If I eye a fish cake on a menu I generally take it. Although not usually on consecutive days, which I did do this week – by chance, and by choice.

After spending a few days here in Johannesburg (trying to dodge the unforgiving traffic with a GPS that tells me to take too many rights) it all seemed much better when I made my pilgrimage to The Patisserie in Illovo.

After side-stepping the perfect iced petit fours, I ordered a fish cake. It was definitely the plumpest one I’ve had to date, made up of moist salmon with flecks of smoked haddock, and served smothered with a rocket mayo and a pile of dressed leaves and avo.

That was on Monday. Yesterday I landed up in the design precinct of Kramerville and popped into the branch of The Kitchen at Weylandts, where I enjoyed a pile of fish cakes coated with crispy panko crumbs and fragrantly spiced with some Indian pastes. Together with a tomato sambal and a gooseberry chutney no wonder they are a fixed item on the menu.

I suppose if there were fish cakes on the menu last night at The Radium Beer Hall, the oldest bar in Joburg, I would have ordered them, but with much longing I had the piri piri LM prawns. One of my favourite food authors Tessa Kiros makes reference in one of her books about her memories of these prawns eaten at this restaurant during her youth.

Radium was established in 1926 and is one of those places that’s an absolute institution. It’s very much worth a visit, with its cheerful waiters, fans up on pressed ceilings, heyday photographs and framed local newspaper headlines.

I am relying on Google maps to get me around today, starting for breakfast at 44 Stanley. I want to check out a new place called Three Marys – maybe not for a fish cake that early, but you never know!

Abigail