Terroir Restaurant

On Saturday night we went to Terroir, one of the best known restaurants in South Africa.  It's on the Kleine Zalze wine estate in Stellenbosch.  The waiter brought a big chalkboard menu to our table and we picked our starters and main courses.  They all sounded so yummy.  I picked "baby beef" tartare as my starter and it was incredible.  For my main I had beef fillet because they were already out of springbok.  Everyone loves wild game here.

Hiking in the Franschhoek Mountains

On Sunday John and I went hiking in the mountains around Franschhoek where we are staying outside of Cape Town.  The path was steep and the sun was very hot above us.

After an hour of hiking we found a small ledge with the only shade around.  We rested and had some water and nectarines while taking in the view of Franschhoek and the surrounding vineyards in the valley.

95 Keerom

After climbing Table Mountain our parents were too tired to go out so John and I went, just the two of us , to 95 Keerom, an Italian restaurant.  We both ordered tuna carpaccio to start.  It was so delicate and simple with just some olive oil on top of the rocket.  Then I got a trio of game from the chef's very own farm.  From the left, it's kudu, springbok, and widlebeest.  It was so tender and yummy!  John got Karoo lamb from his farm as well.  Super simple food, well done.

Cape Town

My family and I arrived in Cape Town on Wednesday, my birthday.  On Friday we climbed Table Mountain via the Platteklip Gorge that you can see bisecting the two peaks above.  The first half of the climb was almost straight up stone steps.  We climbed three miles in three hours.

Below you can see where we finally reached the top of the mountain.  We very wisely took the cable car down and had a seafood lunch at the V & A waterfront.

Below is a little dassie, found only on rocky outcrops in Southern Africa.  He was very cute admiring the view for a long time.  He also looked to be incredibly well fed which is common among any rodents living in areas populated by hungry tourists.

The Batswana Snack of Choice

Mophane Worms

For six and a half years I have somehow managed to avoid the culinary delicacy of Botswana, the mophane worm.  Then Trace invited me over for tea at her new house after work.  She brought out two snacks, boiled salted peanuts and mophane worms.

At the beginning of every summer, Batswana start salivating over the anticipation of their beloved snack emerging from the ground with the first rains.  This worm is actually a caterpillar with very large spikes coming from its body but they do no good against hungry desert dwellers.  Batswana catch them by the bucket full and Trace paid for her daughter’s first school uniform by catching, cooking, and selling 50kgs of mophane worms. 

She told me that what you do is you get a small stick.  You find a worm and jam the stick inside the little body and drain out the inner puss (unless you catch this mophane worm the very first day it emerges from the ground, then the puss draining is not necessary).  You put the worms in a big pot over a fire and cook them.  Then you leave them to dry out on a piece of cardboard in the sun.   Once they are dry and hard you can rub one against another to get the spikes off.

I’m a bit embarrassed now by all the faces and noises I made leading up to putting a very small piece of mophane worm in my mouth, chewing, and then swallowing it.  I am proud to now say that I have eaten mophane worm and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  That is not to say I will ever eat another one but it tasted like salty, black tea and that was fine.  I have endured far worse much closer to home and attempting to eat room temperature cow tongue and vegetables in aspic at a family gathering sticks out as having been much more debilitating on my gag reflex than mophane worms.


I asked Trace if there was any food that us makgoa devoured with delight that appalled her.  Her answer was quick and short.  Crab.  Whole crab.