The Best Biltong in South Africa?

The first time I stopped at The Fat Butcher, my life was packed into a car.

My father and I were driving from Cape Town to Johannesburg. He would take the train back to Cape Town, and I would carry on into the City of Gold to begin the uncertain business of becoming a man. I did not have much of a plan. I had the specific kind of confidence available only to the young and the untested.

The night before, we had slept on our family farm near Three Sisters. We ate breakfast in Colesberg, pointed the car north and settled into N1.

Then the signs began.

THE BEST BILTONG IN SOUTH AFRICA. GEEL VET.

They start working on you kilometres before Ventersburg. Any South African who has done enough road knows the feeling: the words pass through the windscreen and connect directly to the salivary glands.

Ventersburg is a small Free State town on the N1, the kind many travellers know first as a distance marker between larger places. The Fat Butcher reverses that relationship. Suddenly, the town is not something you pass on the way to the story. It is a reason to interrupt the story.

I walked in for the first time more than a decade ago. I have returned whenever I get the chance: visits to my wife’s parents on their farm, September heritage tours for radio, drives down to Cape Town and drives back up again.

As you walk in, rows of biltong hang above you in a magnificent cured-meat curtain. A sign declares MOERSE LEKKER BILTONG, which is true. Behind the counter, friendly, cashiers make jokes that are probably the same jokes they made last time. They ask where you are coming from and where you are going.

Nobody is ever not on the way somewhere when they stop at The Fat Butcher.

Ordering biltong here is not a transaction. It is a consultation. How much fat do you like? Wet or drier? How do you want it spiced? Sliced or left in pieces? Your answer says something about you. More importantly, it determines the next hour of your life.

Good biltong is balance. Salt must season without overpowering. Vinegar should sharpen and preserve without making the meat taste pickled. Just the right amount of coriander, pepper and spice is crucial.

The Fat Butcher’s version is soft, beefy and wet, with a golden seam of fat giving way as you chew. 

The pies are also brilliant and easily among my five favourites in South Africa. To wash everything down, get the homemade gemmer. It comes in a repurposed wine bottle, with bits and sediment drifting inside.

Can I prove that this is the best biltong in South Africa? Of course not. “Best” is an argument South Africans were born ready to have. Somewhere, right now, somebody is pointing towards a tiny butchery in another town and preparing to fight me with coriander-scented conviction.

But more than a decade after my first visit, I still believe the signs. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, make sure your next road trip takes you through Ventersburg. Pull off the N1, visit The Fat Butcher and buy more biltong than you think you need.

It still won’t be enough.

Know before you go 

Address: 3 H. Pienaar Street, Ventersburg, 9450—northbound, opposite the Caltex

Phone: 082 388 0118

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