Win a Christmas present from Zomato

It should come as no surprise to you that I love Zomato. I really enjoy working with them and catching up with people like me – who love to eat. My growing waistline might disagree though ;-).

I even see Zomato increasing in popularity among the people I know. In fact, last week, the husband wanted to surprise me with a romantic evening and logged on to Zomato and browsed their romantic collection to find the restaurant we eventually went to.

I love Zomato because it’s a comprehensive listing of restaurants in the cities they support with all the details you will ever need to make your restaurant decisions – menu, opening times and reviews from real people like you and I so you can make an informed decision. Well you know my opinion on Zomato so I asked some people what they think. Here’s what some of what they had to say.

The good

I have friends who are really jealous of my Zomato foodie meet-ups and are fervently trying to rack in their reviews to get to the top in the hopes of being invited. Ooh the foodie events are nice. It’s like Zomato thanking you for spending all that time on their website.

Zomato’s best feature is that you can easily find a restaurant’s menu and browse through it before arriving at the restaurant. Surprisingly, a lot of restaurants don’t have their menus and opening times on their website (if they have a website at all). Unless I’m in a really picky mood, I actually prefer perusing through a menu at the restaurant but there’s been many occasions where I’ve had to organise dinner for many people with dietary requirements. This definitely comes in handy then.

It’s honest reviewing. Zomato verifies reviewers and you can read those reviews knowing that it’s not Internet trolls or people hired by the restaurant to write up a good review. Yep! That’s my favourite feature. I like that I know what foods to try or give a miss without having to experience it all by myself.

I’m an indecisive person so I sometimes play around with the filters to narrow down my choices. You can filter on price, cuisine, whether you want to dine in or take out and you can even filter on wifi availability at the restaurant! The result is a filtered list that you get to pick from that meets all your criteria. I’ve never used this feature but I’m sure in a few years, I might want to know how baby friendly a restaurant is.

Collections are the greatest thing to hit Zomato. Dependent on my mood or reason for eating out, I browse through a collection like Great Breakfasts or High Tea. Again, not a feature I use very often but if I’m planning high tea, it’s nice to be able to easily see what other restaurants provide that service that I don’t know about.

The bad

Because Zomato groups restaurants by city and not province, when I look for a restaurant that kinda borders Joburg and Pretoria, I sometimes have to search both section.  I don’t have that problem because I’m generally in Jobrg but it must sucks for the people bordering both cities. I wonder whether Zomato will allow searches in two cities instead of one…

There are tons of great places to eat just outside the great cities but since Zomato hasn’t mapped out those areas, people might never know about it. Zomato is growing – they just launched the Garden Route last month but yeah the growing pains means you’ve found a great restaurant to share but it’s not listed yet cos it’s outside the cities they support.

Now that you’ve seen what others are saying about Zomato, what are your thoughts? If you haven’t used Zomato yet – you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Use it now before you plan your next night out.

To end off the year, Zomato has graciously given me meal vouchers for 2 to spend at Rodizio to the value of R250 each. Luckily, the post office strike seems to be over so it makes it ideal to run this competition.  Entering is easy – tell me what you think about Zomato and why you use it. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How to survive a night of load shedding

I was far too busy at work today to even realise that we were up for load shedding tonight. So I went about my usual business and came home just after 6 to a dark complex. Instead of being grumpy and hating on Eskom, I decided to get on with my unexpected Friday evening. Here are my tips on how to survive a night of load shedding without having to leave home.

Take advantage of natural light. We’re so used to switching on a light whenever it gets a little dark and sometimes all you need is to open up the blinds and curtains…and then there was light.

Invest in an emergency light. I had the bare essentials when I lived alone. I don’t think I even had candles. The husband has an emergency light – you charge it when you have electricity (I would totally forget to do that) and voila! Light…for when the natural light runs out.

Acquire a gas stove. Or a gas cylinder thingy with a stove-top attachment – that’s the one we have. The husband actually told me there are actually tons of these kinds of gas powered stove things. Some even come with a wok attachment! I suppose a braai would do too. Anyway, get one of those and you don’t have to resort to KFC for supper. We made a gourmet dinner on a little gas stove – coffee crusted steak with mash potatoes (couldn’t quite do a potato gratin without an oven) and a blue cheese dressed salad.

Always charge your laptop. And make sure you have series or movies loaded on it. Entertainment for the evening sorted! Who needs TV anyway.

