Eating Out: Inside the Botanic (al) Gardens!

Standard People
I’m unsure when delightfully demure Nomsa Gwataringa received notice to quit the Zen-serene Botanic Gardens Restaurant she’d built up so successfully in the park of that name off 5th Street Extension in Alexandra Park/Belgravia, but it seems ages ago.

She was told National Parks and Wildlife wanted to run that then well-established eatery themselves and, under that pretext, reluctantly packed up and left.

On my previous visit to the gardens, at least three, maybe four years after Nomsa left, the place was a total shambles and hadn’t served as much as a coffee in the yawning inter-regnum.

So when I got word, separately, from two sound “assets”— one a reporter, the other a diplomat — that the little restaurant was again serving wonderful food to an appreciative mob, this jaundiced journalist set off to investigate at first opportunity.

Well it was really the second opportunity. As I recalled Nomsa always shut Mondays, somehow I assumed her much delayed successors would do the same. Not the case! On lunching there Tuesday, I learned the place — now run by — surprise, surprise- — not a government department, but by Laiza’s Food Services, an outside catering firm who also do the grub at Chapman Golf Club, opens daily.

I’ll always remember Nomsa’s wonderful, thick, rich soups, with croutons and garlic bread: lovely, steaming hot on a winter’s day and was sad new management don’t list it on a compact, typed, polythene-wrapped menu.

From the no fuss carte du jour, I selected succulent flaky grilled fillets of Kariba bream in piquant lemon butter sauce with gorgeous, golden, hand-cut big square chips, crisp and crunchy on the outside, hot and floury within which, with lemon halves and a green salad — which was better dressed than me — cost an incredibly reasonable US$8.

And, believe me, nothing’s really dear on the menu, with steak, egg and chips at US$12, summer fillet of beef, US$10; skewers (kebabs) of beef, chicken or fish at US$8: Also same price as marinated breast of chicken, or pan-fried bread-crumbed bream fillets: All with chips or rice and salad.

Beef burgers (amusingly mis-spelled “burghers”: Is there an Afrikaans influence here?) are US$5 or US$8; grilled quarter of achicken is US$6 and half US$8.  Mouthwatering-sounding Mongolian stir fry costs US$7.

I probably ate more breakfast or brunch at Botanic Gardens in the old days than any other meal and my waitress (coincidentally, also Nomsa!) said these were served all day from US$4 – US$10 with scrambled or poached egg on toast at US$3 and nice sounding omelettes US$5.

I also remember excellent puddings: Fine fresh fruit salads, apple-and-sultana pies with cu-stard or cream, light as air sponges. They now only do a double scoop of pleasant vanilla ice-cream at US$2.

Neither Nomsa nor her prede-cessors were licensed to sell alco-hol, but it was common to see regulars opening good bottles of Cape wine or splitting a six-pack from a cooler bag at one of the many tables in full sun, dappled shade or on the stoep. There’s still no booze, but canned and bottled cool drinks are between US$1 and US$2 as is a range of teas and coffees.Bottom line: a very fine, substantial fish, chips and salad (but I’d have welcomed bread-and-butter or a roll), ice-cream (no cho-colate sauce!) and Rooibos tea: US$11.

Chef Samuel Mugabe (he runs the swish kitchen, not the poor old country!) who’s 69, but doesn’t look or act it, was making a hellish noise tenderising steaks when I arrived and ordered.

I asked him over to congratulate him on a high standard of cooking and to hear why it had taken me 11 months to learn that the restaurant was again in business: With my formidable militia of contacts?

While I got the usual Shona shrug, eloquently stating in inter-national body language “I am not the one” to the second question, he was overjoyed that I’d thoroughly enjoyed the food.

He’d worked at the old, much lamented, Cellar Restaurant in Marimba Shops, which speaks volumes — if not libraries — to anyone with an educated palate who regularly ate out here 12 or 15 years ago and at the also much missed Dublin Carvery, Fife Ave-nue, under the late Brian d’Aquino.

He also trained at Meikles Hotel, worked for Heath Stewart (now a Padre) on very demanding menus at the Thai/Zimbabwe steakhouse Blue Banana/Baobab Grill operation at Newlands and also had much experience “Down South”.

A few drawbacks to eating here are that the gardens themselves are looking as bedraggled and neglected as the economy and the rest of Zimbabwe, but you have to pay to enter them: US$3 a car, senior citizens free Mondays.

What should be a lovely, cool, shady stroll from car park to the eatery is now marred by broken-bricked paths ankle deep in twigs, branches and leaves.

I saw no labourers cleaning, sweeping or cutting (Nomsa’s guys used to do so in the immediate vicinity of the restaurant); va-rious buildings including a Desert Room, featuring Namibia’s flora, are locked and bolted; the education centre is half re-built, quarter-thatched after a fire; on another unidentified building the old thatch is half missing.

I briefly wandered through calf-length grass checking on a few trees while waiting for lunch. They’d been planted in June 1967 and February 1977, respectively, according to metal tags naming specimens in Latin, English and the vernacular.

As I sat at the comfortable solid wrought iron garden tables, I mused whether it would be possible to find any tree planted post-April 1980 in these rolling acres just seven minutes from the CBD, but felt it most unlikely!

Botanic Gardens Restaurant at National Botanic Gardens, 5th Street Extension. ([email protected]) Opens Sunday to Friday 9am-5:30pm, Saturday 8:30am-5:30pm.Phone 0772 843 273/2918262.Dusty Miller rating. I don’t award more than four stars to unlicensed restaurants; this is worth 3,5+ stars   mid-May 2012.

 

By Dusty Miller

[email protected]