SEVERAL times I’ve seen self-appointed experts on Portuguese cooking almost come to blows discussing the relative merits of Harare’s two main piri-piri outlets: Coimbra, Selous Avenue and Samora Machel Avenue’s Cascais. These eateries are similar in design: airy, spacious roofed-in courtyards surrounding former early colonial family homes. Menus are almost identical; prices very similar.

I have often bleated about tardy, lethargic service at Coimbra and early on Tuesday night thought I may repeat that complaint in writing. But suddenly we were spotted by a keen young waiter and never looked back.

The table had previously been occupied and sauce-bespattered linen was swiftly replaced.

Icily cold Pilsener lagers were soon served, followed by a basket of warm crusty bread and those foil sachets of imported butter difficult to open when you can’t find your specs.

I suppose they aid portion control and are more hygienic than butter open to the air, coughs, colds, sneezes and tobacco smoke but, candidly, I find them annoying!

We hardly looked at the menu. Piri-piri chicken is the house speciality and it was half a grilled bird, medium-hot, we ordered each, with chips, rather than trademark whole boiled spuds of metropolitan Portugal and its far-flung former empire…. or rice. Service was swift, sleek and civil, not servile.

I’m a great fan of Portuguese green soup — caldho verde — made with kale, rape, spinach or other brassicas and starring a lump of spicy chorizo sausage. It’s only $1 at Coimbra, but I didn’t order it as my appetite wouldn’t do justice to the main course after soup and bread.

We did have Portuguese salad ($3) generously endowed with plump, unctuous, black olives and a rich soft cheese of unknown provenance atop the usual suspects: lettuce, tomatoes, raw onion, peppers and much grated carrot.

You need that vegetable intake to help cut grease in golden, square-cut chips which were actually crispy, fairly unusual for a Portuguese restaurant, where they are often willowy and limp and rich succulent huku.

It was 11-days between lunch at Cascais and supper at Coimbra and, in my opinion, the former outlet served by far the tastier, tenderer and better marinated poultry than Coimbra, and their presentation was more aesthetically pleasing than Coimbra’s slightly over-filled round plate.

Neither served food on hot plates: a widespread failing in southern Africa, especially in restaurants of this genre. Lesson one at chefs’ school should be: serve hot food on a hot plate.

Coimbra’s chips won hands down. These were French fries as good as any served in the best British chippy or pub: which means the best in the world.

Both restaurants are always well patronised; true success stories in Harare catering. Cascais was pumping when we past at about 8:30pm and we’d to park so far from Coimbra’s door my dining companion wondered whether we’d get a table. Cascais and Coimbra both charge $8 for a half chicken and starch of choice.

Coimbra’s menu includes chicken giblets as a starter at $4; $7 for mains. I once shuddered at the thought of steak in a Portuguese restaurant, remembering tormented sinewy beasts in the dusty bullrings of pre-independence Mozambique, but I’ve recently had very agreeable rump or fillet served, usually, crowned with a fried egg.

Runny golden egg-yolk with a forkful of slightly bloody medium-rare mombe and perhaps a particle of caramelised onion is a great combination of flavours and textures.  Coimbra steaks are $10-$12.

I thought Coimbra’s fish and seafood slightly dear, when compared with their main opposition and one of my “spies” at a nearby table — an Indian trader from Vic Falls — believed Cascais’ fish cooking superior to that in our current environment.

Calamari was $12, sole $15, hake $10, line-fish $14, kingklip $19 and bacalhau, air-dried and salted cod (almost fish biltong!) a whopping $29. “Prawns” were $24, but were a platter of six big kings, with chips and salad.

There was a short list of typical Portuguese puddings at (I think) $3 each. Salad, p-p chicken and chips for two and several lagers cost $25, before a tip.

(Coimbra, 61, Selous Avenue {off 7th Street} Tel 700237. They shut all day Monday (when Cascais opens!)

Other recommended outlets for piri-piri cuisine include The Pointe; Arnaldo’s, Graniteside and “LM chicken” at Adrienne’s.

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BY DUSTY MILLER

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