It was a fine Sunday to head into the venerable Springbok Bar & Grill in Van Nuys to bend an elbow, grab a bite … and watch a whole lot of sports.
The Dodgers were playing, and so were the Angels. The NFL season hadn’t started yet, but the UFL was doing a good job of it. There was lacrosse on one screen, and soccer on another. And I figure with the Cricket World Cup about to get started, the world’s second most popular sport (after soccer) would get some attention — despite the fact that to many Americans, it makes no sense at all.
Springbok Bar & Grill proudly calls itself “The #1 Rugby Bar in Los Angeles.” Though no rugby was on. But still, for every sport, partisans spent the evening screaming themselves hoarse. That’s true whether the sport is basketball, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, football, rugby, or even cricket, which is as South African as any other sport. (The country’s national cricket team is called the Proteas, named for an oversized flower!)
This is our quintessential South African bar and grill, restaurant and sports club here in Southern California. And when the teams that matter to our population of South African émigrés are playing, they flock to the Springbok to make their presence known.
When you show up during one of those matches, it’s easy to feel that you’re a decided outsider, for the partisan atmosphere in the place is thick enough to cut with a butter knife — and everyone seems to know the names of every player. They’re obsessed. Which is just as it should be.
Springbok “was founded by Peter Walker, Robin McLean and Graham Taylor — all South Africans hailing from Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Having lived in America for many years, we noticed the lack of a really good rugby bar and decided that the time had come for us to do something about it. This bar isn’t just a place for South Africans, but rather a place where people from all over the world can get together and share their passion for good sports and good food. So, bring all your British, Kiwi, Aussie and American friends, and come join us for a couple beers.”
And for much more.
This is a bar that exists in multiple worlds. On one level, it’s a sports bar, which means potato skins loaded with chopped bacon, cheddar and sour cream — a dish from the high-cholesterol past that has me reaching for the Lipitor just thinking about it. There are tacos packed with fish and with filet mignon. There are Buffalo chicken wings, which seem to be so American, and yet toss the wings in spicy sauce with a South African flavor, and you have a dish from both here and there.
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The flavor of note is peri-peri sauce, which is made using the African bird’s eye pepper. The name is Swahili for, literally, “pepper pepper.” If you’ve ever been to the Nando’s Chicken chain in London, you’ve eaten peri-peri sauce, for their dishes are all based on it. It’s as addictive as Sriracha, maybe even more so. And it flavors the chicken wings, as South Africans might say, “brilliantly.”
There’s also a house Buffalo sauce, a barbecue sauce, and a lemon-garlic sauce. But peri-peri — that’s the real deal!
And so, for that matter, is an order of sliced boerewors, which is Afrikaans for “farmer sausage” — a sort of rough, well-peppered, chunky sausage that appears on the sampler platter, along with fries, calamari, wings, curried beef samosas and chili bites and “train smash,” a colorfully name condiment made of tomatoes and onions.
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For those who aren’t up for a taste of South Africa, no worries. There are sandwiches (“sarmis”) and burgers, salads and beef steaks. There are chicken tenders and chicken schnitzel.
The fun here — aside from all the sports, and some two dozen beers on draft — is pretending that you’re in Jo’burg, and Table Mountain is just outside. And you can chew on a plate of Pete’s Pili Pili Tiger Prawns, or the Naidoo’s Durban curry of the day, or just down-home chicken peri-peri, which is exactly what it sounds like. Served with fries and a side salad. And beer, always beer. It’s what makes the Springbok run.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
Springbok Bar & Grill
Rating: 2 stars
Address: 16153 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys
Information: 818-988-9786, https://springbokla.com
Cuisine: Bar Food/South African
When: Lunch and dinner, every day
Details: Full bar; no reservations
Atmosphere: Rollicking sports bar, with big screens everywhere, showing every game available, with a huge assortment of brews on tap and in bottles, and a menu of classic bar food, along with “traditional” South African dishes.
Prices: About $20 per person
On the menu: 12 Starters ($7.95-$29.07), 3 Salads ($6.18-$18.67), 11 Sandwiches (“Sarmis”) and Burgers ($14.95-$21.75), 6 Entrees ($19.95-$41.47), 5 Traditional Dishes ($16.59-$41.47), 16 Sides and Sauces ($1.30-$14.51), 4 Desserts ($6.50)
Credit cards: MC, V
What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.)