I just found the flaw in my post – the router is off. How am I supposed to upload this? *Goes back to hating Eskom*

Simply Asia: re-defining Thai cuisine for me

When I first met the husband, his friends loved meeting at their favourite Thai restaurant. At that time, I already knew that I was pretty much the only person in the world who didn’t like Thai food. So I would look through the menu for a tried and tested dish I could stomach: crispy duck with some stir fry veggies and maybe pad thai.

Of course, his friends would be super amazed by the food, each person boasting that their food was tastier than anyone else’s. And so, in true Thai style, everyone would share each other’s food and I’d dread it cos it really didn’t taste that great to me.

Fast forward to a few years later when I suspected that I actually just didn’t like the taste of coconut milk. That explained why I hated those dreaded Thai dishes I tried. I had pretty much written off Thai food from my palate repertoire. That was until Simply Asia opened up close to home in Kyalami. The husband insisted that we go as it used to be his favourite restaurant when he lived in Cape Town. He also maintained that this restaurant would get me to like Thai food.

And how right he was! From the first time we went there, I loved every dish I tried. Since I know that the curries are all coconut milk-based, I steered away from that and tried anything else off the menu. I loved it so much that I pretty much go there at least once every two weeks. But it’s more than just the food that I like.

The staff are really friendly and I really like that they help you decide what to eat. They’ll often point out the specials or tell you what their popular desserts are. And if you pick a meal that is slightly out of the usual Thai dish expectations, they tell you so that you know, e.g. if I dish is prepared very dry and isn’t saucy. I’ve also overheard them advising customers on what heat level to choose which is so important to being able to enjoy your meal instead of burning your taste buds off. While I can handle hot, I find medium a lot more enjoyable.

If you fancy yourself a vegetarian dish, they have quite a few veggie options but you can pick any meal and they will transform it to vegetarian for you by substituting the meat for tofu or soya. It’s so handy when you’re fasting. I also like that they cook with loads of veggies so I feel like I’m eating healthily.

I wouldn’t recommend any specific dishes (since I like them all) but a dessert you should definitely try is the mini chocolate spring rolls. Decadent chocolate encased in light spring rolls served with a huge dollop of vanilla ice-cream. It’s a lot lighter than it sounds…so you’ll definitely have space for it. But don’t just take my word for it, try it…I know you’ll like it. 

When I grow up, I want to be a lady of leisure

If you’ve met me in real life, you’ll know that all I want to be when I grow up is a lady of leisure. Unfortunately, I just don’t have that funding to do that. So I work and although I do my job really well, I hate that I’m forced to play to The Man’s tune for the best part of the day and best years of my life.

I live for the weekends and public holidays when I am free to do whatever I want to do. Last week, coincidentally, Diwali fell on Thursday with the Gujarati New Year on Friday. I managed to get both days off from work extending my weekend. The husband couldn’t. At first, I was quite upset that for our first Diwali as a married couple, the husband had to work. Eventually, I embraced this as an opportunity to try out this whole lady of leisure business.

I’ve jotted down the amazing benefits of being a lady of leisure and if I could do it forever, I definitely would. It looks like it’s not on the cards for me yet. So while I buy a lotto ticket, here are some of the things I learnt spending a few days without the mad rush in the rat race.  

Money talks

I mentioned this already and I am sure that everyone knows this. I was only able to enjoy my time off because of the money I made working. In a world that revolves around me, I would have money streaming in from daddy dearest or….the public’s taxes. Without that, it’s more like a sad woman who can’t afford to do anything but sit at home.

Playing housewife

Now that I had the time, I could do things like make elaborate breakfasts for my husband. Heck, I even invited his work colleagues over for lunch…for a meal that took more than two hours to prepare. I unleashed my inner domestic goddess with all the cooking and baking all because I loved seeing that proud smile on his face.

High maintenance pampering

In my normal world, there is just way too little time in the day to do everything I want to. So where does one find the time for non-essential admin? I managed to have a pedicure and manicure in between everything else I needed to do.

The benefits to my husband

I recently read an article of a stay at home mom proving her worth by talking about the benefits she staying at home has on the family. I totally concur! The husband came home to home-cooked meals and didn’t have to worry about weekend errands. All of a sudden, our evenings became a relaxing time together. And because I got the admin like selling my household goods out of the way during a week day, our weekend was filled with catching up with friends and family – the stuff we really want to do.

