Mbali Mbatha

A great meal doesn’t have to come with a hefty bill, and Johannesburg’s restaurant specials prove just that. Johannesburg’s restaurants are serving up weekly specials that make dining out more affordable, from two-for-one pizzas, half price pasta to cocktail happy hours.  So, whether you’re planning a quick lunch, after-work drinks or a date night, here’s where to find some of Johannesburg’s best food and drink deals. If you feel we’ve missed anything, please head over to our social pages and let us know - Facebook and Instagram. Let’s share the good deals with everyone. NB: Please note that these specials can change from time to time, and we have no control over if/when they do. We will do our best to keep the list as up to date as possible. Nhlalala Mthembi is a Johannesburg-based freelance journalist. He writes about culture, entertainment, and lifestyle, with a particular interest in storytelling that highlights South African experiences. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines and check out our latest travel guides written by local experts.

Disney+ launched its new psychological drama The Shards with a screening of the first episode at Hotel Sky in Sandton on Wednesday - and the series deserved a better audience than it got. Adapted from Bret Easton Ellis's novel, the show follows a fictionalised teenage version of the author (played by Igby Rigney) navigating 1980s LA, opening with Bret recalling a memory from watching the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. It's a sharp, layered piece of television. The guests, less so. When beautiful people are draped in stunning garments and behave like reasonable adults while sipping on alcoholic beverages and nibbling on sushi, it sets an expectation of a certain class and calibre. The overall experience would have been top-tier had the guests maintained their own standard. Put your phones away, adhere and hush! Very few guests adhered to the '80s dress theme; the production made up for it with its colour schemes, fashion, and set design. But the disappointing aesthetic among guests was a more forgivable sin than ushers shining lights into the auditorium to get people to put their phones away. The declining attention span on display is a real concern - this was a single episode. How would this crowd cope with a two-hour film? The disruptively loud chitchat was the kind that would make African parents turn off the screen and yell, "Would you like to take over the performance and have us focus on you instead?" This, of course, was no fault of the production or ho