Cape Town: Steak, Kudu, Pinotage and a Sweet Finish at Hussar Grill

South Africa on a plate, without unnecessary complications

Cape Town has one inconvenient quality.

You arrive with a plan of everything you want to see, only to realise very quickly that you need to plan everything you want to taste just as carefully.

Wine is a given. The ocean is all around you. But leaving South Africa without having a proper steak would be a missed opportunity.

And when beef, game, Pinotage and good company meet around the same table, there really isn’t much to think about.

Hussar Grill in Mouille Point – a South African steakhouse classic in Cape Town.

Hussar Grill – a steakhouse that was here long before us

Hussar Grill isn’t a new restaurant built around the latest steak trend.

The first Hussar Grill opened in Cape Town’s Rondebosch neighbourhood back in 1964. From a single restaurant grew a South African steakhouse tradition built primarily around quality meat, proper ageing and straightforward grilling.

And that is exactly what I liked about it.

No unnecessary culinary theatre.

Meat. Fire. Sauce. Wine.

From blue to well done. With a good steak, precision is sometimes what matters most.

Why steak in South Africa?

South Africa has a deeply rooted culture of meat and grilling. Braai isn’t a fashionable culinary term here – it is part of the culture.

Add a long tradition of cattle farming, generations of experience cooking over fire and restaurants that have specialised in steak for decades.

The result is a combination that visitors from Europe can appreciate twice over: excellent meat at prices that remain very attractive compared with premium steakhouses in many European cities.

Hollandse Biefstuk – simple, but far from ordinary

One of our steaks was the Hollandse Biefstuk.

Beef fillet with coarsely cracked black pepper, cooked in butter and flambéed with South African brandy.

Simple on paper.

On the plate, exactly the kind of dish that proves you don’t need another ten ingredients.

Hollandse Biefstuk – beef fillet, black pepper, butter and South African brandy.

Kudu – a steak you don’t often find back home

A classic beef steak was almost obligatory.

But when you are in South Africa and local game appears on the menu, it would be a shame to stick only to what you already know.

So next came kudu.

Kudu – dark, lean and distinctive South African game.

Kudu is a large African antelope, and its meat is one of the types of game you may encounter while travelling through southern Africa.

It is dark, very lean and more distinctive in flavour than beef, without being overwhelmingly gamey.

Our kudu steak was fantastic.

And having the opportunity to taste it alongside classic beef made the comparison even more interesting.

The kudu had more distinctive character and a completely different flavour. The Hollandse Biefstuk, on the other hand, was noticeably softer and more tender.

Not better or worse.

Just two completely different reasons to order a steak.

Kudu with a simple sauce and fries. There is no need to overcomplicate things here.

South African meat calls for South African wine

There wasn’t much of a dilemma here.

Pinotage.

The grape variety was created in Stellenbosch in 1925 by crossing Pinot Noir with Cinsaut and gradually became one of the great wine symbols of South Africa.

A good Pinotage offers dark fruit, spice and enough character to stand comfortably alongside grilled beef or game.

We went for Diemersfontein Pinotage.

Diemersfontein Pinotage – local wine with local meat. Sometimes the simplest decision is the right one.

The best ingredient of the evening wasn’t on the menu

You can have a perfect steak.

You can open a good bottle of Pinotage.

But some dinners aren’t remembered only for what was on the plate.

You remember the people sitting around the table.

And in Cape Town, we had a great group of friends from Slovakia to share it with.

Good food needs good wine. And both taste even better with good company.

And then came Malva

An evening in South Africa deserved a South African ending.

Malva pudding.

Despite the word pudding, this isn’t pudding in the way many Central Europeans would understand it.

It is a warm, soft sponge dessert, traditionally made with apricot jam and soaked after baking with a rich buttery cream sauce. It is often served with custard, cream or vanilla ice cream.

Malva pudding – warm, soft and a properly sweet South African ending.

Ours arrived exactly as it should.

Warm, sweet and wonderfully soft, with vanilla ice cream and custard.

After beef steak, kudu and Pinotage?

Completely unreasonable.

Which is exactly why it was right.