Sleep

Sleep – glorious sleep. Imagine waking up when your body tells you to wake up, not cos your boss expects you in at a certain time :-).

Do whatever you want to do

My life is so busy trying to squeeze in everything I want to do. Essentially, this post is about how, during this time, I could do whatever I wanted to do...that includes the nothingness that comes with watching mind-numbing television.

Blogging

This title is for all the things that I’d rather do besides work. I even found the time to write this blog post ;-).

Win tickets to Taste of Joburg with Zomato

If there is one event that I try to go to every year, it is Taste of Joburg. It’s an outdoor food festival at Montecasino that runs from 25 – 28 September 2014. The highlight is that some of Joburg’s top restaurants are featured all in one place. They all offer starter size portions of their menu offerings. I love it because I get to sample a few dishes from restaurants I’ve never been to so I know whether I like them enough to dine there.

Restaurants aside, they have loads of wineries, artisan producers and drink brands exhibiting their wares. There’s something for everyone – whether you like to chill out at the beer tent, browse through artisan food products or watch cooking demonstrations.

I’m quite excited about the restaurant offerings:

- The Blackanese Sushi and Wine Bar

- Beluga

- Prosopa

- Le Sel @ The Cradle

- Spiceburg

- GweFey

- Licorish

- The Green Peppercorn Bistro

- Roots @ Forum Homini

- 2 Thai 4

- Vivace

- That’s Amore

- Sprout 360

- Braeside

- Woodview

Sounds good? Visit the Taste of Joburg website to buy tickets and check out all the exhibitors and sponsors so you know what to expect. 

Also exhibiting at Taste of Joburg is the lovely gang at Zomato. In case you haven’t already realised it yet, Zomato is the coolest and most comprehensive restaurant directory that is taking the world by storm. They’ve already mapped out all the restaurants in South Africa’s big cities on their website where you can go in order to write a review and read reviews before trying out new restaurants. Truly one of the best online start-ups of our time but my business views aside, their mobile app fits in perfectly in our online social world so if you haven’t checked them out yet, do it now.

Zomato has kindly offered two sets of double tickets to give away to my foodie readers. Enter through Rafflecopter below by following the easy steps.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

In-city weekend getaway: Southern Sun Hyde Park

Weddings seem so glamorous when you’re not the one getting married. For the ones getting married, it is stressful. I’m constantly stressed about money and wondering whether everything will run smoothly. I have arguments with my family to keep them in check. My in-laws to-be are no better and I have to walk a fine line between having my wedding my way and being the respectful daughter-in-law. The worst part, though, was realising that my fiancé and I were upsetting each other during the emotional process of combining two separate small apartments into one.

We needed a break from all the wedding stress and the hotel stay I won from Deelish Life ‘n Style couldn’t have come at a better time. We spent the weekend at the luxurious Southern Sun Hyde Park hotel. 

I know what you’re thinking – that the hotel is about 20km away from where I live but the great thing about that is that I get to have a weekend getaway without travel time eating into my weekend and without the costs of flights added to my getaway costs.

Hyde Park is the epitome of upmarket. You feel it from the moment you walk into the hotel reception to the quality of the rooms. Their 4 star grading means enjoying that upmarket-feel without the price tag of a 5 star hotel.

The Southern Sun Hyde Park is situated on the same premises as Hyde Park corner. The sundeck overlooks the lush green surrounding suburbs and is renowned for being the bar with one of the best views in Johannesburg. When I was single, I loved coming to the bar after work on a Friday. It still has that same vibe I used to come for with a wonderful view of the setting sun. On a quieter night, it feels quite comfortable cosy-ing up on a couch with a cocktail.

Our room was spacious. I could have spent all weekend in that room without feeling claustrophobic. The room overlooked the Jan Smuts-William Nicol intersection and while we could hear the hum of the traffic, it was surprisingly a nice background sound to compliment the view. We also had a room right at the corner of the floor so we weren’t bothered by other guests or hotel staff.

I loved the bathroom! If I could, I would copy-paste it into my fiancé’s apartment. I loved the tiling, the walls, the rain showerhead and even the wall mounted toilet. Most importantly, I loved the clean feeling in the bathroom. I hate when I feel like a hotel room hasn’t been properly cleaned.

 The only downside of this hotel is that it doesn’t have a spa. It has one of the best bars in town, an extremely popular restaurant and a gym with a view but no pamper station. But...that’s what Hyde Park Corner is for. Sorbet is in the centre and you can book a massage there. Or for some couple time, you can get a manicure at their nail bar.

