Giovanni’s— Good food, wide choices

Wining & Dining
Lunchtime was approaching and some gentle hints to Petal revealed she had an Old Mother Hubbard cupboard, so Plan B was put into action.

Lunchtime was approaching and some gentle hints to Petal revealed she had an Old Mother Hubbard cupboard, so Plan B was put into action.

By le connoisseur

The easy solution was a trip up the road to Giovanni’s in Arundel Village.

We arrived before the lunch crowd so were immediately shown to our table on the verandah where we could people-watch.

One of our laminated menus was coming apart a bit but I did notice that others were okay, or had been redone, so hopefully someone is in the process of sorting them out. Another improvement was the inset, basically the same as the laminated page, but including prices.

Mine was a decidedly frayed and grubby home printed sheet (well on the way to emulating a typical Zim US$1) but Petal’s was a new and professional looking folio.

Being a finicky type, she was having trouble getting the “too big” concertina back into the menu, clearly because the new sheets hadn’t been trimmed to size.

I noticed clear trimming and folding marks along the edges but our “someone” had overlooked this little detail — perhaps it should be attended to, before the shiny bright insets follow their predictable path to crumpledom!

Drinks were our first thought and I spied fresh fruit juice, trying the apple, which was very good, much like the result of putting fresh fruit through a juice extractor.

Petal was not much impressed by the lunch options on the main menu but there turned out to be a supplementary “specials” menu, with a fair selection of more robust meals — fish, chicken, steak and that sort of thing — but be warned, it is a complete lunch menu for a set price and you can’t have one course from here and dessert from the main menu, unless you are prepared to pay the full set menu price even if you didn’t have all courses, in addition to what you order off the main menu.

Unfortunately, our waitress failed us here and we only discovered this at the end.

I thought there was a reasonable selection on the main menu. There are also various breakfasts, including a health breakfast, French and German omelette, filled croissants, smoked salmon and scrambled egg and sun-dried tomato, pesto and mozzarella sounded good, open sandwiches and toasted sandwiches; wraps or pitas, all sounded good, a pizza selection with exotic toppings like bacon, cranberry and mozzarella, interesting tapas snacks; some pasta dishes under Italian “Faranacious” dishes and some very nice salads; smoked salmon, caper and avocado, prawn and avocado cocktail, orange and parmesan, etc.

Spelling mistakes are many and various, from what should be farinaceous, there were also “mozarella”, “napolatana”, “ala” (which has quite a different meaning from the correct alla), frullata, and even the occasional Giovanni!

We had the bream fillet and chicken piccata from the supplementary menu, both nicely presented and great chips, crunchy on the outside and soft inside. I was expecting a chicken breast, as described; it came as three schnitzels in a very tasty piccante sauce, but this didn’t matter; we both enjoyed our mains.

Dessert time came, the brownie was warmed and came with a dollop of ice-cream, quite pleasant.

Deluxe Coffee Shop 4 Plates Expect to spend US$5 – US$25 per head Arundel Village, Mount Pleasant, Harare

Related Topics