Good food and wine are an integral part of the Cape lifestyle. In the Cape there are numerous festivals to celebrate the local cuisine and have some fun.

Held each year in October, The Cape Olive Fair represents South Africa's largest gathering of olive producers. Featuring an old-world food market, the fair offers an enormous selection of olive oils, table olives and wine as well as Mediterranean food served in the gracious Cape Town Castle of Good Hope's courtyard. Locally produced olive oils are gaining in popularity and the quality compares with the best in the world. The award for the best olive oil for 2003 was awarded to Morgenhof.

Held annually in July the Bastille Day Festival in Franschhoek is a celebration of French culture, cuisine and fun. The Fair showcases the Franschhoek valley's talented artists and crafters and a host of delicious fresh products. Varieties of food range from calamari and kebabs to olives, locally farmed and smoked trout, pancakes, homemade pies and preserves.

For a festival with a sexy tone, come July, be sure to venture along the Cape Garden Route for all the Knysna Oyster Festival action. The festival is an adventure in leisure and outdoors with a variety of activities ranging from oyster cooking, a marathon and a cycle tour. If its family fun you need head to the Cape West Coast for the Saldanha Festival of the Sea held each year during the month of February to celebrate the bounty of the sea. Here you can feast on freshly caught line fish like snoek and kingklip, enjoy calamari, mussels and crayfish or try bokkoms (dried fish), a local speciality.

The Cape's many food festivals celebrate the region's eclectic mix of cultures. From Mediterranean style fire-baked breads, Asiatic sweet and fragrant curries, "potjie kos" (pot food) cooked the Dutch settler way in black iron pots over tall flames to African indigenous delicacies such as corn kernels blended with sugar beans (samp and beans) - Cape cuisine combined with excellent local wines is a veritable international cocktail of the very finest global flavours.