Eat like in South Africa - Funky Africa in Salzburg in the Afro Cafe

In the Afro Cafe in Salzburg you can eat like in South Africa

Eating like in South Africa, that's what I wanted for a long time. Every now and then I feel a longing for the countries that I have traveled to in my life. Habits build up and friendships are made that last for years. You get to know restaurants and dishes that keep tempting you. This is exactly what happened to me in the townships of South Africa. Actually places that I was shy about entering at first. On the one hand, because I still remembered the reports from our media about the acts of violence from the times of apartheid, and I didn't know what to expect. And on the other hand, because I don't like to look strangers into their cooking pots without an invitation. But that's exactly what you do when you visit a shebeen in South Africa.

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Eat like in South Africa in a shebeen — African wooden figure as it is sold there at street stalls - eating like in South Africa in a shebeen

Eat like in a shebeen

A shebeen is a pub that will be set up in a residential building in the townships. Often the landlady is a mother who has to feed a number of children alone. So she is simply converting her living room and yard into a restaurant where she serves food to her neighbors every day. Homemade, of course. There is usually a lot of love in the furnishings. This is simple, but with ingenuity and craftsmanship it turns even the poorest hut into a pub where you feel good. It doesn't matter if the floor consists only of tamped earth and the wallpaper on the wall consists of thousands of old cigarette packets, which embellish the room in patterns.

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Food like in South Africa — Also a motto: “No Money No Ladies” Eat like in South Africa

Enjoy the African lifestyle

The Afro Cafe in Salzburg tries this attitude to life, which stands for the departure and zest for life of the Africans Austria in the Salzburg country pick up. And he succeeds very well. Petar and I were there for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was certainly not the last time. The colorful interior immediately took me back to my beloved shebeens in Johannesburg, where after a while I was welcomed like a friend when my fear of contact had disappeared and my host and I had got to know each other better.

Delicious: Coconut shrimp soup with coriander - food like in South Africa — Delicious: coconut shrimp soup with coriander - food like in South Africa

African food

And in the Afro Cafe I finally get the exotic dishes from the African kitchens that I came to appreciate over time: the wonderful coconut-prawn soup with coriander, the tender ostrich steak with Yorkshire pudding, or the delicious guinea fowl on couscous I've eaten so much in Soweto. And finally, I can treat myself to one of those excellent African highland coffees made from the aromatic beans of the Ethiopian highlands, the home of coffee. A meal can hardly end better.

Eat like in South Africa in an African decor

The whole thing exists in an environment that brings me back to the simple pubs of Soweto or Windhoek with its colorful decor. Even the floor of the Afro Cafe reminds me of the simple mashed clay soil of the typical shebeens. On the walls are hand-carved figures, which are offered in African countries on street markets. The benches of the restaurant are adorned with cushions in bright red, yellow, orange or pink, which for the duration of my stay give me the feeling of sitting back in one of the pubs of Johannesburg.