Silver Spur losing its shine

Wining & Dining
Entering the Silver Spur restaurant, ground floor of the Holiday Inn, I was immediately taken back to my teenage years, going out with friends or on a date.

Entering the Silver Spur restaurant, ground floor of the Holiday Inn, I was immediately taken back to my teenage years, going out with friends or on a date.

BY LE CONNOISSEUR

The décor has a distinctly “seventies” feel, with its rows of booths with leatherette seats, designed to cater for mobs of teenagers or large families, out to sink their teeth into a big, juicy steak, piles of crispy chips and the ubiquitous tomato sauce!

Once I’d located my spouse, it took a while to attract the attention of the waitress to order a drink.

The drinks in fact come from the bar next door and prices are hefty, something we only discovered once we received the bill and, taken aback at the total, investigated to see what had pushed the tally so high. The culprits? The beers.

The menus were well-used, and perhaps could do with replacing, while the content itself at Silver Spur is impressive in size, especially if you are a carnivorous devourer of steaks and burgers. Our starters — crumbed mushrooms with garlic sauce, buffalo wings and spicy beef strips — were generously portioned. The beef strips were nothing to write home about, and certainly, lacking in spice.

The mushrooms were nicely crispy but the accompanying garlic sauce disappointing and definitely not garlicky enough. The buffalo wings however, were very enjoyable.

The main courses offered cover all the usual steak house options from monkey gland steak and pepper fillet to tex mex and rump with a variety of sauces.

There are also a number of pork dishes with the all time

favourite ribs, plus chicken and fish with the usual combos of surf and turf, calamari and line fish of the day.

There is a salad bar from which to help yourself, but our Greek salad to share was rather plain and uninspiring. The pork ribs were good and the Spurs Speciality — deep fried onion rings in batter which appear on every dish — were passable rather than wow material.

In spite of liberal doses of sauce, the monkey gland steak was not particularly tasty and rather tough. The calamari had sadly run out.

The generously portioned hake was however, rather tasteless.

The puddings were the typical steak house offer — ice-cream with chocolate sauce, choc nut sundae, chocolate mousse, and the log cabin waffle with syrup and ice-cream, which my spouse thoroughly enjoyed. The filter coffee was poor — weak and tasteless.

There were a number of advertisements of the Silver Spur as a party venue with jumping castle and reasonably priced children’s meals, and I’m quite sure that this restaurant comes into its own for such occasions.

Most of us have visited a Spur restaurant at some stage in our hungry lives, be it in Zimbabwe or in another southern African country.

The strength of a franchise restaurant is that you should know what you will get and if you feel like eating the particular food your chosen franchise offers, you can count on getting it exactly as you expect it to come.

The Silver Spur, in this regard, is beginning to lose its shine and for the meal we had, was pricey.

Family Restaurant 2 Plates Expect to spend US$25 – US$35 per head The Holiday Inn, Samora Machel Ave, Harare

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