Restaurants in South Africa offer outstanding value compared with Britain or North America. In every city you'll find places where you can eat a good main course for well under US$7/£4, and for US$15/£10 you can splurge on the best. Restaurants with imaginative menus are found in all the larger centers.  Franschhoek, a small town in the Winelands, has established itself as a culinary centre for the country, where you'll find some fine eating places in extremely close proximity. As a rule, restaurants are licensed, but Muslim establishments serving Cape Cuisine don't allow alcohol at all.

An attractive phenomenon in the big cities, especially Cape Town, has been the rise of the continental-style cafés - easy-going, informal places where you can eat just as well as you would in a regular restaurant, but also drink coffee all night without feeling you're expected to order food. A reasonable meal in a café is unlikely to set you back more than US$5/£3. Café service tends to be slick and friendly, with long opening hours. Make sure you don't confuse this new type of café with the traditional South African café found in even the tiniest country town.

The equivalent of a corner store elsewhere, they commonly sell a few magazines, soft drinks, sweets, crisps and an odd collection of tins and dry goods. Their only concession to ready-to-eat food is normally a meat pie heated in a microwave, or a leg of chicken that spent a little too long incubating in the warmer.