Main Ingredient

Main Ingredient

Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines

Eat In Guide Outstanding Outlet Award Winner 2006,2007 & 2008

Shop 5, Nedbank Centre, 15 Kloof Rd, Sea Point 8005

Cape Town, South Africa

Phone : +27 21 439 5169 Fax: 086 604 5169

Finding that Main Ingredient

If you love food, living in South Africa can sometimes be a challenge. We don’t yet have access to all the exciting ingredients and products that we all see in recipe books or on the food programmes. But things are changing. Main Ingredient was set up in 2002 to fulfil that need, to find the best and most unusual ingredients customers were looking for and put them in one shop.

At the end of April 2010, we closed our shop in Sea Point and we can now be found through this site and at markets like the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Salt River, Long Beach Market and Hathersage in Somerset West. If you subscribe to our weekly e-journal MENU, we will give details of the next week's markets. Otherwise,  visit us at home or phone and order. We can always deliver.

We sell salts, spices, preserves, vinegars, sauces, flours, chocolate, ready-to-bake frozen croissants, wines, luxury goods such as pates, duck fat, truffles: fresh to order, in jars, in oil; tins of duck confit, the best vanilla products and other real flavour extracts (we wont sell fake essences or food colourings). In addition to some excellent South African products like Protea Hill Farm’s wonderful herb and fruit vinegars and superb chutneys and relishes, we sell delicacies from Spain, Italy, France, England, the Mediterranean, Middle and Far East, even the Americas.
Our customer base is food and wine lovers from all over South Africa and they come and visit us whenever they are in Cape Town. We can post small items to destinations all over Southern Africa and other countries as well. We have many loyal foreign customers, some of whom are ‘swallows’ who live here for a few months each year and they bring us new ideas as well as their custom. We don’t sell the same things as the supermarkets, but we do sell what they don’t, won’t or can’t sell. We could never compete with their prices, so we try to be different and innovative. We watch cooking and eating trends and try to anticipate them by finding the ingredients first – or getting someone local and talented to produce them.

We are a 'Mom and Pop' business and we pride ourselves on our personal service and our interest in the needs of our customers. We will try and find things for you. We also have a huge network of food sources so we can often advise you where to find things that we dont sell. And Lynne is happy to give advice on how to use and cook ingredients. You might enjoy getting MENU, our weekly e-journal, which gives you information on our new products and how to use them, a recipe each week using those ingredients, a beautiful photograph, food and festival news, restaurant reviews, lists of restaurant specials, comments about what is going on in the food industry (not always complimentary as we do believe in speaking out) and wine news and advice.

 Our table at the Neighbourgoods Market

You can also find us at 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point – a pretty cul-de-sac above High Level Rd. 

To get our publication MENU by email each week, either Phone us on 021 439 5169 or send an email to  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

This week’s edition is on this website. We look forward to meeting you.

Lynne and John Ford