Cape Town, South Africa – Oxtail. Done just the way you know it should be – virtually sliding off the bones, in a rich, brownish sauce and with butter beans and carrots, of course.

You can get this almost any time of year, any time of day, anywhere in Jamaica. Only this time, you are thousands of miles across the ocean at Moyo restaurant in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

But the sauce is more complex than usual and the taste lingers pleasantly. After temporarily getting over the oxtail before returning to the buffet line to be awed all over again, you try to soak up the ambience.

Moyo is located on the Spier Wine Estate in the heart of the Cape Winelands and is simply a delightful dining experience. Actually, it’s more than the food, which, given the ‘wok’ there, is quite a bit.

It starts with the tents pitched on gravel, all under one mother tent and the ‘just right’ lighting provided by the candles on each table. Then there are the heating lamps at strategic points in the outdoor dining room. Even if the lamps didn’t work, you might have forgotten about the cold when you saw the buffet line.

Yes, South Africa has winter. So to keep the Moyo experience special all year round, operators put up heating lamps in the winter and place blankets on all the chairs.

When you’re all warmed up, and ready to eat, servers perform a traditional African hand washing ritual, where they pour rose water on the hands.

And manager Yvonne Qabaka, who more than hints that the oxtail’s magnet has something to do with a certain spirit, warns you against leaving too early. In other words, she is saying make sure you don’t eat too little.

“The food is out of this world, and the good thing is you can eat all night,” our waitress chimes in.

The menu items are mostly dishes from all across Africa, from meatless samp and beans to the Ostrich fillet with an Ethiopian spice blend.

So if you’re ever in South Africa, which you should seriously consider if you want to eat “out of this world” food and sight storybook mountains, stop at the Moyo in Stellenbosch for some of that old world charm without the politics and colonialism.

And Yvonne, who laughs like there are no problems in the world, will hook you up with as much of that oxtail and everything else, as long as your stomach can hold it.