Dining in Joburg

The plane that took me to Africa - only four months old.

I've made a number of business trips to South Africa in the last 18 months. Generally they consist of uninspiring meals in my hotel, interspersed with cab rides to and from the Johannesburg office. Last week I made an effort to break the mould. Our local managing consultant offered to show me some of the city's more popular culinary sights.

Our first night was spent at Saigon. This was a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant in Rivonia has tables centred around a raised, rectangular water feature stocked with tiny fish. The food here was exquisite. I enjoyed the Tom Rang Muoi Tieu - lightly battered stir-fried peppered prawns. This was definitely some of the best Asian cuisine I've sampled outside of Asia. If only London had a few local restaurant with cheap, simple food of this quality.

My last night in town was spent at Moyo. The restaurant can be found in the Market Theatre, a grand old Victorian building that once contained the city's fresh-produce market. Until recently the area was little more than an industrial slum. It's now undergone something of a revival. Market Theatre is one of many venues leading the way. Moyo sits in the heart of the building surrounded by an artist's precinct which includes galleries and live performance theatres.

It offers what can only be described as modern African fusion food, presented in surroundings that fuse the rough, metallic surfaces of a gold mine with the open atrium of an old woolshed. The food was divine and the service sublime. I'll definitely be visiting Moyo again.