The hotel’s restaurant is Bice, a popular Italian restaurant. A tip for hotel guests: book a table on weekends. It gets insanely busy on Friday and Saturday nights and we were unable to get a table. After an hour wait, we were accommodated which was great but by then they had already run out of their specials. That wait was totally worth it, though.

Service was superb. The waitrons were chatty and ever so helpful regardless of how late we kept them up until or how early they had to serve us breakfast. I don’t quite see that level of friendliness in any of the hotels I previously stayed in so I loved the friendly atmosphere. Given that a lot of business travellers frequent this hotel, it’s not surprising that the world thinks that Saffers are a friendly bunch.

Despite us only being seated at 21:30, we had a lovely lady assist us by picking out the perfect bottle of wine to complement both our meal choices and our palettes. I must say that she did an excellent job. In fact, next time I go to Bice, I won’t even bother reading through the wine list. This lady would pick the right one a lot faster.

With Bice being an Italian restaurant, I loved that there were three risotto dishes on the menu. I never had risotto before so I liked the variety. I chose a seafood risotto and I was not disappointed. Despite being pasta, it was rather light. The chefs somehow had baby mussels and baby clams in there which made scooping up a forkful so easy.

The fiancé tried the spaghetti ala vodka which was fresh pasta served with prawns. Again the prawns were cut up into tiny pieces making eating so easy because you only needed a fork.That’s how pasta is supposed to be eaten. Really, who has time to be cutting up prawns into bite sized pieces or de-shelling them when you’re eating spaghetti? Because the pasta was fresh, the meal was light yet filling. The uneven-ness of the spaghetti and the thickness meant the pasta had a much better grasp of the sauce. The portion sizes were just perfect - none of those obese-American-sized portions that most restaurants are in to.

For dessert, I really wanted a soufflé – just to check whether the souffles the fiancé and I make are right. We realised for R15 more, we could get chocolate mouse and brownies so obviously we went with this really sweet chocolate dessert plate. The soufflé was ridiculously light with a delicious chocolate sauce oozing from it. It was the best item on the plate. The brownies are the standard ones which left me wishing there was a scoop of ice-cream to cut the richness. The mouse was sweet and light. The soufflé just caught my eye but they have a page full of other desserts to choose from if sweet and chocolate isn’t your thing.

Breakfasts are my favourite meals at larnie hotels. I love the variety. You can never re-create the variety at home and even breakfast joints don’t lay everything out as nicely. I am not much of a bacon and egg kinda girl so I loved everything else they had on offer like the extensive fruit, yogurt and the variety of syrups and compotes to go with it. The hot breakfast has your usual English breakfast options but with so much more – the lamb sausage was my favourite item. After all that food, I hardly had any space to attack the bread table with all the cold meats and cheese.

My weekend getaway ended with me feeling well-fed, relaxed and de-stressed. If, like me, you feel like you need a little getaway, consider Southern Sun Hyde Park. You will not be disappointed.  

Cleaning out my closet

Everyone keeps asking me about the wedding but it’s not just the wedding day we have to prepare for – it’s also about the days after the wedding. Logistically, we’ve decided to move in to the fiancé’s apartment. We both currently have 2 bedroom apartments and we need to manage to squeeze in everything we want into just one of those apartments.

I’m not too worried about the big appliances. The daunting task is figuring out how all my clothes are going to fit into his place.

This week, a friend asked for pre-loved clothes to donate to a charity. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to actually take stock of the clothes we have and cut down where we need to. And in the process, create cupboard space for myself.

We first started with the fiancé’s wardrobe to create the cupboard space and then moved on to mine. The fiancé is actually quite reasonable with understanding what needs to be kept and I am a lot more emotional. Here are my tips, if you are planning on spring cleaning your wardrobe anytime soon.

Don’t hoard

I am a hoarder. I don’t buy a lot of clothes so when I do buy something, I just add to my existing pile of treasure. My cupboards get untidy again or I find myself without time to dress up in the mornings and then I end up wearing the same things over and over again. Most people I know will update their wardrobes by buying a new collection of clothing. If that’s you, great – you can now get rid of the older stuff in order to make space. It’s a great idea but I wouldn’t do that so I need to find another way to stop my hoarding. Maybe regular spring-cleaning…

Adding to the give-away pile

I decided to try on all of my clothes while cleaning out my closet. Because of that, I knew exactly which ones to add to the give-away pile:

- It’s out-dated, faded or doesn’t look nice on me.

