Japanese food in South Africa

When I started blogging, I swore I'd never do a food post. I've broken that promise to myself several times, and here I go again, with a post about Japanese food in South Africa.

The whole world, including South Africa, has jumped on the sushi bandwagon. I'm not a sushi expert – I eat very little seafood – but my sushi boffin friend Vox assures me that you can, indeed, get good stuff down south.

Sushi salad in Woolworths

You can even eat at a restaurant that belongs to celebrity chef Nobuyuki Nobu Matsuhisa, who has several chichi eateries in international locations. I looked at the menu of his Cape Town restaurant, and the prices are certainly not exorbitant for South Africa.

This article has a list of the ten best sushi restaurants in Cape Town. One of them, Genki, is actually in Stellenbosch, and I've been there, eaten tempura and talked – in Japanese – to chef Arata Koga. It's a great restaurant. Highly recommended.

Genki in Stellenbosch

Genki chef Arata Koga

Is South African sushi "real" sushi? Yes and no. Some of it is as near as damnit to what you get in Japan; most of it has more avocado, cucumber and wasabi  (which is OK-ish) or canned tuna and mayonnaise (I kid you not) than raw tuna.

Genki is the real McCoy (the real Suzuki?); this menu, which I spotted in a supermarket called SPAR, is not.

You can also buy sushi at Woolworths, or Woolies as it's affectionately known in South Africa. It's modelled on Britain's Marks & Spencer, but it's completely independent. I miss Woolies food more than I miss my family.

Sorry, but … there you have it.

Woolies as well as other supermarkets also sell Japanese products like miso, Kikkoman soy sauce, nori, sushi rice, etc. You'll find it on the "Asian" shelf, together with Chinese, Indian and Thai ingredients. These four cuisines are all very popular in South Africa.

(Lina, Malaysian food, or rather Cape-Malay food, is regarded as local food in the Western Cape. It's just chucked onto the ordinary shelves along with everything else.)

  

I smiled when I saw how often sushi-related ingredients were described as "exotic". I also noticed that South Africa is going through a wasabi craze: wasabi peanuts, wasabi crisps, wasabi chocolate.

Extremely exotic!

I've included photos of a Cape Town restaurant called Fujiyama (which I passed but didn't enter), a Stellenbosch restaurant called Umami (which despite its name serves pizza and koeksisters) and a Thai noodle franchise called Simply Asia.

PS: If you want to compare prices, it's very easy to convert South African rand to Japanese yen: just add a zero. R10 = ¥100.

Fujiyama in Cape Town has a chef that hails from Fukuoka.

Umami in Stellenbosch

"Umami" is a Japanese word for the so-called fifth taste, corresponding to
the flavour of glutamates. This Stellenbosch restaurant doesn't serve
Japanese food, but it has a glorious courtyard, doesn't it?

Simply Asia in central Cape Town (above) and Stellenbosch (below)

You can buy ingredients for Asian cuisines at this speciality store in Durbanville.

Nothing to do with food, but I spotted this well-known Japanese
educational company in Newlands in Cape Town.

A photo for Lina: spices in a Bo-Kaap Cape-Malay shop