Cape Town, South Africa

Luke Dale-Roberts' Test Kitchen in the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock has held the title of Best Restaurant in Africa multiple times and been ranked among the top 50 restaurants in the world — a tasting menu restaurant that combines the finest South African ingredients (Karoo lamb, Cape crayfish, biltong, rooibos, Cape Malay spices) with the full technical repertoire of contemporary fine dining. The Dark Room and Light Room serve successive courses in different atmospheric spaces. The wine list is one of the great Cape wine documents. Booking opens 60 days in advance and fills within hours of opening. This is the most important dining table in Africa.

Consistently rated among the top restaurants in Africa and in the world, La Colombe sits at the Silvermist Wine Estate on the slopes of Constantia above Cape Town, at an elevation that delivers panoramic views across the Cape Peninsula and the Constantiaberg mountains. The tasting menu integrates French technique with Asian influence and South African ingredients in a way that has defined South African fine dining for two decades. The tinned tuna dish — a perfectly executed conceptual joke that has become one of the most famous single dishes in South African culinary history — arrives in an actual tin. The wine pairing draws on the Constantia Valley vineyards visible through the dining room windows.

The rooftop companion to The Test Kitchen in the Old Biscuit Mill, where Luke Dale-Roberts' small-plates sharing format covers the full range of Cape Town's food cultures: Cape Malay spices, Karoo lamb, West Coast seafood, Japanese technique, and the specific umami-forward flavor profile that has made this one of the most copied restaurants in South Africa. The views from the top floor of the mill over the Woodstock roofscape toward Table Mountain are the best restaurant views in Cape Town. The small plates format means a table of four can eat the entire menu, which is the correct approach. No reservations required for lunch.

Every Saturday morning from 9 AM to 2 PM in the Old Biscuit Mill, the Neighbourgoods Market assembles the finest concentration of Cape Town food producers, street food vendors, and specialty coffee roasters in one place. The bobotie wraps, the boerewors rolls with chakalaka, the Cape Malay koeksisters, the free-range biltong, the single-origin pour-overs, the sourdough from the artisan bakeries, and the specific Saturday morning energy of a city that knows how to eat — this is the most complete single Cape Town food experience available without a tasting menu price. Arrive before 10 AM; the best vendors sell out. The surrounding Woodstock neighborhood is the best context for understanding the city's current creative culture.

Occupying the upper floors of the converted grain silo in the V&A Waterfront — the same building that houses the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) below it — the Silo Hotel is the most architecturally extraordinary hotel in Africa. The six floors of 28 rooms sit above the museum in the silo's original grain storage structure, the exterior punctuated by the bubble-shaped window insertions of designer Thomas Heatherwick that have made it one of the most photographed buildings on the continent. The rooftop pool, the bar with its panoramic Table Mountain and harbour views, and the specific experience of sleeping above one of the world's greatest contemporary African art collections make it the single most complete luxury experience available in Cape Town.

The pink-washed colonial grande dame of Cape Town hospitality has been operating since 1899, when it opened to receive passengers from the Union-Castle mail ships and became the social center of the Cape Colony. Winston Churchill stayed here after escaping from a Boer War prison. Agatha Christie wrote part of a novel in the gardens. The 11 acres of manicured gardens in the Gardens neighborhood, the legendary afternoon tea on the terrace with Table Mountain as the backdrop, the Planet Restaurant, and the two pools constitute the most historically resonant hotel experience in South Africa. For a traveler who wants the Cape Town that existed before the V&A Waterfront, this is the address.

A 1912 Edwardian villa on a Bantry Bay clifftop with uninterrupted views across the Atlantic and Table Mountain as the constant backdrop — consistently rated the finest small hotel in Africa and one of the top boutique hotels in the world. The 13 rooms and two villas are decorated with one of the most significant private collections of South African art on the continent. The two swimming pools on terraced gardens dropping toward the sea, the chef's table dinner, and the wine cellar housing one of the great Cape wine collections make it the most complete and most beautiful single hotel experience available in Southern Africa.

Eleven individual lodges built on the rocks directly above the Atlantic at Hout Bay, beneath the Chapmans Peak cliffs and accessible only via the dramatic Chapmans Peak Drive — one of the world's most scenic coastal roads. Each lodge is named for an African island and decorated with artifacts and textiles from that island's culture. The combination of the rock platform above the ocean, the Cape Town sunset over the Atlantic from the dining terrace, and the 30-minute drive through one of the continent's most beautiful coastal landscapes makes Tintswalo the most scenically extraordinary hotel stay in the greater Cape Town area.

The rotating cable car that ascends 1,086 meters to the flat-topped summit of Table Mountain in seven minutes delivers one of the most extraordinary natural panoramas available from any city on earth: the Cape Peninsula stretching 75 kilometers south to Cape Point, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meeting at the horizon, Robben Island visible in Table Bay, and the Winelands spreading inland to the Hottentots Holland Mountains. The summit plateau is a botanical reserve containing more plant species per square kilometer than any equivalent area in the world. Book the first or last car for the best light and the fewest people. The mountain is cloud-covered approximately 170 days per year — check the conditions before going.

The island in Table Bay where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most important historical site in post-apartheid South Africa. The ferry from the V&A Waterfront takes 30 minutes. The tour is led by former political prisoners who guide visitors through Cell Block B, the lime quarry where prisoners worked and went blind, and the courtyard where Mandela secretly cultivated a garden. The experience of standing in Mandela's cell — 4.5 square meters, the dimensions precisely preserved — with a man who was imprisoned alongside him is among the most profound historical encounters available to a traveler anywhere in the world.

The full Cape Peninsula day tour is the single best day trip available in South Africa: the drive south along the Atlantic Seaboard through Clifton and Camps Bay, through Hout Bay and over Chapman's Peak, to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point at the peninsula's southern tip where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans create a visible temperature boundary in the water. The return route passes through Simons Town to Boulders Beach, where a colony of 3,000 African penguins live among the granite boulders year-round. The penguins at Boulders walk among visitors at close range with complete indifference. The entire route is one of the finest coastal drives in the world.

The Zeitz MOCAA is the largest museum of contemporary African art in the world, housed in the lower floors of the converted grain silo at the V&A Waterfront — the same building that supports the Silo Hotel above it. Thomas Heatherwick's conversion carved the cellular atrium from the existing grain tubes, creating an internal architecture of curved concrete cells that is as extraordinary as anything the museum contains. The collection spans nine floors and focuses exclusively on African and African diaspora contemporary art — the most comprehensive survey of the continent's contemporary visual culture available in a single building. Opening: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 AM to 6 PM.