A Snapshot of South African at Peli Peli

Tell people that you are going for dinner at Peli Peli, the new South African restaurant in The Galleria, and they will probably ask, What is South African food like?

The easiest way to define it is as a melting pot with many influences. Like the United States, South Africa has had wave after wave of immigrants. Its culinary tributaries include English, Dutch, Indian, Portuguese and local indigenous flavors. And no, as expressed at Peli Peli, these indigenous flavors do not include wild game. There is no hippo or warthog or giraffe on the menu.

You’ll find instead lamb chops, steak, shrimp, lamb osso buco, sea bass, mussels, calamari and fat grilled links of the crumbly farmer’s sausage called boerewors.

Preparations offer a few twists, however. For example, bobotie (photo above) is a traditional South African dish, much like shepherd’s pie. The bobotie at Peli Peli contains a lightly curried filling of ground meat along with carrot bredie, which is a version of rough-mashed potatoes, carrots and leeks. It’s sealed into its small casserole dish with a light pastry crust and served topped with mango chutney. It will make a hearty supper when the weather cools down, and I already yearn for that chilly rainy day in order to eat it again.

Espetada is a kebab-like arrangement of spice-rubbed beef that arrives on its skewer swinging from a hook (photo at left). Offered as an appetizer, biltong is something like American beef jerky, though South Africans typically recoil from that comparison. “Pap and gravy” brings a scoop of stiff starchy porridge (it tastes like polenta) served with a tangy vegetable sauce. Pappadews – pickled sweet-hot peppers the size of your thumb’s first joint – are filled with cream cheese and chives. Over-sized South African-style samosas are stuffed with curried chicken. And kingklip (a South African eel-like fish) is served simply pan-seared.

One of the most remarkable features of the restaurant, which took over the location that was Gigi’s Asian Bistro, is the far-out dining room with a domed ceiling that is meant to emulate the view from beneath a canopy of trees in the desert. It’s backlit through a pattern of leaves and branches, and a programmed LED system mimics watching the sunset. Over-sized artwork is a curious mix of African, Jewish and Christian images that I will leave to you to interpret.

The restaurant name? It comes from the Swahili word (“piri piri”) for the bird’s eye chile that is commonly used in South Africa to flavor sauces and marinades. Piri piri sauce is made from crushed chilies, citrus peel, red bell pepper and other flavors. Think: Cholula sauce.

The new Galleria restaurant is the second of two local iterations of Peli Peli. The original Peli Peli was launched in far-northwest Houston at Vintage Park in 2009. And I recall yet another South African restaurant from chef/owner Paul Friedman out on Jones Road in the mid-1980s. His partners in the new location are Thomas Nguyen and Michael Tran.

Peli Peli in The Galleria is open every day for lunch (brunch on the weekend) and dinner. It also has a broad menu of South African wines – our server, in fact, declared it the largest collection in the United States.

PELI PELI, 5085 Westheimer (in The Galleria next to Del Frisco’s), 281-257-9500, pelipeli.com