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Sj visit 2017    Die Strandloper.

   Sunday July 16

Just north of the park was an open air restaurant called Die Strandloper that did a daily beach braai and the ts had arranged for the five of us to have lunch there. It was a byob establishment where you sat on wooden planks around small tables and over the course of several hours a ten course meal was served. Said meal was cooked there on the beach on a series of fires.

This was a fun experience, even if a little chilly in the South African winter. It has turned out to be quite a fun experience now we are back home as well as Cj has tried to translate the various items of the menu for this post. Clearly there are several idiomatic expressions that have defeated the translation software. Rosecake and cakesisters being but two examples. Probably these display a lack of vocabulary in the english language to describe bits of bread dough, baked in an oven [rosecake] or deep fried in oil [cakesisters].

The menu.

See if you can do a better translation than me AND email me if you can!

Die Strandloper -- the Beach runner

While they technically had a bar (which a sign proclaimed it to be a wysisyg bar, customers were also welcome to bring their own alcohol so we proceeded to polish off the last of the wine from the weekend as we ate our meal.

which a sign proclaimed it to be a wysisyg bar

Lots of interesting cooking pots and braii fires on the go and some clever uses of non-cooking equipment bent to culinary use. Cj always pleased to see innovative bread oven construction.

The tri-pots.

Dutch ovens made from converted gas canisters.

Bread ovens made from oil drums coated with fireclay/concrete.

By now we were ready for something to eat so bring on the first course!

Course 1: fresh baked bread and jam
Course 2: mussels
We were told to 'hang onto your mussel shell, it's your fork'

Courses 1 and 2. fresh baked bread and jam, mussels

We proceeded to polish off the last of the wine from the weekend

Now for Course 3: snoekHarder or Mullet

By now we were ready for a short break before the next course.

and errr a comfort break

Course 4: Fish curry.

While the snoek cooks,

we have another wander round.

Course 5: Snoek, sweet potato and 'rosecake' [roosterkoek].

Course 6: Lamb stew.

Coming up: lynvis gerookte engelvis.

Course 7 and 8: Line fish and smoked angel fish.

Next on the braii, lobster.

Course 9: Lobster

South African lobster quite unlike their New England cousins as they have a pebbled texture, very different from our fairly smooth ones.

That might just be a bit prickly Th.

Course 10: Koeksusters

Moer Koffie roobos koeksusters

Moer koffie or maybe rooibos

Back to Capetown when lunch was over. Drive took us fairly close to the coast so brief stop before we got back to town to admire table mountain from the other side of the bay. All in agreement that after the lunch we'd had dinner was completely unnecessary so spent the evening sitting by the fire and planning our movements for the next few days.