- It’s too small. When I moved to Joburg, I was a size 28. Now at size 32, I really doubt I’m going to get that skinny again to keep those clothes.

- Too much of the same item. The fiancé realised he had tons of blue jerseys so he just added some of them to the give-away pile

Adding to the repair pile

There’s always those items that still offer quite a bit of life to them but need to be repaired. If you’re lazy to do them yourself, take your shoes that need new heel tips, jackets with missing buttons and any garments that need to be hemmed to Fordsburg one day. You’ll find tons of cobblers and tailors who are much cheaper than anyone in the northern suburbs. All you loved items will be renewed!

Donate

Giving to those less fortunate than me is quite dear to my heart and considering that I missed the Twitter Blanket Drive this year, I think 3 massive suitcases filled to the brim more than makes up for it. A lot of people take for granted what they have and don’t realise that there are a lot of people out there who desperately need some clothes. If the opportunity doesn’t come knocking at your door, there are other ways from giving the clothes to specific individuals to donating it to a church, the Salvation Army, the SPCA and even to specific drives that come around every once in a while like the Twitter Blanket Drive.

Assess your clothing needs

When I was done, I realised that I have so little clothes left. I think I gave away more than I actually kept. This is probably cos I refused to buy clothing in my size for a long time. I kept thinking that I would get back to a size 30. At this stage, most people would assess their clothing requirements now and go out and buy what they need. I need to first pay for my wedding and then I’ll look at stocking up.

As emotional as the process was of getting rid of my things, I actually feel quite relieved right now. Logically, it made sense to not hoard so much of things. I’m now giving others a chance to benefit from my clothing. And the most important part is that there’s space in the fiancé’s closet for me…and my clothes will be able to fit in there.

Hopefully this inspires you to spring-clean your cupboard and if you did, let me know if you also shared similar rollercoaster emotions. 

Winter survival kit

Even though, we've been in the midst of winter, we are so lucky to have been experiencing lots of sunny hot days. Tonight is the start of a cold front that I am dreading. And what better time than now to share with you my winter survival kit - how I get through the cold.

As much as I prefer the cold to the scorching sun, winter doesn't seem to like my skin very much. I end up dry, itchy, scaly-looking and with a host of other dehydrated skin problems. Here's how I help my skin fight off winter.
- Nivea in-shower body lotion. I've been raving about this since I tried it. It's like magic. Just apply it in the shower, rinse off and get dressed. You've got beautifully moisturised skin that lasts all day.
- Softlips. Dry, cracked lips are ugly and uncomfortable. I keep my lip balm in my handbag and apply it whenever my lips need attention. I've also got lip balms lying all over the house, my car and the office.
- Dermalogica. I've been using Dermalogica for over two years and I started in winter. It's been the only product that keeps my skin feeling soft, smooth, moistured and free from pimples.
- Dermalogica facials. A professional's touch is needed in winter. They have these amazing treatments that you can only get at the spa, like the oatmeal face mask. I go to the ladies at Sorbet and they are great is assessing exactly what your skin needs to survive winter.

Some of my skin's dehydration is my own doing. Water just doesn't cut it in winter. This weekend, I stocked up on Milo, hot chocolate, tea, instant coffee and the type that goes into the coffee machine. And I got a bunch of snacks to go with them - like chocolate chip cookies, chocolate and murrkoo (one of my favourite Indian snacks).

If you don't have someone to cuddle with at night, my favourite alternative is my electric blanket. I'm actually going to switch on my electric blanket as soon as I get home and spend the rest of the night being all toasty in there.

I love my Woolies fleece PJs. Firstly, they are a size XS so they make me feel really good about my size. They are super warm. Unfortunately, the fiance won't allow me to leave the house in them.

When you're not in the mood to leave your warm cosy house, spending an evening at home works perfectly...if you have enough things to keep you busy. The fiance is well stocked with his James Bond DVDs (which I am forced to watch *sigh*). I have a hard drive filled with series to keep me occupied. And then there's always the DSTV's offerings. They have some pretty captivating new series.

