Durban curry and bunny chow: the honest guide to Durban's Indian food heritage
Durban’s Indian food heritage
Durban has the largest concentration of people of Indian descent outside India itself — approximately 1.2 million people in KwaZulu-Natal, with the majority in and around Durban. This is the result of the colonial-era indenture system: between 1860 and 1911, the British colonial government brought approximately 152,000 indentured workers from India to work on KwaZulu-Natal’s sugar cane plantations. They were followed by “passenger Indians” — merchants, traders, and professionals who came voluntarily.
Gandhi spent 21 years in Natal (1893-1914), practising law and beginning the political activism that would eventually lead to South African independence and Indian independence. His presence is embedded in the city’s history in ways that the Inanda Heritage Museum (at his first ashram, north of the city) documents in detail.
The culinary legacy of this migration is a distinctly South African Indian cuisine — not a reproduction of any regional Indian cooking but a new tradition shaped by locally available ingredients, the mixing of workers from different regions of India, and several generations of adaptation. Durban curry, and its most famous serving format (the bunny chow), is the most identifiable product of this history.
Bunny chow: what it is and where it came from
A bunny chow is a quarter, half, or full loaf of white bread with its centre scooped out and filled with curry. The bread serves as both bowl and accompaniment. The “bunny” refers to the bania (the Gujarati merchant caste whose shops and restaurants served the dish) not to rabbits; “chow” is straightforward.
The origin story most widely accepted places the bunny chow in the 1940s in Durban. Under apartheid, Black and Indian workers were barred from entering restaurants through the front door or from eating inside with white customers. The solution: curry prepared in the kitchen was scooped into a hollowed-out loaf and handed through a hatch or side window for workers to take away. The crust of the hollowed loaf, called “the virgin” (the piece of bread dug out), was placed on top and served alongside for dipping.
Whether this origin story is entirely accurate is debated — some food historians argue the bunny chow predates apartheid — but the working-class, street-food character of the dish is not in doubt. It was fast, cheap, filling, and required no cutlery. It remains exactly that.
What to order
The canonical bunny chow ingredients are:
Mutton curry: the traditional Durban filling and still the benchmark. Slow-cooked with a masala (spice blend) that typically includes cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli, and garam masala. The fat content of mutton gives the curry a richness that chicken cannot match.
Chicken curry: more widely available in the city’s restaurants and lighter on the palate. A good chicken bunny has significant chilli heat — the Durban curry tradition does not reduce heat for general consumption.
Bean curry: the most common vegetarian option. Often made with red kidney beans in a tomato-based masala. Less interesting than the meat versions but satisfying.
Lamb or beef: variations that appear at specific establishments.
Quarter vs half vs full loaf: a quarter bunny is the correct starting size for a visitor who has not eaten this before. It is more food than it appears. A half bunny is a full meal. A full bunny is a personal challenge and exists primarily as a local bragging-rights item.
Eating it: with your hands. The inside of the bread softens with the curry and is eaten first, then the walls. The “virgin” (the cap of bread) is used to scoop. This is not a fork-and-knife experience.
Where to eat in Durban
The Britannia Hotel, Grey Street
The Britannia Hotel on Grey Street in the CBD is Durban’s most institutionally significant bunny chow venue. The building dates from the early twentieth century; the restaurant has been serving curry and bunny chow for decades. The mutton curry bunny here is the reference point against which most Durban bunny chow discussions are measured.
The Grey Street area (now part of the Victoria Street precinct) is Durban’s historic Indian quarter. Walking from the Victoria Street Market to the Juma Masjid (the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere) and through the spice and fabric shops along Grey Street is the context for understanding why this food exists here. It is not a gentrified food district — it is a functioning commercial neighbourhood that has served its community continuously since the nineteenth century.
The Britannia is not a tourist restaurant. The setting is plain, the service is fast, and the customers are a cross-section of the working city. That is the point.
Patel’s Vegetarian Refreshment, Grey Street
Patel’s is the definitive vegetarian curry stop in Durban. Operating from a small frontage near the Victoria Street Market, Patel’s has been serving vegetarian curry since the 1970s. The bean curry bunny is what most vegetarian visitors order here. The setting is minimal; the curry is excellent.
