Grub: Dining Out

The absolute best thing about going out to eat here is undoubtedly the cost. Back home, Marnie and I would go out to a proper sit down dinner once or twice a month. Here we go out two or three times a week.

At a chain type sit down place Marnie and I would usually spend $20, for a slightly more upscale bistro around $30. At the nicer steakhouses/ restaurants we might splurge on a bottle of wine and spend $50, but that would include starters and dessert as well. A standard tip is 10%.

In the US we have American Bistro fare (Applebees, Chili’s, Max & Ermas, etc) where you can guess what is on the menu without looking (wings, quesadillas, burgers, etc.). The same goes for RSA bistros. The menus can be lengthy and overwhelming, until you realize that the same ingredients are recombined in varying ways.

For example, on most menus you will find; chicken livers, calamari, feta, olives, haloumi, sun dried tomatoes, chorizo, bacon, pepadew peppers, Peri-Peri sauce, and most importantly, avocado. South Africans put avo, as they call it, on everything. These base ingredients are paired with others on salads, pastas, sandwiches and pizzas. Tack on steaks and you have a complete menu.

Many of the restaurants are absolutely enormous, particularly in malls. Due to the relatively cheap cost of labor, at off-peak times there are large numbers of staff standing around doing absolutely nothing. The ethic of “always look busy” seems to have escaped them and the volume of help on hand is no guarantee of speedy service.