Offbeat Eats

One of the downsides of our frequent travel at Offbeat Eats is that international travel means spending a lot of time in airports, which often aren’t exactly focal points of good cuisine, and usually “expensive” and “mediocre” are the order of the day. But every once in a while I find a refreshing exception to this, and that was definitely the case for our return trip through OR Tambo International Airport on our return to the United States. After checking in to our flight, we had a few hours to kill, and wandered down to the south end of Terminal B, where we found Airport Craft Brewers.

Both on our outbound trip and returning trip, we tried to get reservations at Marble, which is considered one of the best restaurants in South Africa, and were not able to secure at table. On our last evening in South Africa, however, we got lucky and I managed to secure a 7pm reservation, so we found ourselves heading out to the Keyes Art Mile, a part of Johannesburg’s Rosebank neighbor known as a newer restaurant and gallery district.

Soon enough, we found ourselves heading back to the King Shaka International Airport in Durban, and onward to Johannesburg, back at the very pleasant Hyde Park Guest House. After getting settled in and unpacked, and relaxing with a nice glass of Pinotage, we decided it would be good to head out for a nice light supper. Looking at the various options walking distance from the guest house, including quite a cluster of restaurants on Oxford Road in Illovo (side note: our tendency to actually walk to places vs. taking an Uber seemed to shock our hosts a bit; while Johannesburg is not exactly a low-crime area, Hyde Park is rather secure, well-lit, and well-policed), we decided to check out Hogshead, a local beer and burger bar.

Sometimes in our search for truly offbeat locations, Offbeat Eats finds ourselves in some interesting scenarios, like drinking Namibian beer in the back of a bookshop in a suburban shopping mall in Hyde Park, a northern suburb of Johannesburg. How we got here was an interesting story; going with friends to a charity auction for the Upper Valley Humane Society, we ended up winning a bid on a week-long safari at Zulu Nyala in kwaZulu-Natal, scheduled for April 2020. Well, we all know how 2020 turned out. Over the next two years, that trip got delayed a half-dozen times, and then more than a little drama with South Africa (riots in 2021, severe flooding in April 2022), a hotel getting sold and having to rebook, and United Airlines canceling a week’s worth of flights due to jet fuel shortage. These almost led to our May 2022 trip getting canceled. But despite all that drama, we ended up having a smooth 16 hour flight, arriving in the evening in Johannesburg and getting a driver to take us to our Johannesburg-area accommodations at the splendid Hyde Park Guest House and promptly crashing into bed. The next day, after an insightful, but historically sobering, tour of Constitution Hill, we ended up going to a quirky dinner spot that had been recommended by a fellow guest at the Guest House: Olives & Plates.