Monos Restaurant brings a fresh, new, much more spacious look and feel, which now includes al fresco options, to what was formerly Le Français. I much enjoyed my lunch in this new establishment, chatting with Hotel Manager Ivan Kasozi and Deputy General Manager Valentine Halimana. Offering a fine dining experience, and entered in Deluxe Family, Monos Restaurant provides a varied menu which, while emphasising the ever popular steaks and grills for which our country is famous, covers the full range of eating requirements in an up market hotel restaurant, including some very imaginative vegetarian dishes and fish and seafood options.
The name is well chosen, for “the Monos” has been the almost universally used popular reference to this well–known hotel for decades. The other restaurants are also being rebranded and revamped as part of the on-going refurbishment exercise, to be completed this year.
Warm individual towels to wipe one’s hands before starting the meal were a nice touch, and I was very impressed with the tasty mushroom soup, a favourite of mine in any case so I’m quite fussy about it, specially recommended by our friendly waiter. It came with its heat cleverly sealed in by a slim pastry hat over the bowl, in itself, a welcome alternative with the soup, to the ubiquitous roll. Grills being the primary focus of the menu, while I was very drawn, as I often am, to the several enticing vegetarian meals, these being particularly so, I decided this first time to try the Steak Diane which is flambéed at the table, always adding a dramatic touch to a meal – and it was very good.
As well as a good, varied menu, well-designed, Monos Restaurant also has an extensive, well-researched and chosen wine list which I studied carefully. This is an area in which many restaurants continue to fall down, and quite rightly. The ZOAP review team forgive the transgression of its absence less easily these days, especially in the Deluxe and Deluxe Family entry categories. There is decent wine in abundance and readily available nowadays in Zimbabwe, and really no excuse not to introduce a proper wine list which caters for the required options for an enjoyable dining experience.
The restaurant was well-patronised with mainly corporate lunchtime trade, and with the new look which is more modern, airy and spacious, rather than the rather dark and claustrophobic look favoured by restaurants of yesteryear, I expect Monos to succeed well in putting itself on the map of good places to eat near the city centre. I wish Monos the best and hope that they will suitably impress the ZOAP reviewers down the line, whoever they are, as they did me.
