Cape Town, South Africa – travels with food allergies

By lucylox on April 11, 2026

This year, we’ve spread our wings and tried to be more adventurous, mainly prompted by Little S’s gap year and her desire to travel and not let allergies hold her back. I often opt for the safer, easier option, but this year we’re learning that you can be more adventurous in a safe way and travel is a wonderful thing to expend your horizons and open your eyes to the bigger picture.

Below is another guest post from Little S: I feel it’s incredibly helpful to see travels from her perspective, as someone with allergies to milk, eggs, peanuts and sesame. I didn’t always think what she is doing would be possible, but she’s proved me wrong and hopefully it will inspire others too.

At the very bottom of this piece, I’ve added some of my own recommendations as an allergy parent visiting South Africa. Now, over to Little S:

During my gap year travels, I asked my family to join me for a week in Cape Town before I headed off to rural South Africa to start volunteering (more info in a future post..). Having never travelled to Africa, my nerves were high even without considering my allergies! We ended up having the most incredible time, Cape Town is a beautiful city which offered some amazing activities, and all the tourist spots felt safe with many security officers patrolling the streets.

Cape Town viewed from Table Mountain

We flew with Virgin Atlantic, and although it wasn’t a very comfortable 12 hours, allergy-wise the staff were kind when I mentioned my allergy and made an announcement once everyone had boarded. Virgin does not serve any peanuts on their flights either, which is certainly reassuring. As always, I personally would never trust airline food due to unknown suppliers & lack of knowledge on potential cross-contamination. I did not feel like I was missing out, enjoying a much tastier meal than the sad airline food my parents were served!

As with any trip abroad, our suitcases were stuffed full of safe snacks (see previous posts). Essentials included; safe chocolate bars, biscuits, emergency bread, many cereal bars and spreads (tartex/marmite etc).

Boulder Beach

There was little information online about dealing with food allergies in South Africa, I certainly had a few concerns over food labelling and allergy awareness – but how wrong I was! The main supermarkets we shopped in were Woolworths and Spar. All food was clearly labelled with allergens, and we came across many familiar brands in these shops (such as Oatly and Lotus biscuits). In fact, I may go as far as saying that there was a wider range of safe bread, crisps and pastas here than in any other country I’ve visited.

The majority of brands had no may contain warnings (although some did so we could be sure that cross contamination had been considered), even most brands of bread didn’t have a sesame allergy warning which is certainly rare!

Another example of something that really shocked me was the cereal, almost every type of Kellogs cereal only contained gluten – a huge contrast from in Australia when it had a may contain peanut warning!

Another great shop we came across a few times was called Wellness Warehouse ( a bit like Holland & Barrett in the UK). There was an amazingly wide range of chocolatey treats and snacks that were safe for my allergies – some of which I wasn’t a big fan of due to them all being date-based, yet it was still amazing to see this sort of product on offer! I don’t think we’ve ever found safe chocolate in another country, so that was a really nice surprise.

As usual on our family holidays, we chose not to risk eating out very often due to having a lovely Airbnb to stay in and an already jam-packed schedule. We instead opted for nice, refreshing drinks as a little treat. We had some delicious drinks at the V&A waterfront, and staff never made a fuss about my allergies and all seemed to understand the severity.

Unfortunately, once I did have an incident with a pina colada I ordered. On the menu, there were no dairy-containing drinks and I opted for a pina colada (with a written description stating it was made of coconut milk and pineapple juice). Stupidly, I didn’t check with the waiter as I trusted this description and the lack of milky drinks on the menu. I ended up immediately reacting after taste-testing my drink, so luckily I had only had a very small amount but it was scary nevertheless. It was definitely a good reminder to always always check with the waiting staff, no matter how confident you feel in what you’re ordering!

We did not expect to be able to eat food out, but ended up having 2 impromptu meals out during our trip. The first of which was a pizza from a stall called Earthfire Pizza in the Mojo Indoor Market near Sea Point. The staff seemed a little fed up, but did agree to make me a safe pizza. Luckily we were there early and it looked like we were the first order of the day. We could see them cleaning the spatula used to put the pizza in the oven which was reassuring, and I had no issues eating here with my allergies. It was a delicious and unexpected lunch on the go!

The second time we braved food was at a small winery in the Franscchoek wine region called, Atlas Swift. It was a beautiful little winery, we were actually the only people there at the time, so managed to have an in depth discussion with the owner herself about my allergies. They offered a vegan charcuterie board, something I have never eaten before – especially due to my peanut and sesame allergies. I was certainly nervous to try the bread and range of dips on the board, but the owner was very reassuring and removed any items that may contain any of my allergens from the board. Despite my anxiety, I had no issues eating any of the items, and thoroughly enjoyed my first ever charcuterie experience – something that I usually wouldn’t even dream of eating!

In general, Cape Town was amazing allergy wise. I was pleasantly surprised by the clear labelling and understanding of food allergies and would certainly recommend the location to anyone with food allergies who is looking for a more adventurous holiday destination!

Back over to Lucy:

Travelling long haul to a destination we knew little about has pushed us out of our comfort zone limits! Despite researching before the trip, I found little info on how allergies were approached in South Africa. So it was such a welcome surprise to find the shops well stocked with well labeled items. This may be the first country we’ve visited where we could easily buy bread, pasta, crisps and cereal. Dairy-free yoghurts were harder to come across but dairy-free margarine and cheeses were readily available. We even found free-from chocolate which was completely unexpected! There was a really good selection of gluten-free products too.

I would say that service was amazing, but maybe too good for the allergy consumer. There seemed to be a tendency of wanting to please, to give you good customer experience. Which is rather nice, but when you want the real answer to tricky questions you don’t want unnecessary gloss. So I’d say, always make sure you speak to the manager or the chef and don’t just rely on what the waiter says.

Cape Town and the surrounding areas are absolutely stunning and there’s so much to do, it’s an amazing destination for a holiday. In one week we did everything from seeing the penguins on Boulders Beach to visiting Cape Point, climbing Table Mountain, visiting the wine lands and a safari. We wanted to visit Robben Island but it sadly didn’t fit into the time we had. We felt very safe but you do have to be careful. There is a large amount of violent crime and you need to stick to the busy touristy areas, take Ubers and don’t walk around after dark.

One thing as an allergy family that was a huge joy was going on safari. I was lucky enough to go on safari when I was much younger. But, I always thought it was something we wouldn’t be able to do. Mainly due to uncertainty about the catering and being far from medical services. But we did a day safari to Aquila private game reserve and it was incredible. Yes we took our own packed lunch but to experience the animals in the wild was just priceless. The safari includes a breakfast buffet that we didn’t feel comfortable eating. As a rule, i’d never trust a buffet due to cross contamination and lack of allergen labeling. I did enquire about the bread and the waitress did her best to find the info, but it wasn’t clear enough to trust. Aquila gets some bad reviews because people say it isn’t a ‘real safari’ as it’s on a private reserve. While that may be true, it feels just like a safari and you get to see things like rhinos as there is a lesser risk of poaching. Also having been on ‘proper safari’ where you spend most of the day trying to find one of the big five, to actually get to see them all in a morning was just magical.