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South African Steakhouses |
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South Africans love meat, particularly beef. South African beef is disease-free and rates among the best in the world. Steak appears on the menu at just about every restaurant, but there are several dedicated to the preparation and consumption of meat.
Fabulous Family Fare
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Bottom of the range (in price but not in quality) are the Spur Steak Ranches, found all over the country in their unmistakable American-Indian livery. Very popular with families, Spur serves a range of beef burgers and steaks done to order.
- Steakhouses tend to last longer than the fad restaurants that disappear as quickly as they spring up. One such example is the nostalgia-filled Thunder Gun in Blackheath, Johannesburg. This eatery has been drawing faithful carnivores to its red-leather booths for almost 40 years.
Designer Steaks
Step up the price bracket a notch or two and one finds restaurants that make an art out of preparing and cooking meat. In recent years such establishments have been ageing their own steaks, hanging grain-fed beef in hygienic chilled rooms for a week or more in order to mature, and dry-ageing the popular T-bone steak. Meat has become a customised product in these restaurants, with the cut, weight and thickness as variable as the way it is cooked and the sauce with which it is served.
- At the top of the steak chain are the Cattle Baron and Butcher’s Grill franchises. Found in major centres, the Cattle Baron provides a casual ambience of the old-fashioned steakhouse variety, while the Butcher’s Grill is more modern, with leather lounges for a pre-dinner drink or post-dinner cigar.
- Separate from these is the Butcher Shop and Grill in Nelson Mandela Square, Johannesburg. Notoriously intolerant of vegetarians, this immense restaurant has an enviable array of meaty dishes and a wine list to match.
- While not strictly a steakhouse, The Carnivore in Muldersdrift is a meat-lover’s paradise. Offshoot of the world-famous Carnivore in Kenya, this exotic restaurant in a country setting serves platters of every conceivable meat, from traditional beef and lamb to all types of venison (even warthog and crocodile) and is a popular destination for groups of tourists as well as locals.
- B’s in the Cape coastal village of Hermanus is famous countrywide for its well-hung steaks and welcoming spirit. The walls are covered with the signatures of customers, some of them famous, (and the owner swears that his signature meal accompaniment, a stuffed, caramelised and baked giant onion, has been copied by jealous rivals).
- In Durban, the Havana Grill & Wine Bar provides glorious sea views from the Bluff to Umhlanga Rocks. Part of the Suncoast Casino & Entertainment World on Durban’s Golden Mile, the restaurant serves fresh seafood as well as top quality beef and lamb.
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