Eating out with Dusty Miller
Picking up stompies! That’s what I was guilty of, when overhearing a diplomat friend of mine tell another member of the second oldest profession that her husband’s favourite restaurant was the Greek Sizzler at “Borrowdale”.
I tramped around Borrowdale Village several times spotting somewhere between 20 and 30 outlets there where you can eat, drink and be merry if you can afford it, but no Greek Sizzler…indeed no Greek restaurant, at all, other than Leonardo’s, where the Zimbabwean-born half-Italian/half-German owner’s wife is a third generation Zimbabwean of Greek descent and they serve a few Hellenic dishes along with a medley of mixed Mediterranean cuisine. Driving in that same area, recently, in a car with which I’m still not yet totally familiar, but I’ve christened Mrs Thatcher, because she tells me to do up my seat-belt and shut the back door properly, etc., lights started flashing, apparently announcing Mrs T was thirsty and needed fuel. I don’t think she did, as the digital read out showed that the tank was at least a quarter full, but decided not to risk running out to hell and gone at Helensvale and almost coasted into the Pomona filling station to put in five-litre’s worth which would get me to a Redan station, where I could use company-issue coupons to fully fill up. Lo and behold, there was the Greek Sizzler Café staring at me: opposite the garage, next to Pomona Bakery, to whom it belongs…it was well into the Friday conventional lunch hour and I was quite peckish, so a parking place was swiftly found. (For the benefit of non-Zimbabwean on-line readers, the Pomona Shopping Centre is immediately opposite Borrowdale Village, across a very busy, often congested, badly maintained and frequently dangerous road.) It wasn’t a great start to a new dining experience. I ordered mushroom soup and toast to be followed by the Friday daily special of fried hake, chips and salad. “How do you want your eggs cooked?” a rather fawning over-familiar waiter asked. “Which eggs?” “The ones you’ve just ordered, after the soup” Having established that no eggs were needed, my main course would be hake, fried not grilled, I asked “Are you licensed?” “Of course, sir,” said the latter day Uriah Heep. (Dickensian character, not head-banging band!) “Good for you…I’ll have a nice cold Golden Pilsener lager, then, please” “Oh, no sir, we don’t sell beer. We have a café licence, food licence, health licence, a shop licence, municipal licence, radio and TV licence, the night security guard dog has a licence and his handler a gun licence, but we don’t have a licence to sell alcohol.” Well that’s put a damper on a promising Friday lunchtime, I thought, ordering Sprite canned lemonade and wondering how any husband of a friend of mine could describe this place as his very favourite eatery? Obviously a closet wuss! I soon learned why! I’ve often written (and said many times) that the patently excellent mushroom soup at Taverna Athena in Kensington, Harare is arguably the best professionally cooked in this country. Well, belay that opinion. Stavros Agnostapolous has just lost that accolade to whichever of his kinsmen or clansmen from the Hellenic Brotherhood owns the Greek Sizzler (and the popular Pomona Bakery next door.) I was fairly promptly served the biggest, deepest, steaming bowlful of flavoursome, fragrant, foresty fungi packed so fully that you could almost stand the legendary spoon up in it. The steaming piping-hot broth was herb rich, intense, complex and jam-packed full of vegetarian goodness. It came with two slices of toast and butter and cost all of US$4! For the same price of four-bucks you can have a butternut soup, which definitely must be worth trying and for a dollar more I suspect the home-made chicken soup probably deserves a Michelin star in its own right! It’s definitely worth braving the mad-cap Borrowdale Road traffic (there was tailback from the TM car-park to the Celebration Centre the previous day) to eat at the Greek Sizzler, where the most expensive of a wide range of breakfasts is the “full Sizzler” (not “full English” in an outlet which is either Greek or Cypriot) at US$8. There are some delicious-sounding and -looking burgers and toasted sandwiches which were being attacked extremely enthusiastically by a mixed bunch of Greek-looking and black athletes or soccer players, who also ate mountains of golden chips. Steak, chop and kebab dishes looked stunning. I liked the sound of the pastitsio Greek pasta, which I suppose, is the nearest Hellenic equivalent to an Italian lasagna at US$6 and what is probably the iconic trademark, flagship traditional Greek dish: moussaka at US$7. I assumed that fried hake would be deep-fried in crispy beer batter, a la British West Yorkshire, but this was shallow pan-fried and, as a result, the skin at first looked deceptively greasy. That was a pure mirage. The pearly white flesh was cooked to perfection, still beautifully moist and cutting off in delicious flaky slices. There was a huge amount of well-cooked crisp, golden skinny chips (probably the bulk bought-in variety…but you can’t have everything), a small jar of piquant — probably home-made — tartar sauce and a fairly substantial side salad. It was excellent value at US$9 and was served — precisely as requested — exactly five minutes after the waiter collected my empty soup bowl. Precisely five minutes after the cartoon-like debris of my main course (a few thin bones and a scrap of skin) and a second empty Sprite can were cleared away, a still warm fruit-filled apple crumble whose provenance could be traced all of 10 metres to Pomona Bakery! and vanilla-ice-cream were served for US$4, along with a great steaming mug of grand cappuccino with a wee biscotti (US$2 a cup, US$3 a beaker.) I saw several lovely ladies who lunch languidly enjoying what seemed to be really elegant and tasty-looking salads as I sat on the stoep, which was a little bit too chilly in late July for total comfort, but will be wonderfully cool in high summer. Greek Sizzler Café, Pomona SC. Opens daily: weekdays 7am-5pm’ weekends 7am-2pm. Sorry, the phone number was on the receipt, which I’ve already handed in for reimbursement as I’m off of five-and-a-half weeks’ working holiday, three days after finishing this critique and I need the loot!
- dustym@zimind
