Namibia
Braai smoke over the desert: game steaks, millet porridge and cold Atlantic oysters at the edge of the dunes.
Namibia eats around the fire. The braai — a wood-fired barbecue — is the country's great social ritual, and what goes on the grill is whatever the semi-arid land runs: oryx, kudu and springbok, lean and dark and quietly excellent, eaten with a stiff scoop of pap or millet mahangu porridge and a spoonful of relish.
Street corners smell of kapana, strips of beef seared over open coals and dusted with chilli-peanut spice, handed to you in newspaper to eat on the spot. There's German colonial memory in the brötchen, the Windhoek Lager brewed to purity law, and the racks of biltong and droëwors drying in every shop. Then, surprisingly, the Atlantic: at Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, plump farmed oysters and grilled kingklip, cheap and fresh where the cold Benguela current meets the dunes. Desert country, but you'll eat very well.
- Pap / mahangu (millet or maize porridge)
- Kapana (grilled beef street strips)
- Game meat (oryx
- kudu
- springbok)
- Biltong (dried spiced meat)
- Potjiekos (cast-iron pot stew)
- Swakopmund oysters
- Windhoek Lager