The fiance introduced me to K-Way, a Cape Union Mart's range of clothing which is meant for the outdoors. Aha! That's how you know it's going to keep you warm. I love their new soft shell jacket range. Also, because I don't like wearing too many clothes, I like how light their jackets are. I sometimes wear a tank top for the lightness and then my K-Way jacket on top of it to stay warm.

If you have some better things in your survival kit, let me know. Who knows; it might help me get through this winter.

Win a meal voucher with Zomato

I don’t understand people who feel that food is just fuel for the body. For me, food is something to be shared with friends. Food needs to delight my taste buds. And food should also be enjoyed in a relaxing environment. That’s why I love eating out so much and why I love that the fiancé regularly cooks amazing dishes for us.

Since I moved to Joburg, eating out has been a regular thing for me to do – usually to catch up with friends. I realised that I used to stick to the same old restaurants that I was used to or tried out new restaurants in the shopping centres that I was used to. Let’s face it, finding a new restaurant is a schlep. That’s why I love Zomato. They take out the hard work of finding a restaurant and provides you with tons of options in just a few clicks through their app.

Zomato took the South African food community by storm last year and in no time mapped out almost all the restaurants in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban to create an online directory – a first of its kind. The concept is amazing – you have access to every restaurant in your city on one website. Similar sites exist but this surpasses them all with their current information and exciting vibe.

Their star feature is that users can post detailed reviews of their experiences – the food version of Trip Advisor. It’s also kinda like the online version of word of mouth. You can check out trending restaurants, eateries within a specific suburb and you can see what ordinary people rate them. Zomato has actually become my first point of call when wanting to access to restaurants’ operating hours, contact details and menus instead of googling or going to their website.

I also really like that they keep their content fresh by constantly looking at innovative ways to update their website. Their latest offering is a feature called Collections. You can browse for restaurants for a specific theme, e.g. romantic. Do you know how difficult it’s been for me to think up first date restaurant ideas? Luckily I don’t need to do that anymore but I suspect I’ll be working my way through the Healthy Eating collection now.

The fun part of this is that Zomato’s decided to spoil one of my readers with a meal voucher for two worth R200 to use a Vasili’s in Morningside. Entering is easy! Just remember to use the Rafflecopter widget for your entries to be valid. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#FindingJozi: Red Bus Tour

When I went to London, I had three days to spend and I wanted to see as much of London as I could. Given that I was alone, the most cost effective way to do that was to do the hop-on-hop-off Red Bus Tour. For two days, it took me all over the most famous landmarks in London and I chose where to hop off and explore further on my own.

As with most people, I don’t know my own city well enough. Last week, I changed that by trying the Johannesburg Red Bus Tour. Although I had been to many of the stops on the itinerary, I hadn’t really done it as a tourist.

We took the Red City Tour and Soweto Combo. You can hop on at any of the stops but I suggest parking at Gold Reef City (parking is free) and starting from there. Here are all the stops:

- Gautrain Park Station

- Gandhi Square

- Carlton Centre

- James Hall Transport Museum

- Gold Reef City

- Apartheid Museum

- Mining District Walk

- Newtown

- Origins Centre at Wits

- Braamfontein

- Constitution Hill

- Back to Gautrain Park Station

We started with the Soweto Tour first which I recommend you do as well. The tour is done in a taxi so if you’ve never been in a taxi, you’ll get a taste of it here. The first taxi to Soweto leaves at 10am from Gold Reef City and because it was early in the morning, our group of 6 were the only ones in the taxi. It’s much more fun when you’re exploring with only your friends.

The Soweto Tour is a two hour tour with a guide explaining the history of Joburg, how Soweto came into being and how it has transformed over the years. The two hours is not enough to see everything in detail but it does touch on a little of everything so you can come back and do something specific in a bit more detail. We drove through most of the famous places in Soweto but our specific stops were:

- Soccer City (I’ve never seen Soccer City so quiet before, i.e. without a concert when I usually frequent this venue)

- Diep Kloof (The entrance of Soweto)

- Hector Pieterson Memorial (For a little bit of history not too far from where it all happened)

- Vilakazi Street (We walked past Mandela’s and Desmond Tutu’s houses)

- Kliptown (An amazing tribute to our constitution)

My crew in Soweto

A rather quiet Soccer City

If you look carefully, you can see someone bungee jumping!

