In line with other Spar supermarkets in Harare which include an in-store restaurant, Lucullus Café is joined to the Athientis Spar at the Fife Avenue Shopping Centre.
Report by Le Connoisseur The Café offers breakfast and lunch buffets with a good, albeit somewhat unexciting, selection of food. The calculation of the bill was a novelty to me, because you pay by weight. After selecting your choice from the buffet, your plate is weighed, the price tag being US$16 per kilogramme.
On the day we went to Lucullus Café, we were slightly irritated because the coffee machine wasn’t “ready” and we had to wait half an hour.
We wandered around Athientis Spar, killing time and checking out what was available. There are some interesting items in the shop, and a comprehensive selection of fruit and vegetables as well.
Back to the Café, and we were able to order our cappuccino. However, by this time we were ravenous, and the small snack we were looking for transformed into a full meal from the buffet table.
Personally, I am not a fan of self-service restaurants, but they do have one advantage; you can see the meals and don’t have to rely on the menu.
I felt a bit like I was in one of those awful American sitcoms, where the kids are always having food fights in the cafeteria, and the adults are too scared to take control of the situation.
Let me reassure you, there were no food fights, but that didn’t stop my imagination taking over! My own children were very well-behaved, and the self-service didn’t faze them at all. Maybe I’m getting old!
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There was a selection of sliced and prepared fruit at the start of the buffet, which was very nice, but a little strange given that fruit salad is traditionally more of a dessert than a starter at lunchtime.
A fresh-looking selection of salads followed the fruit. Huge dishes of white and yellow rice and chips were at the ready to complement the main courses.
Macaroni cheese and various vegetable dishes catered for vegetarians, but the focus was definitely on satisfying the carnivores among the clientèle.
Chicken curry, roast chicken drumsticks with roast potatoes and pumpkin, T-bone steak, beef stroganoff, beef stew and last, but not least, fat, juicy prawns.
If you’re watching your fat intake perhaps stick to the vegetarian options — the chef has a liberal hand with the oil used to cook the meat dishes.
The proof of a meal is always in the eating, and we had mixed feelings about ours.
The chicken curry and the pumpkin dish were delicious, but the steak was dry, and we felt that it might have been on the buffet table for some time. After sampling the steak, I was nervous about eating the prawns; I’m sure they were very nice, but wasn’t prepared to try them.
The long-awaited cappuccino was passable, but not spectacular.
I tried one of the Café’s croissants, which was crisp and light with an unusual raisin stuffing.
There was a magnificent looking Black Forest cake which actually looked better than it tasted, but, once again, it was passable.
The service at Lucullus is mediocre and, even though it is a self-service restaurant, I feel that the waitrons could take a little more interest in the people they are serving.
I also found it annoying that the dishes at the buffet had no labels, making it difficult to know what was available. We chose by sight, and the chicken curry was a lucky choice.
