Written by Barbara Ludman

There are many areas in Johannesburg with clusters of restaurants offering food for the discerning diner. Here’s a guide to gourmet neighbourhoods.

SOME, described below, are obvious: Melville and Parkhurst have been restaurant meccas for decades, and Greenside has lately attracted the stars among the city's restaurateurs. Parktown North has fulfilled its earlier promise and offers several good places to eat.

A new entry is Melrose Arch, where a selection of restaurants, some of them highly regarded, is set out close to one another in this cobblestoned quarter.

The addition of Kensington may come as a surprise; it is in development, with only one or two top establishments, but may well be on its way. As for Norwood, although the chains seem to have pushed out most of the gourmet spots, one or two remain. And Fordsburg is one of those neighbourhoods where you can’t go wrong.

Melville
Melville is the oldest restaurant haven in Joburg, and probably the most volatile, with restaurants springing up and closing down within a year or two. However lately it has been attracting some interesting talent.

Soulsa, on Seventh Street towards Fifth Avenue, has well-known chef Nicky Gibbs on board. The menu changes often but a recent one featured prawn and chorizo risotto, roasted rump of lamb with Moroccan spice, seared beef fillet with peach, green pepper and brandy sauce and, among starters, bruschetta on home-made focaccia with white anchovies, roasted plum tomatoes and wild rocket.

A new and well-regarded entry on Seventh Street is The Loft, where chef Tom Hughes turns out dishes like slow-roasted pork belly with fondant potatoes and pancetta, or coriander- and lime-marinated tuna loin on sweetcorn fritters with black-eyed beans, guacamole and tomato salsa. Hughes trained in Cape Town, gained experience in London, Italy (where he cooked with Valentina Harris), Switzerland and the US before returning to open The Loft with lifetime buddy Martin Jakovy, who is the front-of-house. The two plan a small empire: The Attic opens in Parkhurst this year.

For several blocks along Seventh Street, from First to Fifth avenues, you'll find a range of eateries, including some of the most successful in the city – like Soi, largely Thai but with a few Vietnamese dishes, and Nuno’s, which is part of a burgeoning empire. Nuno de Gouveia owns the popular Portuguese Restaurant and All-Day Café, which specialises in fish, seafood, pasta and pizza; the Xai-Xai Lounge next door; and the Portuguese Fish Market and Deli just across the road. The popular Melville Grill, owned by former journalist Samson Malugeta, offers aged beefsteaks as well as a separate menu of Ethiopian food. Café MezzaLuna has excellent Italian cuisine.

At the far end of Melville, at Rustenburg Road and Ninth Street, is the Service Station, one of the more surprising success stories for a rough, tough town like Johannesburg. It offers salads and quiches which patrons heap on to their plates and then pay for by weight. It opens early for breakfast but closes in late afternoon – and despite queues of people on Fridays, particularly, and huge crowds on Sunday mornings, the restaurant has neither added tables – widely spaced for privacy – nor begun taking reservations.

Greenside
The traffic circle at the confluence of Greenway and Gleneagles roads in Greenside has been attracting foodies for years.

Yada Yada Yada was called The Circle way back when, and still offers a champagne bar and cigar lounge as well as a deck for sundowners. At lunchtime there’s pasta, pizza and inventive fish dishes; the dinner menu leans more towards meat and game. Among specialities are Thai chicken and prawn curry and tuna done several ways, for example seared and crusted with pepper.

Greenside has some first-rate ethnic eateries. Karma’s food is described as Indian fusion; under its founder it was turning out fabulous curries (and turning away an overflow crowd). It has changed hands, but is still very good. The small but elegantly decorated Bite features Chinese and Japanese food

Doppio Zero not only has excellent food – described as Mediterranean – but also that most sought-after attribute in Greenside, a parking lot.

The odd chain restaurant is making an appearance in the area, but so far the truly good restaurants are holding their own. Greenside will, hopefully, not go the way of Norwood, where only two or three good restaurants have survived the incursion of fast-food chains and other enemies of fine dining.

Parkhurst
Parkhurst is probably the trendiest of restaurant neighbourhoods. Walk along Fourth Avenue and it seems there are sidewalk cafés edge-to-edge, with only antique, hardware and flower shops to add a bit of variety.

