Size Counts: Belly Restaurant Group Settles the Great Boerewors Roll Debate

It took ten boerewors rolls and a team of blindfolded food tasters to settle on the recipe for Cape Town CBD's first fully-fledged boerewors restaurant, set to open next month.

But it wasn't all about taste—size counts when it comes to a proper boerie roll. You can't have your wors disappearing into the roll; it needs to stick out at both ends. 

“Sometimes a boerewors is really good, but it's not the correct wors for a boerewors roll, so we have to take that into consideration when eating it on its own versus in a roll,” explains chef Anouchka Horn of East City establishment Belly of the Beast, which is opening BURI at 99 Harrington Street in the first week of August. “The boerewors needs to be long enough to stick out at either end. Even when you make a boerewors roll at home, it’s a strict requirement. Your first bite has to be just that really good boerewors.”

Horn and her business partner Neil Swart are the brains behind The Belly Restaurant Group, the team behind some of Cape Town's most distinctive, intimate dining spots. Now, they want to elevate one of South Africa's best-loved street foods—long associated with braais, sports matches, and hardware store carparks—into a dedicated restaurant experience with a full boerewors roll menu.

The white bun is baked specifically for BURI’s sausage, “created to hold the full experience while still feeling like the comforting roll everyone knows,” the group said in a statement. The boerewors itself is a bespoke recipe developed exclusively for the restaurant, featuring three core boerie roll options as well as monthly specials.

“Everyone has a boerie roll memory,” says Swart. “It is one of those things that is so simple, but when it is done properly, it is brilliant. We wanted to have a bit of fun with that.”

News of Cape Town's bespoke boerewors restaurant comes just days after a data analytics company showed the Western Cape has a bigger ‘braaipensity’ than Gauteng based on a survey of braai-related products in shoppers’ baskets. To date there is no data on who are the biggest boerewors roll eaters.