South African food has never been easy to define, shaped as it is by Indigenous traditions, migration, colonial history and ingredients that change dramatically from one region to the next. Today, a new generation of chefs and winemakers is taking those influences and doing something distinctly contemporary with them, whether that means reviving recipes once cooked at home, putting local produce at the centre of fine dining or reconsidering how grapes should be grown in some of the country’s oldest wine regions.

From Johannesburg restaurants exploring Zulu and Nguni food traditions to low-intervention winemakers in Swartland and ambitious kitchens across the Cape Winelands, these are some of the people changing the way South African food and wine is being talked about, and the places worth adding to your itinerary if eating and drinking well are part of how you like to travel.

Johannesburg

South Africa’s largest city may sometimes sit in Cape Town’s shadow when conversations turn to food, but Johannesburg has a growing collection of chefs determined to change that. At contemporary South African restaurant Gigi, Chef Moses Moloi uses modern techniques, seasonal menus and local produce to explore the country’s culinary heritage. His philosophy centres on telling the story of South Africa through food, an approach that has helped earn him multiple accolades, including Best Chef in South Africa at the South African Restaurant Awards.

That exploration of heritage extends beyond the restaurant kitchen. Chef Mmabatho Molefe has become one of the country’s leading voices in contemporary South African cuisine by looking back to the Zulu and Nguni food traditions of her childhood in KwaZulu-Natal. Her cooking incorporates nose-to-tail techniques as a form of cultural preservation and, following the closure of her Cape Town restaurant Emazulwini in 2024, she has continued working around the country through collaborations and residencies, including at Johannesburg cocktail bar Nook.

Elsewhere, one of South Africa’s most familiar culinary traditions is being given a more polished setting. Braai — cooking over an open fire — is part of everyday life across the country, and at Sandton’s Marble Restaurant, a grand wood-fired grill imported from Michigan sits at the centre of the kitchen. It is an elevated interpretation of something deeply embedded in South African food culture, showing how Johannesburg’s restaurants are increasingly looking to familiar traditions rather than simply borrowing from international dining trends.

Constantia

Wine has been made in Constantia for centuries, with the Groot Constantia estate dating back to 1685, but the area’s long viticultural history now sits alongside one of South Africa’s strongest collections of contemporary restaurants. That combination makes this leafy corner of Cape Town as compelling for its food as for what is poured into the glass.

La Colombe, voted The Best Restaurant in Africa by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2025, is among its most celebrated names. Chef James Gaag’s tasting menu draws on South African ingredients and influences in dishes such as smoking Cape Malay snacks, the restaurant’s playful tuna ‘La Colombe’ served in a miniature tin, and Karoo lamb. With the strength of the pound against the South African rand, its tasting menu can also represent considerably better value for British visitors than an equivalent experience at home.

Nearby, Foxcroft has entered its second iteration at Constantia Nek under Glen Williams, combining global influences with distinctly local ingredients such as smoked snoek and bokkom, the air-dried and salted mullet traditionally eaten in the Western Cape. On the Buitenverwachting estate, meanwhile, Peter Tempelhoff’s Beyond builds its menus around rare-breed meats, seasonal heirloom vegetables and artisanal cheeses. Together, the restaurants demonstrate how Constantia’s dining scene increasingly draws its identity from both the produce and culinary traditions of the country around it.

Swartland

North of Cape Town, Swartland has become one of the most interesting regions in South African wine, driven by producers willing to question how grapes should be grown and wines made. Natural and low-intervention approaches have become increasingly important here, often accompanied by a renewed interest in old vines, soil and varieties suited to the landscape rather than commercial fashion.

Few people have been more influential in that movement than Eben Sadie of Sadie Family Wines, whose philosophy is to “plant what belongs to the region”. Across 51 hectares in the Western Cape, including 24 hectares of the estate’s own vineyards currently in production, the team adapts its viticultural planning to the characteristics of each individual site rather than applying a single formula across the farm.

Chris and Andrea Mullineux brought experience from wineries in France and California to Swartland before establishing Mullineux, which has since been named Winery of the Year by Platter’s Wine Guide five times. Their vineyards are farmed organically, with an emphasis on improving soil diversity while developing greater balance and complexity in the grapes.

That connection between land and wine also defines the work of Adi Badenhorst and his cousin Hein of AA Badenhorst Family Wines, whose family history in South African wine stretches back generations. Their grandfather managed Groot Constantia for 46 years and Badenhorst is also a founding member of Swartland Independent, whose charter encourages minimal intervention, old dry-farmed bush vines and wines that reflect their terroir. Many of Badenhorst’s own vines date from the 1950s and 1960s, and the resulting wines include nods to some of South Africa’s less fashionable drinking traditions, including fortified wines and a long-forgotten aperitif.

Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch is one of the names most closely associated with South African wine, home to more than 200 wine and grape producers and around 150 official wine cellars and estates open to the public. Yet spending all your time moving between tasting rooms would mean missing an increasingly creative restaurant scene where chefs are applying much the same focus on provenance to food.

At the 36-cover Good to Gather on Rozendal Farm, chef Jess Shepherd serves a regularly changing set lunch built around the seasons. Diners eat in a courtyard shaded by cork oaks, while ingredients come from the restaurant’s vegetable and flower garden as well as a network of local organic growers and small producers. The emphasis is less on elaborate presentation than on reconnecting what appears on the plate with the people and land that produced it.

A different interpretation of South African heritage appears at Post & Pepper, which chef Jess van Dyk opened in Stellenbosch’s Old Post Office in 2022. Her aim was to offer the quality of fine dining without its formality, revisiting foods from her childhood in dishes incorporating koeksisters, kerribone, lieslap and skaapstertjies cooked over the braai. It is an approach that feels personal rather than nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake, taking recognisably South African flavours and presenting them in a contemporary restaurant setting.

Wine producers here are equally focused on place. Bruwer Raats has spent more than 26 years specialising in just two varieties, Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc, believing that concentrating his efforts would ultimately produce better wines. Raats Family Wines is now regarded as a pioneer of both, producing wines intended to express Stellenbosch’s distinctive dolomite granite soils.

Bernhard Bredell’s Scions of Sinai takes an equally long view. Although the label itself belongs to a newer generation of South African producers, Bredell comes from seven generations and more than 160 years of wine farming in the region. His focus on slow farming, bush vines and careful vineyard management reflects a broader movement in Stellenbosch towards understanding precisely where grapes come from rather than treating the region as a single, uniform terroir.

Franschhoek

The wine tram may be the first thing many visitors associate with Franschhoek, but this small village has also become an important training ground for South Africa’s next generation of chefs. For somewhere of its size, the concentration of ambitious restaurants makes it worth arriving with several tables already booked.

At Chefs Warehouse Maison, Liam Tomlin and chef-partner David Schneider take a more relaxed approach to the Winelands restaurant experience. Sustainability underpins the kitchen, with meat and fish bought whole and butchered or processed on site, while ingredients are sourced from local suppliers and the restaurant’s dedicated kitchen gardens. Charcuterie, condiments and other elements are made in-house, turning what could easily be another long lunch in the Winelands into an example of how ethical sourcing can influence almost every part of a restaurant operation.

Protégé was created specifically around that idea of developing new talent. Established under former Eat Out Chef of the Year Scot Kirton, the restaurant was designed to give up-and-coming chefs the opportunity to run a high-level kitchen and establish their own reputations. Today, rising chef Andrew Willemse leads the kitchen, with dishes including a Kerala kingklip slider, local fish with Cape Malay mussel chowder and Karoo wagyu flat iron demonstrating how South African ingredients can sit comfortably within a menu drawing inspiration from further afield.

Elgin, Robertson and Hemel-en-Aarde

Beyond Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, several smaller wine regions east of Cape Town are developing reputations of their own. Elgin, Robertson and Hemel-en-Aarde may have less international name recognition, but producers here are making wines increasingly capable of standing alongside South Africa’s better-known estates, often with sustainability and site-specific farming at the heart of their approach.

In Elgin, Almenkerk uses precision viticulture to minimise its environmental impact, monitoring vines individually and picking grapes in small lots. The valley’s cooler climate allows fruit to ripen while retaining natural acidity and moderate alcohol levels, characteristics that have helped distinguish the region from warmer areas of the Cape.

Robertson has a much longer track record in detailed vineyard management. DeWetshof has kept meticulous records since the 1970s, charting how individual vineyards respond to different soil types, irrigation and climatic conditions. That commitment to understanding each site has become central to an estate particularly renowned for its Chardonnay.

Further south, Hemel-en-Aarde’s Creation Wines, ranked No.7 in The World’s 50 Best Vineyards in 2025, takes advantage of another comparatively cool climate particularly suited to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Environmental considerations extend beyond the vineyard, with a range of ecologically minded practices across the estate. Visitors wanting to immerse themselves completely can even stay among the vines at Voormanshuis, its solar-powered self-catering cottage.

Conclusion

Taken together, these regions show how broad the conversation around South African food and wine has become. The most interesting chefs and producers are not trying to create a single definition of the country’s cuisine; instead, they are looking more closely at their own landscapes, communities and histories. And that makes eating and drinking across South Africa an increasingly revealing way of understanding the country itself.

Photos for “South African food: the people shaping its new culinary identity”: Various, Dave Herbst, South African Tourism, Jan Ras Photography.