Best known is George’s on Fourth, which gives the crowds that flock there delicious designer portions of fusion food and stacked vegetables. Small and super-popular Cilantro styles itself as MediterrAsian. That means dishes like moules et frites, but these mussels are flavoured with Eastern spices; or an Asian prawn and avocado fan. The Parkhurst version of Europa – there are branches elsewhere, including in Sandton, Norwood and Oaklands – is good for deli sandwiches, really good coffee and excellent pasta. And the sushi at Ruby's, next to the shop, is as good as it ever was.

Nice is, well, nice for breakfast - justly popular is a poached egg in a toast basket with bacon, spicy tomato relish and a bit of parmesan - or for a light lunch - sandwiches, pies, quiche, salads. Desserts are remarkably good. The restaurant is split into two; at the corner is its bookshop with tables down the centre, a very civilised way to lunch. Dinner on Thursday and Friday is a five-course set menu, reservation only.

Parktown North
The owners of Northpark Centre in Parktown North have converted a hodge-podge of neighbourhood shops into Restaurant Row.

They've renamed the stretch along Third Street and Seventh Avenue Parktown Quarter, expanded the parking lot, invited in Woolworths, and made space for restaurants that, by and large, are excellent.

The star of the Quarter is Moemas. Part-patisserie, part tiny restaurant, its instant success surprised owners Danielle Postma and Mike Caudle, who expected "a slow, gentle opening". It is arguably the best patisserie in Gauteng, offering brilliant versions of brioche and fruit tartlets (apricot, pear, cherry), flourless chocolate bundt cakes and brownies, lemon meringue, superb Belgian chocolate tartlets, carrot cake ...

Breakfast is the usual range, plus their own granola; lunch is a choice of anything from rare roast beef fillet to lamb curry or a savoury tartlet, and/or a choice of inventive salads. Postma worked in top-end bakeries in London for a decade and, with Caudle, ran a catering company in Johannesburg before opening the shop in May.

Lulu could be billed as a fast-food shop, but it's different from most: plenty of tables, an arrangement of comfortable couches in the corner, and food, although packaged in plastic pots, made on the premises. Its claim is "slow food available quickly".

The menu runs to such items as chicken Caesar salad and club sandwiches; there are interesting soups – like spinach and feta – and a wide range of smoothies, and the coffee is very good. It's the third Lulu this year; a shop opened in Melrose Arch in March and another in the East Rand’s new Greenstone Shopping Centre. On the drawing board is a Lulu in Cape Town and another in Sydney, Australia.

Johannesburgers might remember the Turn ‘n Tender steakhouses, a feature of the gourmet dining landscape in the 1970s. It’s back: Brian Aaron, one of the four brothers who ran the original restaurants, has opened a steakhouse in the Parktown Quarter. The menu runs to marinated beef spareribs, hamburgers and steaks with a range of toppings and marinades – for example, fillet rolled in olive oil and dipped in paprika, coarse salt and black pepper.

Sugo is run by a couple of guys with a hotel school background. It's a small trattoria featuring pizza, pasta and paninis. All the usual versions are there, as well as other, more interesting ones: pasta with coriander and lime, for example, or walnut, rocket and parmesan; and pizzas like the Zola, topped with mozzarella, gorgonzola, pear and sesame seeds.

Across the road, the Local Grill – another steak house – has opened a branch on the corner, featuring spice-rubbed steaks and gourmet hamburgers, served with shoestring chips or potato wedges.

Parktown Quarter has a coffee shop, of course – Vida e Caffe. Nando’s and Yo Sushi, established before the renovation, have survived; and halfway down Third Street is still another steak house, the relatively venerable Wombles.

For fine dining, head to Fourth Street. Here is La Cucina de Ciro, where Ciro Molinaro, formerly of The Ritz, creates Italian fare, freshly cooked and delicious.

Next door is Fino, an elegant tapas bar recently bought by two restaurateurs: Cristina Sato, owner of the highly-rated Yamato; and Zane Beer, former manager at Assagi. In addition to a range of cold and hot tapas, there are such main dishes as arroz con seca, a Spanish version of mushroom risotto, and the popular chicken with orange and mint, an Andalusian speciality.

