By Barbara Ludman

It's not easy being a South African restaurant guide editor, given how brief the lives of many of the restaurants are, especially in the cities.

But three main guides are soldiering on, with two having hit on the most sensible way of dealing with the fluctuating restaurant scene: a web site version, with continual updates. And the online (and offline) feast doesn't end there - see further below, as well as in the box on the right.

Eat Out styles itself as "the restaurant guide of SA". Edited by food writer Lannice Snyman, author of many books on South African cuisine, the magazine – on sale in bookshops throughout the year - lists hundreds of restaurants across the country, in big cities and tiny dorps, with brief descriptions of each, and contact details. The Eat Out web site goes further, with customer reviews as well.

Snyman hasn't a bad word to say about any restaurant, but then she's not doing reviews in this useful guide; she's offering the reader what used to be called "write-ups" – cheerful, colourful – and, in this case, brief - descriptions. Looking for an expensive Italian restaurant in Sandton? A Thai eatery in Melville? An affordable steakhouse in Bloemfontein? Both the book and the site make this kind of information easy to find.

The 2002 edition won two major awards: the Sappi Pica Award as the best annual consumer directory and the Ad Mag Award as best lifestyle publication.

The 2003 edition is due out in December, when presumably the web site will also be updated.

This used to be The Guide To Get. Opinionated, often quirky, always interesting, its judgements could be trusted. Last year's guide was in the grand tradition, edited by funky restaurateur (Deluxe, in Parktown North) and food writer Andrea Burgener – fun to read, pretty much safe to follow. This year, Style seems to have thrown in the towel. The 2003 guide is a small, almost pocket-sized magazine with brief descriptions of a few hundred restaurants – nicely written but entirely non-judgemental.

The Style Magazine web site no longer offers free access to the restaurant guide. If you want it, you'll have to pay: R199.95 for a CD-Rom that includes desktop and PDA versions, or R120 for a PDA version you can download into your Palm pilot (or any other version) – useful if you find yourself in the middle of nowhere and want to know where you can go to keep hunger at bay.

This is probably the best of the guides if you're looking only for the best restaurants, not just somewhere you can find a pizza without having to drive too far. There are more than 100 restaurants listed – but nowhere near the hundreds listed in the other guides – and all are the best in their category.

The 2003 edition of this excellent guide should be in the bookshops. It is also available through online retailer Mags at Home.

In addition, Wine Magazine regularly puts up the restaurant reviews featured in the magazine - and allows you to search its reviews database by category or area.

News in the restaurant world is covered by several magazines – Style, Femina, House and Leisure among them – but the best by a long shot is Food and Home Entertaining. Features focus on new restaurants likely to be successful – or at least to stay in business until the next edition – chefs, and food trends in South Africa and abroad. There is no web site yet, unfortunately. A firm called A&C Maps publishes well-designed special interest maps – arts and crafts routes, Africana, pink, weekends away, among them – and restaurant maps for Cape Town and Johannesburg. They can be reached at acmaps@iafrica.com, and the maps, which seem to cover the territory well, can be picked up free of charge at participating restaurants.