THE FRIDAY FOOD TRAIL

Friday, 5 December 2025

✍️ Riaan M. Odendaal

Some meals aren’t just meals.
They’re coordinates —
points on a map the heart remembers long after the journey ends,
quiet reminders of the places that shaped you
and the ones that still speak when the room goes silent.

This morning, in a Cape Town kitchen,
I made myself a Texas breakfast.

Not the curated, export-ready version.
The real one —
the Fredericksburg one —
the Hill Country plate I learnt at the Sunset Grill,
where the coffee arrives before you open your mouth
and where the woman pouring it
already knows whether you want your eggs soft, firm,
or somewhere in between.

I always choose the same.
Poached — the Hill Country way.
Not watery, not chalky — just right.
A feel, not a recipe.

Ham steak, of course.
Not bacon.
Because there are some decisions
you don’t revise just because of distance.

Country-fried potatoes in Texas
carry the taste of open land and cold mornings —
and while Cape Town can’t replicate that geography,
I did my own version:
thin slices of potato,
shallow-fried in butter
until the edges crisp and the centre softens
like a memory you don’t want to resolve too quickly.

Zucchini fries were part of my Texas rhythm,
but Cape Town doesn’t reward shallow frying —
so they stayed as stories, not ingredients.

Sourdough, however, is non-negotiable.
Thick. Warm. Honest.
Real butter — the kind that softens on contact
and doesn’t apologise for being what it is.

One slice gets apricot jam —
a South African signature so familiar
it almost counts as inheritance —
and that slice becomes the bed
for the two poached eggs.

The second slice is split in two:
half with Marmite (identity matters),
half covered in thin, cold Black Forest ham.

That plate —
sourdough, apricot jam, poached eggs, ham steak,
butter-fried potatoes, Marmite, Black Forest ham —
said something simple and true:

I don’t belong to one place anymore.
And I don’t have to choose.

Cape Town gave me stillness.
Texas gave me breath.
Between the two,
I learnt how to build a life
that doesn’t collapse when the wind changes direction.

This plate knows that.
It knows I walk in two geographies now.
It knows I love both.
It knows I carry both.

A Texas breakfast
in a Cape Town morning
isn’t nostalgia.
It’s honesty.

It’s the kind of meal
that doesn’t ask you to be one version of yourself.
It lets all the versions sit at the same table
without explanation.

And if they ask…
tell them Riaan sent you —
not to a place,
but back to the kind of meal
that brings you home to yourself.