, and a half dozen salads including potato, pasta, calamari, coleslaw, carrot and pineapple, and waldorf. Warm bread pudding with rum sauce and cherry ice cream round out this feast. Dining is by reservations only. The price is
$15 per person for lunch or $17 for dinner.

Le Quartier Francais
Franschhoek
The menu tantalizes at the 52-seat Le Quartier Francais, a premier wine country restaurant with a 17-room auberge. In ambiance and style, it parallels California wine country cuisine. Specialties include half-shell mussels in sparkling wine, ostrich carpaccio, roast monkfish with basil on truffle pasta sheet, duck breast with sweet potato gnocchi and gooseberry chutney, and white and dark chocolate mousse with passion fruit ice cream or frozen lemon parfait and ginger plum ice cream.

Gerard Moerdyk
Pretoria
Gerard Moerdyk is a charming Colonial African restaurant. The house was built in 1920 by Moerdyk as a wedding gift to his wife, the second cousin to Paul Kruger. A typical menu includes an elegant cream of butternut soup floating a viola, a composite entree plate
of three dishes in little soufflÈ cups -- bobotie, venison pie, and chicken pie with three sambals of pineapple relish, chutney, and tomato and onion relish; rice, and fresh vegetables; and a brandy pudding with whipped cream and chocolate ice cream. The tab: $24 per person with a fine Zonnebloem Cabernet Sauvignon 1990 alongside, priced at $13 a bottle.

The Coach House
Old Coach Road at Agatha, Northern Province
telephone (0152) 307 3641
This is a five star inn with lovely spacious guest suites and a pool overlooking the lush grounds and Drakensburg Mountains. One would love to linger there for days. With a renowned, black executive chef, Lucas Ndlovu, the cuisine features seafood and game and emphasizes the mangoes and avocados grown on the local plantation. A candlelit dinner at round tables includes Dindinnie mango with prawns in a curry sauce or baked avocado with Madagascan crab, Peanut Soup, baked Sabie trout with fresh green beans and carrot puree, and a fabulous dessert trolley bearing bittersweet chocolate torte with cream, mango cheesecake, walnut meringue with lime curd, and fresh tropical fruit salad. Dinner per person is 85 rand or $21.

Royal Grill in the Royal Hotel
Durban
The five star Royal Hotel offers deluxe upscale dining in its Royal Grill, a beautiful stained glass high-ceilinged Colonial dining room. A five course wine dinner, including the vintages, is priced at 125 rand, around $31. At round linen-draped tables aglow with candles in hurricanes, the menu commences with a wafer-thin vegetable carpaccio of eggplant, sweet potato, and mushrooms laced in a pesto sauce with shreds of granna. A potato and leek soup with truffles and bacon, paupiette of sole and salmon on mushroom risotto, and tournedos of beef with mustard sauce and a vegetable bouquet follows, partnered by a silken Douglas Green Cabernet Sauvignon 1978. A continental dessert trolley holds a dozen sweets: among them, trifle, cream puffs, apple tart, and cherry yogurt pudding.

Chez Patrice at the Balalaikai Hotel and Crown Court
Sandown
telephone (27 11) 322 5047
This is an elite restaurant. A stellar dinner offers a taste-tingling salad of marinated ostrich with raisins, Cape crayfish quenelles in a vanilla-scented curry sauce with a Plaisir de Merle Chardonnay, eland fillet in a guava and green peppercorn sauce, and a dessert plate of roasted sliced mangoes on a caramelized honey-pistachio sauce. Exceptional wines to enjoy include Buitenverwachting Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon; Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon Stellenbosch Reserve 1991 and Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot Stellenbosch 1992; Glen Carlou Chardonnay Paarl 1994; Warwick Trilogy, Cabernet Franc 1994, and Pinotage 1995; and Kanonkop Pinotage Stellenbosch Reserve 1993.

Recipes

South African Airlines is involved in promoting the concept of Rainbow Cuisine. Five of South Africa's chefs staged a spring month-long series of lunches, open to the public at the Delegates' Dining Room of the United Nations. The dishes ranged from smoked ostrich appetizer, to terrine of warthog, poached crayfish and baby perlemoen, to Franschhoek salmon trout and loin of Springbok.

Cold Peanut Soup (The Coach House)
makes 4-6 servings

3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup dried salted peanuts
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup milk
Lemon or cucumber slices, to garnish

In a stockpot, simmer the stock and nuts for 5 minutes. Puree in a blender with chili powder, salt, and pepper to taste. Return to the stockpot and stir in the milk. Simmer 5 minutes. Chill. Serve garnished with lemon or cucumber slices.

Bobotie
makes 6 servings

1 1/2 cups milk
1 slice bread, torn
2 medium onions, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 pounds ground lamb or beef
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons fruit chuntey
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 cup currants
2 eggs, beaten
6 bay or lemon leaves

Soak 1/2 cup of the milk with the bread. In a skillet, brown the onions in oil, add the curry powder and meat sautÈ until browned. Mix in the bread and season with salt and pepper, fruit chutney, brown sugar, and currants. Spread in a greased 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Combine the remaining 1 cup milk with the beaten eggs and pour over. Bake in a preheated 350 F oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until set. Serve with rice or couscous, sliced banana, and chutney.

Couscous Salad (The Africa Cafe)
makes 6-8 servings

2 cups couscous
3 cups hot water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded carrots
1 cup fresh, frozen or canned corn
1 cup chopped macadamia nuts or almonds
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 teaspoons fresh crushed garlic
2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
1/2 cup chopped pitted dates

Place the couscous in a bowl, pour over the boiling water, and let stand until cooled to room temperature. Stir in the remaining ingredients and chill. Serve as a salad on its own or as a side dish.

Buttermilk Pudding (Alice Fullard, The Old School Tearoom, Stilbaai)
makes 6-8 servings

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs, separated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup milk

In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs yolks, salt, vanilla, buttermilk, and flour. Dissolve the soda in the milk and stir in. Lastly beat the egg whites until soft peaks and fold in. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake in a bain marie in a preheated 325 F oven for 45 minutes or until set. Serve hot or cold with sour fig preserve or green fig preserve.

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