Best Restaurants in Knysna
Five essential tables, ranked by occasion.
$$ R200–500$$$ R500–1000$$$$ Over R1000
Knysna’s Top 5
34 South
34 Degrees South (34 South) is ranked highly with 4.3 stars and over 4,181 reviews, offering seafood and Mediterranean cuisine at the Knysna Quays waterfront. The concept combines a grocery store, bakery, deli, fish mark...
Tapas & Oysters
Tapas & Oysters is a vibrant waterside restaurant on Thesen Island with views over the Knysna Lagoon toward the iconic Knysna Heads, well known for great food, friendly service, and vibey atmosphere. The restaurant speci...
The Dry Dock Food Co.
The Dry Dock Food Co. is a lagoon-side restaurant situated on the water’s edge in Knysna, offering a mouth-watering array of the freshest seafood, tempting salads, sushi, fusion cuisine, and sinful desserts. The re...
Knysna Oyster Company
The Knysna Oyster Company is South Africa’s oldest oyster farm, established in 1949, and remains the most unpretentious place to order Knysna oysters. The farm-to-table concept here is at its most literal: the oyst...
Sirocco
Sirocco is situated on the water’s edge at Knysna’s Thesen Harbour Town with Mediterranean influences and outdoor seating that overlooks the serene Knysna Lagoon for stunning sunset views. The combination of ...
The Chartroom
The Chartroom on Leisure Isle provides fine dining with views of the iconic Knysna Heads — the twin sandstone formations that guard the entrance to the Knysna Lagoon and that have been the town’s defining ima...
Dining in Knysna — The Essential Guide
The Oyster Capital of South Africa at Table
Knysna is one of the most celebrated dining destinations in South Africa — the Garden Route town where the lagoon system, the Indian Ocean, and the indigenous forest converge to create a natural environment of extraordinary richness. The Knysna oyster, farmed in the lagoon since 1949, is the most famous single ingredient in South African coastal cooking: the saline depth, the cold-water mineral character, and the specific terroir of the Knysna lagoon produce a bivalve that wine experts compare to the great oysters of the French Atlantic coast.
The annual Knysna Oyster Festival in July celebrates this heritage with nine days of events that draw food lovers from across South Africa and beyond. The restaurants that have grown up around this tradition — 34 South’s 4,000+ reviews, Tapas & Oysters’ creative preparations, and the Knysna Oyster Company’s 75-year heritage — together constitute a coastal dining landscape that has few equivalents in Africa.