All about Adrienne’s, Belgravia

Standard Style
The now very compact menu has been shortened even more and made more manageable at Adrienne’s, the friendly little family restaurant at the Belgravia

The now very compact menu has been shortened even more and made more manageable at Adrienne’s, the friendly little family restaurant at the Belgravia Shopping Centre, in Harare, but most dishes popular over the past two decades are still available and, if memory serves, at slightly more affordable prices than on my last visit.

Eating out with Dusty Miller

Adrienne’s is the cosy, airy eatery which looks as if it operates in a large greenhouse or conservatory at the end of the Belgravia shops, near Reps Theatre.

If KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) had actually opened opposite at 2nd Street Garage before Christmas, as we were led to believe would be the case, I’d have probably got nowhere near my destination due to chaotically parked cars.

But we were spared yet another deep-fried chicken-and-chippery and, according to strong rumours KFC, despite investing mega-thousands upfront, will almost certainly now give Zimbabwe a miss on their world-wide expansion drive. So the totally inadequate and badly potholed Belgravia SC car-park will not have to cope with that particular challenge in the foreseeable future.

Adrienne’s is a family focused economy-to-middle-of-the-road re-staurant, renowned for its wonderfully tasty, nourishing soups. I prefer the minestrone, but on Tuesday, soup-of-the-day was a non-Italian style thick freshly made piping hot vegetable soup, just full of flavour, texture and goodness which, had I eaten it with the three slices of hot toast and butter supplied, would have constituted a meal on its own for many deserving cases in this under-nourished world, at just US$3 a steaming bowlful.

Other starters are the superb sautéed mushrooms with herbs (a very generous serving) at US$5 I can thoroughly recommend for a nice change; creamy chicken livers or chicken giblets a la mode both US$4 or a duet of beef samoosas and spring rolls at US$5.

The restaurant always serves delightful fresh salads, popular with the lovely ladies who lunch languidly. Crisp, well-dressed (well, better than me!) Greek or chicken salads are US$5 each for a so-called “small” serving and US$6 for large; French salads are US$2 and US$3 respectively.

Grazing gustily

For guys who graze gustily (like me, occasionally), steaks are US$14 and US$15 and pork chops US$13, with a choice of starch, seasonal vegetables and a sauce. I really fancied the thought of a luscious prime beef fillet steak at US$14, but these were not available, so settled for a “beefeater” T-bone steak at a buck more.

It was actually a proper, Kosher, T-bone, with meat on both sides of the bone, not a trimmed porterhouse steak like so many places serve, with the fillet side pared off, often for steak rolls. Uncooked weight was, I suppose, about 400g and it probably lost about 50g in flame-char grilling it to juicy medium-rare perfection.

With it I ordered a free mushroom sauce and the starch asked for was a medium-sized jacket baked potato; vegetables were steamed baby carrots and runner beans. Chips, mashed or rice are also available.

The nyama was surrounded by a thin strip of good quality fat, professionally crisped up to make every morsel edible, the meat itself just ever so slightly bloody and accompanying vegetables cooked al dente; the spud floury and hot.

The area that was Adrienne’s friendly little cocktail bar is now used as an up-market blue-chip bottle store selling some of the world’s leading brands of wine and spirits and I suppose I should continued from have treated myself to a glass, carafe, half-bottle or even full bottle of something nice like a Cape Shiraz or Merlot red-wine, but I stuck to a single bottle of ice-cold Golden Pilsener, which slipped down very nicely on a hot, humid day. The cocktail bar has now shifted to part of the former eating area, which hasn’t really suffered from this change of use.

(On my way out I was ambushed by Nick Mandeya, one of Adrienne’s owners and Danny Marini, proprietor of Leonardo’s, at Borrowdale; we sat on rustic outdoor trestle benches in full baking sun, cringed at the appalling driving on 2nd Street and talked about the parlous state of Zimbabwe, over another couple of bottles apiece.) Unusually, Nick Mandeya had been away from the restaurant when I arrived unannounced and without a reservation.

The amiable restaurant manager Erines Chirwa, back from having her baby boy, was meeting, greeting and seating and took my orders.

Braised oxtail

I fairly recently enjoyed an extremely good Madras-style prawn curry at Adrienne’s for US$18, but these are, sadly, no longer listed on the menu. If you want a curry they serve a very acceptable lamb version at US$14. The popular braised oxtail with sadza is US$15.

Prawns do, indeed, appear on the menu listing, as grilled Mozambique prawns (number and size unspecified, but Adrienne’s portions are always rather generous) at US18. Fish (presumably hake) and chips is US$12, the same price as Kariba bream and deep-fried calamari.

Poultry dish choices are now restricted to half a grilled huku, plain or piri-piri or chicken schnitzel, both at US$10 a portion.

And for that apparently mythical creature, the not-so-hungry punter (is there such a beast in Ha-ha-ha-rare, Africa’s fun capital?) there are light meals.

These include hamburger and chips at a competitive US$5, vegetarian patties topped with home-made garlic and tomato sauce at US$6 and crispy chicken goujons or a spaghetti Bolognaise which carries the Miller seal of approval, both at US$7 a pop.

One of the reasons for the high standard of Italian-style cooking is that Atilio Vigoriti, that eminence grise of the hospitality sector in Central Africa, is a sleeping partner in the restaurant with Nick Mandeya and several of the recipes came from his mother back in Italy.

The two founded and ran L’Escargot at the Courteney Hotel in the days around independence when it was restaurant of the year in this country several times and it could take three weeks to secure a table! (How times have changed!)

Puddings consist of a small choice of the Zimbabwean all-time favourite, ice-cream and chocolate sauce, fresh fruit salad or apple crumble (both with ice-cream) at US$3 or the entirely decadent and totally moreish rich Amarula chocolate mousse at US$4.

They serve good teas and coffees; open for an early lunch and continue serving through the afternoon usually fairly late (last orders at 9:30pm), remaining open later when a popular show at nearby Reps is playing to packed, enthusiastic houses.

Adrienne’s no longer opens on Sundays but offers food and drink Monday to Saturdays. Eating indoors or out. Smoking/no smoking. Fully licensed; well-stocked cocktail bar, but no corkage fee if you BYOB. Pleasant background music. Children and fairly handicapped friendly. Tel 335602. – [email protected]