I WAS sad, in a way, to hear Priscilla Maseko had pulled out of catering and sold Arnaldo’s Farmhouse Restaurant in Graniteside and the family’s other operation, the Arabian Nights in Alex Park.
The extremely amiable hostess had soldiered on bravely against many adversities and all the challenges facing the catering trade, since her equally likeable husband, Abel, a former mining engineer, was tragically killed in a road accident soon after the couple scooped the award for Zimbabwe’s Best Exotic Restaurant of the year back in 2004, in a prestigious competition co-sponsored by our sister paper The Standard.The last time I spoke to Priscilla on e-mail, she was in Hawaii and I now hear she’s settled in Canada, where I seem to remember both her girls were at varsity.But if Priscilla is no longer at the helm of Arnaldo’s, it is some compensation that Avengers Investments (Pvt) Ltd now have their name on the licence. Owned by dispossessed farmers, Julie Webb, formerly of the Leopard Rock (when it was run extremely well nine or 10 years ago!) is managing director.I first met Julie when her dad, Rob, was president of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, just before the chaos of the land invasions by so-called war vets put back Zimbabwean agriculture more than half a century.The Avengers company also owns and operates Imba Matomba, an exclusive boutique ex-Chateaux and Relais hotel at Glen Lorne and Tuskers-Gecko Gardens (formerly Seasons) in the same plush northern suburb of Harare.When I re-visited Arnaldo’s, housed in the architecturally interesting former Graniteside Farm homestead in the heart of the gritty light industrial suburb last Friday, there was a minor panic occurring: the sort of storm-in-a-teacup/crisis-in-the-kitchen scenario that nowadays is notoriously frequent in Zimbabwe.But, some of the world’s best crises managers, Zimbabweans are expert at “making a plan” and somehow pulling through.I was greeted with the words: “Sorry…problems… we can only offer chicken and chips today.”Well, that was no train smash: that’s certainly what I’d gone for: the excellent Portuguese colonial trademark dish: piri-piri chicken, marinated and basted to the peak of piquant flavour and char-grilled, as first served there by the eponymous Senhor Arnaldo (now back in his native Mozambique) and continued by the Masekos.Julie was being all hands-on busy and serving a large airy semi-al fresco dining room full of hungry punters and, a few minutes later, so was the restaurant’s general manager, whom I soon got to know as Anne-Marie Theron.Maybe these youngsters know something I don’t, but it seems the country is recently awash with highly qualified and solidly experienced late teens and 20s hospitality practitioners, who have returned from across the globe.In the “dorp” which is Zimbabwe, it soon transpired that Anne-Marie’s maiden name was Swart, her dad Danie Swart, the highly successful Kariba International Tiger Fishing competitor, who still farms at Chegutu. As his daughter and I chatted, her cellphone brought her disturbing news of the family’s turmoil (nine-years on!) with would-be land invaders and trumped up self-styled warlords.Anne-Marie’s husband, Garth, was her childhood sweetheart. Appropriately, for someone married into a well-known competitive big-game angling family, he runs a boat repair yard at Ruwa. The couple met at Watershed College, she was also at Bryden School, Chegutu and Eaglesvale and then did a three year course at the Swiss Hotel Management School at Caux.After practicals and internships in Switzerland and in the USA in South Carolina, she returned home to Zimbabwe and, after a brief spell at Wild Geese Lodge, joined Avengers. The holding company obviously believes in keeping it in the family, because her father-in-law, well-known local entertainer Steve Theron, plays the guitar and sings every Thursday night at Tuskers-Gecko Gardens and from mid-afternoon until evening at Arnaldo’s on Fridays.Arnaldo’s menu is slightly truncated compared with earlier days, but offers (on “normal” days) all the old favourites and usual suspects. Most people go for piri-piri huku with chips, or very flavoursome Portuguese-style savoury rice, at $5 for a quarter bird or $8 for a plump, tender good-sized half chicken.This comes with good continental style crusty bread and butter and a wide-range of sauces for even extra flavour or more intense heat. Portuguese salad for two covers is $3, $4 will give you enough greenery and olives for four folk and a table of six will get their salads for $5.Stews are quite popular and Portuguese-style chicken stew will set you back $4, beef ditto $6. Sirloin steak is $8 and steak, egg and chips $8,50; pork chop $6, pan-fried bream $7, prawns $14.“Combo” dishes seem to be growing in popularity locally. Sometimes these combinations sound a bit unlikely, but Arnaldo’s offers fairly middle-of-the-road ¼ chicken and prawns at $12, ¼ chicken and pork chop (or bream and prawns) $11 and sirloin steak and prawns (almost a surf ‘n’ turf, but that should feature fillet steak) $14.I am assured that soon they will re-introduce the restaurant’s justly famous ultra-juicy Prego steak roll, great to munch at the rustic thatched bar with a bitterly cold local or imported beer or glass of wine. The very popular daily specials will make a come-back and “just now” the sweet list will be expanded to offer more than just the old reliable (but very acceptable) stand-by of ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce at $3.The Graniteside roads are in a terrible broken, potholed state and those on the Boshoff Drive side of the restaurant are so flooded they almost resemble canals!  But it’s worth the effort to drive there and, if you work in the area as many of the very regular “tobacco boys” do, Arnaldo’s has probably a monopoly trade in decent, very affordable, sit-down lunchtime comestibles.
- Arnaldo’s Farmhouse Restaurant and Takeaway, 7, Bessemer Road, Graniteside, Harare. Tel 773877. Open Monday-to-Thursday for lunch; Friday from noon until about 9pm.
   [email protected]
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Dusty Miller
- Arnaldo’s Farmhouse Restaurant and Takeaway, 7, Bessemer Road, Graniteside, Harare. Tel 773877. Open Monday-to-Thursday for lunch; Friday from noon until about 9pm.
   [email protected]