Hector Pieterson Memorial

Craft market outside the Hector Pieterson Memorial

Desmond Tutu's house

A quote by Nelson Mandela

The pavement on Vilakazi street

The principles upon which our constitution is built

In no time, our Soweto Tour was over and we were back at Gold Reef City. We jumped on the bus and headed to the hipster hang-out – Braamfontein. Throughout the bus tour, there was running commentary of the interesting history of each area that we passed.

We soon got to Braamfontein and headed straight for lunch at Neighbourgoods Market. Given that we only had a day on the bus, in hindsight, we should have given this a miss. It is way too busy to try to fit in when you have other places to see. I would have rather scheduled this for another Saturday morning. Nevertheless, we checked out some cool stalls and as soon as we got (to the front of the queue to get) lunch, we were on our way to catch the next bus.

Because we spent so much time in Braamfontein and because things close early on the weekend, we weren’t able to do a proper tour of Constitution Hill. But we did get to check out the premises and give ourselves a tour.

The last stop we made was at Carlton Centre – once the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. A uniformed Red Bus Tour guide escorted us from the bus to the Top of Africa and back again. Although, I’ve never really had an issue in this part of town before, it is nice that the security of our tourists is being considered. We bought our tickets and went all the way to the 50^th floor. We did a walk around the entire floor checking out famous Joburg landmarks from a breath-taking bird’s eye view.

Will I do this again? Definitely…with friends that haven’t been before. Next time I will make sure that we are able to stop at the Apartheid Museum. This time I was just happy that I got to do the Soweto Tour.  

If you want to find out more, check out their website. 

Healthy eating at Nu Health Food Cafe

A few months ago, the fiancé decided we should try to eat healthier which I reluctantly had to go along with. I hate healthy eating because I like tasty food and let’s face it, although healthy food is good for you, it doesn’t really taste nice.

This weekend, I was invited to try out the health food sensation that Cape Town’s been enjoying for a while now, Nu Health Food Café in Waterfall Corner. I had a look at the menu and grimaced at the thought of how all those healthy ingredients would taste and I already decided that I’d probably stick with oats as the safe option.

When I got to their little café and spoke to the staff and eyed the other customer’s plates, I decided to be a bit more adventurous and I was not disappointed. This restaurant offers mostly vegan/vegetarian food with a few other protein options. Their aim is to provide an outlet for people to get healthy food that tastes good. I tried the breakfast wrap made with eggs, avo, tomato, rocket and mozzarella. The finance decided on an open smoked salmon omelette served with the creamiest avocado. I can’t believe how delicious the food tasted. I was also surprised at how light the meals were and I didn’t feel stuffed afterwards.

Speaking to the staff who worked at Nu Health Food Café, I was amazed at how passionate they are about their food – from the waiters to the managers. They work hard at sourcing the freshest organic ingredients, with no additives, all from within South Africa. You really can taste the freshness like with the avocados and the honey.

I know all about the honey because we were treated to a little bit of dessert after breakfast – gluten-free and sugar-free banana-coconut bread served with honey, slices of cinnamon-dusted banana and peanut butter. This did not look healthy at all and it tasted so sinfully decadent. I had so much fun cutting my bread up into little squares and deciding on a topping for every bite. This is the one dish that will keep me coming back to this restaurant and it is the dish you need to try!

The restaurant’s ingredients are halaal although their restaurant isn’t halaal-certified but they take their food preparation so seriously that they only use certain knives and chopping boards for certain ingredients to reduce the risk of cross contamination. I love that special attention because it really gives people a great deal of comfort especially if you’re restricted to eating certain foods for religious purposes.

They have a wide range of sugar-free hot drinks and smoothies made with their own low fat plain frozen yogurt. You can also have that frozen yogurt on its own or topped with an array of yummy bits like goji berries and flaked almonds.

We had breakfast at around 10am and it kept us full until 5pm. I love eating lots of little meals but I am definitely a believer in this low GI thing now – especially if it means I can eat a filling breakfast and have dessert for much less calories than my usual greasy breakfast fare.

I later tried the nu-green quinoa salad and given that I don’t like salads in general, it’s no surprise that this salad wasn’t too my taste – way too many raw ingredients for my liking. A lunch-time wrap that I can definitely recommend, though, is the iron kick. Among other ingredients, it’s made with chickpeas and lentils lightly spiced and wrapped in a low GI multigrain wrap.

If you’re keen to find out more, check out their amazing website, www.nufood.co.za – it breaks down every meal to its ingredients list and gives you the nutritional values. Or pop in to their café at Waterfall Corner and try it out for yourself.