#Food

The Radium Beer Hall, known as “Joburg’s oldest running bar” – there are older bars, but none of them have remained open continuously for as long as the Radium – is not a new destination for me. I’ve been there several times over the years for beer and/or pizza, but somehow I had never gotten around to blogging about it. And since the Radium is one of the places featured in the Hidden Johannesburg book, and I’ve made a commitment to visit and blog about all of those places, I think it’s finally time to put the Radium on the 2Summers map.

CORRECTION: Since publishing this post yesterday, I have been informed by many angry members of the Gatsby Society Facebook group that Gatsbys are NOT sandwiches and should never, ever, under any circumstances, be referred to as such, upon pain of death. I hereby submit my humble apology for this insult to the Gatsby Gods. (Wikipedia is my excuse – they’ve also got it wrong.) I have carefully scrubbed the word “sandwich” from the title and remainder of the post. Sorry, Gatsby fans!

During my Rosebank jacaranda tour last October, I held a contest: The first participant to spot the lone white jacaranda tree on our route could choose a new place in Joburg for me to visit and blog about.

I’ve been visiting the Rand Club, one of Joburg’s most historic buildings, for years.

I’ve blogged about the club before and gone there for various events, which I always enjoy. But I hadn’t considered joining the Rand Club until last month, while I was getting a pedicure.

Some of the best tacos in Johannesburg are served at a restaurant in Alexandra Township. Who knew?

I certainly didn’t. But luckily I do know Asanda Daza, and Asanda knows everything about food in Alexandra (a.k.a. Alex).

Over the past two weeks I’ve seen dozens of heartbreaking pictures of the recent flooding in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and there’s one image I can’t get out of my mind: a shot by photojournalist Jacques Nelles of a Durban beach piled high with plastic waste. Apparently many of the flash floods in and around Durban – which killed hundreds of people – were caused by storm drains choked with plastic. Single-use plastic is killing us, yet we keep voraciously consuming it because there seems to be no alternative.