ILDA JACOBS, Washington DC | Thursday
AMERICANS are discovering one of South Africa’s best-kept secrets: dunking rusks in their morning coffee.
Until recently freshly baked rusks could not be bought for love or money anywhere in the United States. But Kalahari Limited, a South African-owned company in Atlanta, has changed that.
The dried biscuit invented by the Voortrekkers as a food without preservatives that could travel well has now made its way across the ocean.
Kalahari Ltd was dreamt up around a kitchen table in Atlanta in 1998, when South African David Abrahams, originally from Johannesburg, was sharing a box of rusks he had received from family members with his Californian friend, Edward Fitch.
The two friends speculated about the market potential of the South African dunking ritual as a convenient, healthy breakfast alternative for Americans.
They contacted Bokomo in Cape Town and are now distributing Kalahari Brand Rusks around the US.
Their refined version of the traditional rusk, with its “delightful flavour and rustic grace”, is explained to American eaters as cereal baked into a bar with wholesome grains and real fruit.
They emphasise the rusk’s potential to be a quick, satisfying meal that can be taken to work or left in a desk drawer.
They are marketing them as a convenience food for health-conscious people who want to avoid over-processed food.
But Kalahari’s biggest hook is to let Americans in on the centuries old South African tradition of dunking.
Kalahari rusks are marketed as the “breakfast you dunk”, and eating them without dunking as similar to having tortilla chips without salsa, or the popular American bagel without cream cheese.
Kalahari’s web page introduces the art of dunking in detailed steps.
Americans are advised to brew their favourite hot beverage, grab a rusk and then submerge it in the liquid for a slow count of three while they ponder their upcoming adventure.
The next steps are to enjoy the “wonderful flavor of the warm rusk/beverage blend” and to repeat this often.
Americans can order Kalahari rusks off the internet at Amazon.com, where they pay almost R6 per rusk.
Or they can buy them directly from Kalahari’s retail partners in many of the major cities in the US, which sell the rusks for about R40 per box of 44.
Abraham and Fitch are so optimistic about the future of their rusks that they are planning to add an apple cinnamon variety to their existing lines of muesli and original Kalahari rusks next January. – African Eye News Service
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