House of Curries
A more comfortable, sit-down Indian restaurant in the Greyville area that attracts a local Durban crowd. The menu is broader than a bunny-chow-only venue — biriyani, roti-based dishes, full curry service — and the setting is more restaurant-standard. For visitors who want to understand Durban Indian cuisine beyond the bunny chow format, House of Curries provides a fuller menu context.
Orient Plaza and Morningside
The Morningside neighbourhood north of the CBD has a concentration of Indian restaurants serving the city’s middle-class Indian community rather than the Grey Street working-food tradition. The cooking is good; the bunny chow is less central. If you want to explore the full Durban Indian menu (biriyani, dosai, sambar, roti) in a more comfortable setting, Morningside is the area.
Durban masala: the spice blend
Durban curry uses a masala (spice blend) that is distinctly different from the masalas of specific Indian regional cuisines. It developed over 150 years of mixing workers from different Indian regions — Tamil workers from the south, Bihari workers from the north, Gujarati merchants — and local ingredient availability.
Key characteristics of Durban masala: a high chilli component (the heat in authentic Durban curry is substantial, not for decoration), a heavy cumin and coriander base, the distinctive South African addition of ground dried chillies (potjiekos-grade heat), and in many preparations a tomato and onion base that gives body without the cream or coconut milk common in Indian diaspora curries in the UK or North America.
There is no single Durban masala recipe. Every family, every restaurant, every cook has a version. But the Durban masala sold commercially at Indian spice shops in the Victoria Street area (Mother Spices, Ahmed’s Masala) and at vendors throughout the Grey Street precinct is a genuine product — not a tourist approximation.
The Victoria Street Market
The Victoria Street Market is Durban’s primary spice and Indian goods market, open daily. It is a good place to buy Durban masala, dried chillies, rooibos tea, and a range of South African and Indian pantry staples. The market also sells tourist goods (carvings, beadwork), but the food hall and spice sections are more interesting.
Go for the ground masalas, the pickles (mango atchar — pickled green mango in oil with chilli — is a specifically South African-Indian condiment), and the fresh curry leaves if you are self-catering.
Durban Indian food beyond curry
Biriyani
Rice cooked with meat (chicken or mutton) and whole spices in layers, slow-steamed until the rice absorbs the meat juices. Durban biriyani is one of the better biryani traditions outside India, with a drier, more spiced style than the Hyderabadi or Kolkata versions. Available at most of the better Indian restaurants in Durban.
Roti and dhal
Indian-style flatbreads with lentil curry as an accompaniment. Common at café-style Indian establishments throughout the city. The Durban version of roti is oil-layered (similar to Malaysian roti canai) rather than the dry, whole-wheat version of North Indian cooking.
Mango atchar
South Africa’s most distinctive condiment. Unripe mango, oil, chilli, and spices in a pungent preserve that accompanies virtually every meal in Durban’s Indian households and restaurants. It appears alongside bunny chow as a side. Buy it at the Victoria Street Market.
Guided food tours in Durban
Durban’s Indian food heritage is most fully experienced with a guide who can provide the Grey Street neighbourhood context, navigate between the Victoria Street Market, the Britannia, and the mosque, and explain the historical background.
Durban: local markets and culture guided walking tour Durban: city sightseeing and walking tourThe markets-and-culture tour combines the Victoria Street Market with a broader Durban heritage walk. The city walking tour provides an overview of the Indian quarter in the context of Durban’s multicultural history.
For a full Durban day that includes the Indian quarter as part of a broader city visit:
Durban: full-day highlights tourPractical notes
- Grey Street area: the Victoria Street precinct is active and safe during business hours. Standard urban precautions apply in the evening.
- Heat: Durban is humid and warm year-round. Coastal humidity means an authentic Durban curry experience is best enjoyed with cold drinks immediately to hand.
- Vegetarian options: Durban’s Indian food scene is excellent for vegetarians — the tradition of pure vegetarian cooking in the Hindu community has produced decades of vegetable curry, lentil, and legume-based dishes.
- The name “Grey Street”: the street was renamed Denis Hurley Street after the anti-apartheid Catholic archbishop of Durban, but older residents and most locals still use Grey Street. The official name is Denis Hurley Street.
The Durban Indian community and apartheid
During apartheid, Durban’s Indian community occupied a legally defined racial category — “Indian” — that placed them between white privilege and Black dispossession in the racial hierarchy. They were removed from certain neighbourhoods (notably the Cato Manor clearances of the 1950s and 1960s), barred from many professions, and subject to the Group Areas Act that confined them to specific residential and commercial zones.
