Admittedly, South African food and wine weren’t on our radar. We live in New York City, where international cuisine reigns, and even here it’s not too common to see a South African restaurant.  As for the wine, most evenings we rarely make it to France on the wine list, if the Brunello in Italy is flowing just right.  But alas, that’s the beauty of travel, which continually opens your eyes to a culture through food.

We traveled with Completely Unique Safaris (CUS), which hosts just a handful of rare excursions every year, including a $425,000 Safari Seven experience and a whopping $2.2 million dollar honeymoon.  So naturally for that coin, we had a private chef who dealt with our borderline crazy dietary restrictions, the least of which was our gluten sensitivity and no-dairy requests.  Our world was rocked with the fresh oysters they flew in that morning, to serve us in the dark of night under a full moon while we sipped champagne.  We can still taste the langoustine with pesto and tomato sorbet topped with caper berries, and the skate wing with risotto cake accessorized with a rainbow of emulsions and foam.  But it was the evening we were surprised with a Kalahari sunset and campfire, where they brought out a degustation of traditional South African dishes, that stood out.  Maybe it was the cold of night, (or our Midwestern upbringing) but the classic Babotie, a comfort food of sweet and savory sensations that was almost like a bread pudding, was a personal favorite.  CUS was kind enough to share their secret recipe with us, so we’re paying it forward to you.

We’re also listing the greatest hits of the wine we drank on our trip, and we now have our wine guy Brian DiMarco from Barterhouse on the case to acquire the coveted bottles for us to add to our cellar.