The back story

A Taste of the Cape: Bredie, Bobotie and Koesisters

In depth: food·Cape Town

Cape Malay cooking, from bredie and bobotie to koesisters, and where to taste it in the guide.

By the ULTIMATE Cape Town Editorial Team

A short guide to Cape Malay food: the spices that came with the enslaved people of the East, bredie, denningvleis and fish curry, koesisters and yellow rice, and the Bo-Kaap kitchens and harbour fryers where you taste them.

Cape Town’s most personal cooking comes from the slopes of Signal Hill. Cape Malay food, warm with cloves, cardamom and cinnamon, is the table of a Muslim community whose recipes are passed down through generations in the painted houses of Wale Street and Rose Street.

Where it comes from

In the 1600s the Dutch brought enslaved people to the Cape, mostly from Indonesia, Malaysia and India. They brought their spices and their ways of cooking, and when ingredients were missing they substituted, which is part of what makes the cuisine its own. Enslaved women cooking for Dutch households learned to soften the chilli, using paprika for colour rather than heat.

The Cape Malay community grew from shared faith, culture and food, and settled in the Bo-Kaap in the early 19th century. The Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum on Wale Street shows how a Cape Muslim family lived there in the 1800s.

The pot and the oven

Bredie is the great slow dish: vegetables and meat, usually lamb, stewed for a long time with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and sometimes chilli. Tomato, cabbage and green bean bredies are the favourites. Denningvleis is braised lamb with cloves, nutmeg and vinegar, served with rice, vegetables and mash, and a Cape Malay fish curry takes its sourness from tamarind.

Then there is bobotie, the spiced, baked favourite, and yellow rice studded with plump sultanas. Traditionally, this is food eaten by hand.

Bredie is cooked slowly, eaten by hand and passed down through generations of Bo-Kaap kitchens.

Something sweet

Koesisters are the Cape Malay teatime treat: spiced dough, deep-fried, soaked in syrup and dusted with coconut, best eaten fresh and still warm. They are not the plaited, syrupy koeksisters of Afrikaner baking.

By the sea

The Cape’s other everyday feast comes out of the sea. At Kalky’s on Kalk Bay harbour, frying since 1996, you order battered hake or snoek with chips and wait for your number to be called.

Did you know? Bredie, says South African Tourism, is a word of Malaysian origin.

Our advice

Our advice: book lunch at Bo-Kaap Kombuis, run by Yusuf and Nazli, who grew up in the Bo-Kaap, and visit the Bo-Kaap Museum first. Go back down the hill for coffee on Bree Street, and keep a Sunday for fish and chips at Kalk Bay.

Why it's on our list

Where it comes from
The pot and the oven
Something sweet
By the sea
Our advice

Location

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