It takes approximately one warm day for South Africans to decide winter is over. The group chat that’s been threatening to “make a plan” finally produces an actual time and place, sleeves get shorter, and staying indoors starts to feel like a poor use of good weather.

While spring may be the official season, in South Africa September has always felt more like summer’s soft launch. It changes what we feel like eating, too. After winter’s heavier plates, the appetite shifts toward prawns straight off the grill, calamari with a squeeze of lemon, sushi and, naturally, enough lemon butter sauce to need another serviette. 

Seafood always tastes a little like being on holiday, even when the closest you’re getting to the coast is an Ocean Basket table in Joburg.

The Season Before the Season

September occupies a particularly good bit of the South African calendar because the weather is warming up, but the end-of-year scramble hasn’t arrived yet. 

The beauty of this stretch is that plans don’t need much planning. Restaurants aren’t full of office parties and you can suggest Saturday lunch without consulting six diaries and a spreadsheet. It’s a small window, and an underrated one. 

That easy-going approach to eating out has always been part of Ocean Basket. Seafood can have a reputation for being saved for special occasions, but Ocean Basket has spent years making the opposite case: that fish, prawns, calamari and sushi belong at the everyday table, too. And what better way to soft launch summer than with the food that already tastes like it?

For something with a little more ceremony, Summer Wave at R295 lives up to its name. With a generous serving of queen prawns alongside fish, calamari, mussels, rice and chips, it’s the sort of platter that lands on the table and changes everyone’s afternoon’s plans.