I was happy to see that my list of favorite foods from Africa generated some feedback. There's probably nothing so subjective as food, so please keep the comments coming as I round out the list:

Swahili curry, Kenya/Tanzania
The staple of the East African coast -- a coconut milk-based curry with onions and lime that's great with fish and rice or chapati, the thick, Indian-style flatbread. Not a lot to say here; it's as good as it sounds.

Shiro, Ethiopia
If there's a simpler and better-tasting African dish, I don't know it: roasted, ground chickpeas mixed with chopped onion, a bit of oil and a mix of spices. It instantly injects plain rice or injera with incredible flavor, tangy and much easier on the stomach than the ubiquitous butter-based curries. One of the few saving graces of my recent visit to the desolate refugee camps of northeastern Kenya was the Ethiopian-run cafe near the camps that had a steady supply of shiro and kachumbari (a spicy chopped salad not unlike pico de gallo), which, mixed with rice, is a meal I could probably eat for a week straight -- and did.

Bunny chow, Durban, South Africa
A hollowed-out loaf of bread stuffed with ridiculously spicy curry. This was the hand-held lunch carried by a generation of Indian migrant laborers; the name might have come from the Banias, an Indian merchant caste that first started selling it in the southeastern city of Durban. The first time I ate one, in 2005 at a Durban carryout, I could barely get half of the traditional vegetarian version down, it was so spicy. But you adapt. At a food festival in Cape Town last month, one of the city's top chefs turned out his version, tenderly spiced pieces of chicken nestled in a soft, fist-sized bun -- with a fork so that you didn't get curry all over your wine glass. The perfect fast food.

Mbaazi and kaimati, Kenya
It took more than three years -- and several trips to the Kenyan coast -- before I discovered the pleasures of traditional coastal breakfast food. (The well oiled Kenyan tourism industry is only too happy to oblige hung-over Westerners with scrambled eggs, plump sausages and baked beans.) One morning on holiday in Lamu, a Kenyan friend asked the cook at our house to prepare kaimati, a doughnut dipped in syrup, and mbaazi, beans mixed with coconut. You can scoop the beans into a mandazi, a plain, hollow Kenyan doughnut, or eat them alone. A great change of pace for breakfast -- light and flavorful, sweet and savory.

Gemsbok, South Africa
Finally, it's not really fair to include the South African winelands on this list, since the place is a culinary universe unto itself, with more world-class restaurants than it knows what to do with. I could fill a top-10 list or two with only South African meals. But the place stands out for the way its top chefs prepare game meat. Gemsbok is a type of venison and its filet, prepared seemingly as simply as possible, makes for a hearty country-style meal to break up your wine tastings. The big-name chefs like to mix it up into biryani (Indian-style rice dishes) or serve it as a carpaccio. In South Africa, everything, including zebra with a little bit of fresh lemon, can be a carpaccio.