My Great American Biltong Dream

A South African in the US began drying meat in his laundry room – now he can’t keep up with the demand for his biltong!

- Lindsay De Freitas

It Used to drive her mad – seeing the biltong her husband was making hanging in their tiny laundry room. There was so much of the stuff there was hardly any space for her to dry the washing.

But Warren Pala had no choice.

Space in their home in New Jersey, America, was limited but he was desperate for a taste of home so the only way for him to get his biltong fix was to make it himself.

Fifteen years on, the cramped laundry is just an amusing memory – Warren and Nicolle are now based in Texas, and in neighbouring Oklahoma he heads up the world’s biggest biltong factory.

His passion for biltong has made him rich beyond his wildest dreams, but Warren (45) is just pleased he’s played a part in introducing Americans to the uniquely South African treat.

After he and Nicolle (45) moved to the US from Johannesburg in 2001, it wasn’t long before homesickness set in. To cheer himself up he bought himself a bag of beef jerky – the American answer to biltong – but immediately regretted it.

“It’s really bad,” Warren says as he chats to us by video call. “It tastes like a piece of old leather with spices on it. Besides tasting terrible, within 20 minutes of eating it you have heartburn.”

He quickly realised his only option was to make his own biltong. And as he headed up the Springbok Club of New York and New Jersey, a social club for South African expats, he had a ready market for his homemade biltong.

Word of his product spread and he was soon inundated with orders. In fact, there were so many that Warren was able to quit his job as an IT consultant in 2005 and turn biltong-making into a fulltime job.