The Victoria Street and Grey Street area was designated as an “Indian” commercial and residential zone under apartheid — one of the unintended consequences of which was to concentrate the community’s business, cultural, and culinary life in a relatively small area that retained its identity even as surrounding neighbourhoods changed. The food culture of the Grey Street district is partly a product of this enforced concentration.
Gandhi’s presence in Durban from 1893 to 1914 is documented at the Inanda Heritage Museum (the Phoenix Settlement he founded) and through the courthouse on Church Street where he practised law and experienced his first professional humiliation when he was asked to remove his turban. His development of satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) began in Natal, not in India — the Durban connection is fundamental rather than incidental to his legacy.
Beyond the bunny chow: other Durban food experiences
Warwick Markets Triangle
The Warwick Markets Triangle — comprising Brook Street Market, Warwick Junction Market, and adjacent informal markets — is one of the busiest trading spaces in Africa by some estimates, with approximately 7,000 traders and 450,000 customers per day. It is not a food tour destination in the conventional sense; it is a working market.
But for visitors who want to see Durban’s informal economy at full intensity, Warwick Junction is extraordinary. Traditional herbal medicine traders (inyangas and izinyanga), food stalls serving local breakfast items, clothing vendors, and fresh produce traders operate in a dense, layered market environment that has been studied by urban economists and photographers for decades.
Visits are most comfortable with a guide from a reputable township tour operator. The market is safe with local knowledge; it is disorienting without it.
North Beach and Ushaka Marine World
Durban’s beachfront — from the Golden Mile to the North Beach area — has a strip of seafood restaurants and informal food vendors that represent a different food culture from the Indian quarter: fried fish, vetkoek (deep-fried dough), and curry-bunny hybrids coexist in a coastal market that serves the domestic beach tourism market rather than international visitors specifically.
uShaka Marine World at the southern end of the beachfront is South Africa’s largest marine theme park, with an aquarium, water park, and a village-style restaurant complex that includes several restaurants serving Cape Malay and Zulu cuisine alongside the standard fast food.
The Point and Florida Road
Florida Road in the Morningside neighbourhood is Durban’s most concentrated fine-dining and bar street — a leafy suburban strip with 30-plus restaurants serving a range of international cuisines alongside South African and Indian options. Butcher’s Block on Florida Road is one of Durban’s better steak restaurants; Havana Grill is reliable for a full-service dinner.
Gandhi’s legacy and the Indian food heritage
The Phoenix Settlement north of Durban (where Gandhi established his first commune in 1904) and the nearby Inanda community have been the site of significant tensions between the Indian and African communities in recent decades — particularly during the July 2021 unrest. The history of inter-community relations in KwaZulu-Natal is complex and cannot be reduced to the tourist-friendly narrative of Gandhi’s peaceful resistance.
For visitors specifically interested in Gandhi’s South African years, a guided heritage tour that covers the Phoenix Settlement, Inanda, and the Ohlange High School (where ANC founder John Dube is buried) provides the full picture. The food heritage is one strand of this story; the political history is another.
FAQ
How spicy is Durban curry?
Very. Authentic Durban curry is not calibrated for international palates. The chilli heat is substantial — a full mutton bunny chow at the Britannia is not a mild experience. If you have low heat tolerance, ask for a “mild” preparation; some establishments will accommodate this. Patel’s Vegetarian bean curry is generally less intense than the meat curries.
What is the correct way to eat a bunny chow?
With your hands. The lid (the “virgin” — the scooped-out bread piece) is placed on top for presentation and used to scoop. Eat from the outside edges of the bread inward as it softens with the curry. Tissue paper is provided; use it.
Is Durban safe for food tourism?
The Grey Street and Victoria Street Market area is active and safe during business hours on weekdays and Saturday mornings. Standard urban caution applies: no valuables visible, no walking in groups of one in the evening. Guided food and culture tours (as linked above) provide the most comfortable introduction and remove the navigation uncertainty.
When is the best time to visit Durban?
Durban’s subtropical climate is warm year-round. The most comfortable visiting period is May to August — the dry season, with daytime temperatures around 22-26°C and low humidity. December to March is hot and humid with significant rainfall. Curry is excellent year-round; the beach experience is better in winter.
