3 Best Restaurants in V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

Inspired, clever, and—above all—delicious, the food at this excellent Ryan Cole–helmed restaurant is intent on redefining South Africa's high-end dining scene. To achieve this, Cole (whose other venture, Salsify, is also a must-try) asked head chefs Teenola Govender and Geoffrey Abrahams to create a menu inspired by personal food memories and their respective cultural backgrounds using the best seasonal ingredients. The result is set menus, with options for vegetarians and pescatarians, that are a concise, flavor-focused acknowledgement of Africa as its own gastronomic entity. There's a beautiful vegetarian dish of samp (dried corn kernels) and chakalaka (chopped veggies, tomatoes, and beans) that's quintessentially South African or maybe ox tongue with ras el hanout (a Moroccan spice blend) and beef tallow, or an incredible tuna tartare cold starter made with sugarcane and caramelized pineapple that beautifully evokes summertime on the beachfront in Durban (where Teenola grew up). Most of the dishes will be unlike anything you've ever had and will probably never have the opportunity to try again; mouthful after mouthful, you'll likely feel as though the world has shifted off its axis slightly, altering your understanding of what food can be.

Chef Nolu Dube-Cele has created one of Cape Town's absolute must-try restaurants, a place where you can enjoy many of the country's diverse traditional dishes that haven't yet made their way from the home kitchens to restaurant menus (although this is steadily changing). At this lovely spot by the canal that runs through Battery Park, you can tuck into a variety of dishes like chicken sosaties (skewered meat), meat potjie (stew), tripe, and the crowd-pleasing "roadrunner," a free-range chicken cooked slowly in its own juices. There's a great selection of vegan dishes, too, including salads made using healthy grains such as sorghum, as well as "roosterkoek" breakfast buns and sandwich buns stuffed with mince and chakalaka. It's everything necessary to get you properly acquainted with the real-deal gastronomy of this country. The eponymous "seven colours" is a nickname for meals traditionally served at special gatherings, when there's an assortment of differently colored foods on the plate: yellow rice, orange pumpkin, green spinach or beans, red beetroot, and brown meat. 

Located at the V&A's cruise terminal, Makers Landing is a collection of food stalls, casual sit-down restaurants, and even a culinary school. The initial aim was to showcase a diversity of local food, and even though a fast-food vibe has set in, you can get a proper taste of South Africa at Pitso's Kitchen, taste a unique range of spirits at the Pienaar & Son distillery, or satisfy your sweet tooth with some of the best chocolate at Afrikoa.