Melrose Arch
Parking is not a problem in Melrose Arch if one uses the underground parking garage conveniently located just after the entrance into the area from Atholl, with access to the hotel. The High Street is replete with restaurants, some superb, and others, while ordinary, always busy.

Among the superb entries is Orient, part of the restaurant group that has brought us Soi and Wangthai. Its menu is largely Thai but includes a few Vietnamese dishes (for example, crystal salad rolls), Japanese sushi and Cantonese dim sum – including, unusually, vegetarian dim sum. On the fish menu and justly popular is grilled banana fish: linefish marinated in turmeric, coriander, cumin, lemon grass, lime leaves and coconut milk, and grilled in a banana leaf.

March, in the Melrose Arch Hotel, has attracted chef Wikus Prinsloo, who is putting his stamp on the offerings. He’s into fusion – although grilled Mozambican prawns are a feature on the menu – and one can find such dishes as risotto nero with smoked calamari, calves liver with sauce diablo and crème brulee cubed, with three different flavours in the pudding bowl. One can eat in the restaurant itself, in the library, or at an odd but wonderful dining venue – the restaurant’s ankle-deep pool outside.

The Meat Company serves, well, meat – rump, sirloin, T-bone and so on, as well as lamb shank, oxtail and burgers. It even offers a biltong bowl. It’s a winning formula that works not only in South Africa but also in the group's restaurants in Australia and Dubai.

Moyo may be the best-known restaurant in the city, and offers the usual Moyo menu – North and East African specialities, as well as South African dishes like grilled ostrich fillet and springbok shanks. Finally, JB’s Corner is big, loud and very, very popular. It offers a fairly ordinary menu – pizzas, pasta, chicken, steak, salad and so on – and booze. And it is full to bursting much of the time.

Kensington
There are some seriously good restaurants on the east side of Johannesburg, an area often overlooked. Tucked away amid the antique shops on Queen Street in Kensington are two of them, The Bell Pepper and Cumin and Coriander.

The Bell Pepper has been around for almost five years and has such a devoted foodie clientele for its superb cuisine that it was one of the 10 restaurants countrywide named in 2006 in the People's Choice awards on Eat Out magazine's website.

Cumin and Coriander, somewhat further up the road, produces some of the best Indian food in town, created by Pakistani chefs. The service can be slow, but the dishes are worth waiting for.

One hopes this is a restaurant neighbourhood in development. Most of the establishments here are of the snack or café variety, but the new Queen Street Café doubles as a local cheese factory outlet; there is a good home industries shop called Pomander, and if one must eat in a chain restaurant, the Belem Bakery offers everything from caldoverde soup to, well, prego rolls.

Norwood
And while we're in the east, Norwood's Grant Avenue, once a gourmet strip, still has one or two decent places left for people looking for a good meal. At the far end of the Avenue is the new Faff restaurant, replacing the Singing Fig, which anchored the street for a decade. Faff has brought in a system new to Norwood diners: a degustation option, where patrons don't have to choose one of several wonderful-sounding starters or main dishes but can have small portions of three of them. When the starters range from Belon oysters to twice-baked Gruyere cheese soufflé and the mains include polenta crusted salmon and crab cakes as well as flame-grilled sirloin with bearnaise sauce it seems an excellent idea.

At the other end of Grant Avenue, where restaurants cluster, is the excellent Piccolo Prima Donna, a small restaurant which has been serving first-rate Italian food to a justly devoted clientele for years. In between is Shahi Khana, at Grant Avenue and William Road, which has survived for years on excellent Indian fare.

The rest of the eateries are, largely, neighbourhood restaurants featuring the food of various other ethnic groups (Chinese, Thai, Italian, Portuguese, many sushi bars), new ventures with bar lounges, and the takeaway chains that have pretty much destroyed the ambiance of what was a classic high street before it became a restaurant cluster.

Almost every neighbourhood has at least one decent place to eat, but you have to look for it. Often it is tucked away amid greasy takeaways serving industrial food – but a diligent search can bring delicious rewards.