Experience Indian cuisine and culture at The Oyster Box

This tour is a real showcase for local heritage. Durban has the largest Indian community outside of India and our culture and tastes have had a huge influence on the local cuisine. South Africa is known as a melting pot – in this region we’ve melted more into the pot than anyone else.

When you eat an Indian dish, like masala for example, you are tasting a personal recipe. In Indian culture we have a saying, ‘no-one cooks as well as your mother,’ and that’s because it’s all down to personal preference. You mix and match from the raw ingredients – a pinch more garam masala; less of the fennel and so on. At Victoria Street Spice Market, each guest is given a dabba – a dish for collecting their own spices.

In South Africa Indian cuisine evolved from three key ingredients: chilli, tomatoes and coriander – foods that suited the climate and could be grown, in secret, between the rows of cane on Natal’s sugar plantation. Dishes including the Durban lamb curry and a delicious prawn and chicken combination, evolved here. Across South Africa you’ll also find bunny chow, a meat stew inside a ‘bowl’ of bread, mielies (sweet corn) cooked on the grill and tossed in masala butter, samosas and chilli bites, a type of dumpling made from chickpea flour, spices and finely chopped chilli ground into butter. Guests taste some of these snacks on the tour.

Back at the hotel, chef will talk through each dabba and recommend a dish to enhance those particular flavours. We explain how to store and cook the ingredients and talk them through a recipe. The aim is for participants to be able to cook it at home and be reminded of their time in Durban.