I've driven some truly miserable stretches of road just because someone told me there was good food at the end. Worth it every time. So I started reading about South Africa's farm stall culture, and now I'm mentally planning a trip I have no business taking anytime soon.

Farm stalls along South Africa's major driving routes sell fresh produce, famous pies, baked goods, and whatever the region grows best. They sit on scenic countryside roads in the Western Cape, the Garden Route, the Midlands, and beyond. Some are tiny roadside tables. Others have grown into full-blown destinations with delis, bakeries, and seating for a hundred people who all showed up for the same loaf of bread. Getaway put together a guide to the best ones, and it reads like a love letter to slow travel done right.

But the thing about farm stalls is they force you to stop. Not because your legs are cramped or your tank is low. Because there's a hand-painted sign and a cloud of bread smell drifting across the road and you physically cannot keep driving past it. That's the kind of detour I live for.

The food is the draw. We're talking farm butter, local cheeses, figs, olives, biltong, pies that people drive two hours specifically to buy. The produce changes with what's in season, so you might show up in March and find piles of peaches, then come back in October and it's all citrus and root vegetables. Nothing is sitting under a heat lamp. Nothing was shipped from three provinces away.

This is what makes any great road trip work, really. You're not racing to a destination. You're letting the road feed you, sometimes literally. The stop becomes the whole point. I've written before about how we've forgotten that the journey itself is the destination, and farm stalls are what that philosophy tastes like when you actually practice it.

South Africa's driving routes are already on my list for the sheer variety of landscapes you pass through, from coastal cliffs to wine country to mountain passes. Add a network of farm stalls where you can eat your way through all of it, and I'm not sure what else you need.

If you're planning a trip down that way, build your route around the stalls, not the cities. Your GPS might say it adds forty minutes. Take the long way.