Best Restaurants in Durban
Five essential tables, ranked by occasion.
$ Under R100$$ R100–300$$$ R300–600
.JPG)
Durban’s Top 5
Thava Indian Restaurant
Thava has won the American Express Platinum Fine Dining Award for four consecutive years — a recognition that reflects the consistent quality of a kitchen that has positioned itself at the summit of contemporary In...
Palki Restaurant
Palki Restaurant has been serving Durban since 1997 and has been commended for exceptional service and incomparable Indian dishes through nearly three decades of consistent excellence. The restaurant’s distinction ...
Cargo Hold
Cargo Hold is located inside uShaka Marine World — one of the world’s largest aquariums — in a dining room built around a 1.5 million litre shark tank. The theatrical dimension of dining beside live sha...
Mali's Indian Restaurant
Mali’s is loved by chefs and locals alike for its broad Indian menu serving specialities from the North and South with the confidence of a kitchen that has mastered both traditions. The service is fast and professi...
Bombay Blu
Bombay Blu has built a reputation for phenomenal plating style — North Indian curries and rotis prepared with the same care and from the same fresh ingredients as a traditional kitchen, but presented with a contemp...
Indian Summer
Indian Summer has been a well-established part of Durban’s Indian dining scene since 2010, offering authentic North and South Indian and Indo-Chinese dishes with the generous portions, scrumptious flavours, and aff...
Dining in Durban — The Essential Guide
The Indian Ocean City at Table
Durban has the largest Indian diaspora outside the Indian subcontinent — the descendants of the 150,000 indentured workers who arrived from India between 1860 and 1911 to work the sugar cane fields of Natal, and who stayed to create a culinary culture of extraordinary depth and specificity. The curry culture that Durban’s Indian community has developed over 150 years is one of the great culinary traditions of the African continent: the bunny chow (a quarter-loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with curry), the biryani prepared in the Durban manner, and the dhania chutney that accompanies everything are as specific to this city as croissants are to Paris.
The fine dining conversation is led by Thava’s four consecutive American Express Platinum awards and by the extraordinary theatrical setting of Cargo Hold’s shark tank dining. But the genuine argument for Durban as a serious food city is made by the restaurants that the Indian community has built for itself: Palki, Mali’s, and Indian Summer constitute a tradition of genuine culinary depth.
Bunny Chow: Durban’s Gift to World Food Culture
The bunny chow — a quarter loaf of white bread, hollowed out, filled with curry, and served with the bread ‘lid’ on top — was invented in Durban in the 1940s, when Indian restaurant owners needed a way to serve food to Black South Africans who were not allowed to enter restaurants under apartheid legislation. The curry filled the bread; the bread became the container and the accompaniment simultaneously; and the bunny chow became the most delicious expression of culinary ingenuity under oppression that any food culture has produced.