Elaborate sea plants course at Fyn in Cape Town.

Boerewors, braai, bunny chow, biltong and Nando’s.

This was the extent of my food knowledge before I landed in South Africa, so I am excited to spend my first day in Cape Town exploring on foot with Eat Like a Local.

Founder and chef turned tour guide Rupesh Kassen is taking us on a route through Cape Town’s oldest neighbourhood and oldest planted garden, using food as a lens to help piece together the stories, culture and history of South Africa.

We start with a welcome drink at Stellski Coffee Bar before heading towards the unmissable coloured houses of Bo-Kaap.

“The green man is a suggestion,” Rupesh jokes while shepherding our media group across the road.

Given the high unemployment rate, homelessness is an issue. As part of its commitment to making a difference, Eat Like a Local donates a meal to someone in need for every booked guest.

Established in the 1760s, Bo-Kaap is the multicultural neighbourhood formerly known as the Malay Quarter and home to Auwal Masjid, South Africa’s oldest mosque. Slaves and political exiles painted their white rental houses in rainbow colours as an expression of freedom when they were allowed to buy them.

We stop for Cape Malay snacks at Faeeza’s Home Kitchen, where Faeeza Abrahams’ famous guests have included Phil Rosenthal and Roger Federer. By day, a carpark becomes a tea garden where guests can try samosas, curries, milk tart and koesister, a doughnut-like treat made of leavened yeast and spices.

With full bellies we move on to Company’s Gardens, established in 1652 by gardeners from the Dutch East India Company to supply fruit and vegetables to ships on the spice route.

I spy plenty of squirrels, including several of the famous albino variety. As we wander, the joyous sound of choirs practising fills the air.

The South African Museum, and its cafe, Coffee at the Vine, are located within the gardens. We stop for a guided tasting of rooibos, the caffeine-free, antioxidant rich herbal tisane that grows in South Arica’s fynbos biome.

Until now I have only known a rusk as a rock-hard biscuit given to teething babies but in South Africa, it’s a dried buttermilk biscuit for dunking in rooibos or coffee, originally baked to survive long journeys. They’re surprisingly delicious, as are the other foods we try; milk tart, olive oil, and fresh biltong, not to be confused with the more leathery jerky.

As the tour continues, we see market stalls, St George’s Cathedral, the Slave Lodge and in St George’s Mall, a piece of the Berlin Wall given to Nelson Mandela in 1996 during his visit to Germany.

Our walk takes a sweet detour at Honest Chocolate, a dairy-free bean-to-bar chocolatier which uses certified organic single-origin cacao from Kilombero Valley in Tanzania.

I sample a rich range of cacao nibs, brownies and chocolate, then buy a few blocks as gifts.

Behind Honest Chocolate sits The Gin Bar, which started life as a password-only speakeasy.

This building was once a mortuary, so the bar plays into the morbid history with “quack medicinal remedies to cure all manner of ills” on the menu.

Our tour ends at The Drinkery, a contemporary speakeasy in Heritage Square said to make the best cocktails in Cape Town. We learn more about South African winemaking, including South Africa’s signature Pinotage, before getting a taste of braai, the South African ritual of barbecue. I also learn “lekker” is a flexible word for delicious, good times and awesome.

Having worked in the Swan Valley for many years, a tour highlight is seeing The Vine, planted around 1771 and believed to be the oldest fruit-bearing grapevine in the southern hemisphere.

Our tour ends, but not our food consumption. It’s time for dinner at Fyn, Cape Town’s best restaurant. Awaiting us is an eight-course experience menu celebrating Japanese cooking and South African produce.

Fyn takes its name from fynbos. It was ranked No.37 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2022 and has stayed in the top 100.

It has a moody interior and open kitchen crowned by a striking ceiling installation inspired by the Japanese abacus and African beadwork.

I can’t spend too much time staring upwards because the main attraction is in front of me: the food. The sea plants course is the most theatrical dish of the night, with petite, flavour-packed serves of kelp and abalone, sea lettuce and octopus, and hijiki, a Japanese seaweed.