Gin cocktails, super hot curry: where to find Cape Town's best eats

VEGAN: THE HUNGRY HERBIVORE

Orphan Street, CBD

With Mother Gaia's life-insurance policy on the verge of paying out, you may as well at least pretend to care about animals every now and then.

Perfect, then, that the Hungry Herbivore graduated from food truck to full restaurant a few months ago, to cater to the City Bowl's growing population of vegetarians, vegans and pretend-celiacs.

Lunches such as the "Protein Deluxe Bowl" (R79) - jammed with BBQ tofu and teriyaki-ed quinoa - and their namesake tofu-scramble and crispy seitan breakfast (R79) make vegan cuisine friendly, accessible and tasty.

OUTRAGEOUSLY HOT CURRY: SAWADDEE

Rheede Street, Gardens

Half of the difficulty of enjoying a "Jungle Curry" (beef R90, prawn R99, duck R115) from this pleasingly golden-lit Chef Pon's outpost is actually eating it. The other half comes the next morning. You'll wonder if it was worth it; in retrospect you'll say "yes" - never has a curry been so hot, yet so delicious.

It's proof that spicy food can be drug-like, packed with sweet sections of bamboo and chilli-dense sauce that just begs to be spooned on rice and inhaled, digestion-destroying consequences be damned. Breathing can be difficult afterwards; resisting it a second time, even more so.

GIN COCKTAILS: THE GIN BAR

Wale Street, CBD

Winning the contest for most literal establishment name in Cape Town, Wale Street's understated Gin Bar, tucked in a nook behind Honest Chocolate's café, mixes medicine-inspired cocktails to be sipped in the cosy, apothecary-style bar or airy courtyard. While there are gin bars in the city with thicker menus or more bottles on their shelves, the Gin Bar's five house cocktails - including "Head", "Heart" and "Ambition" - are pitch perfect.

Each made with a different local gin, they set the benchmark for the wave of gin-thusiasm set to sweep SA's hippest neighbourhoods. (And, by the way, pair well with Honest's flourless choc cake.)

THEMED BISTRO: HELLO SAILOR

Lower Main Road, Observatory

I feel bad divulging this secret in a national newspaper, but Hello Sailor has been too consistently excellent for too many years to be ignored any longer. You sit on mismatched school chairs, you look at the maritime paraphernalia, you worry about the friendly waiters and happy swing tunes on the radio - but it just feels right.

For breakfast, you eat their "posh" baked beans and poached eggs (R52) or "Spinach Benedict" (R55) with a perfect flat white. Otherwise you eat their moreish burgers (R50+), their outrageous ribs (SQ), their God-proving baked cheesecake with cream, washed down with one of the most thoughtful wine and beer lists around.

EAST AFRICAN: MADAM TAITOU

Long Street, CBD

In a city with lots of good East African restaurants, it's only Madam Taitou - with its building-code-defying internal "treehouse" dining platforms, strict insistence on diners' hand-washing and side-business in curios - that is both suspect and comfortable enough to feel right.

The menu can be disorienting so, on your first visit, try the veggie platter (R75) for an assortment of delicious Ethiopian staples - including mouth-coating shiro wot (chickpea powder stew) and wholesome gomen (collard greens) - piled on fresh spongy injera (flatbread), with a basket of extra injera on the side. Whatever you try, do have the coffee: deep, dark and vinous. (Bring cash -they have no machine.)