I’m unsure when delightfully demure Nomsa Gwataringa got notice to quit the Zen-serene Botanic Gardens Restaurant, she’d grown so successfully in the eponymous park on 5th Street Extension in Alex Park/Belgravia, but it’s ages ago.
Eating out with Dusty Miller
She was told National Parks and Wildlife would run the then well-established eatery themsel-ves and, under that pretext, reluctantly packed and left.
On a previous visit to the gardens, at least three, maybe four years after Nomsa left, the place was a total shambles and hadn’t served as much as a coffee in a yawning inter-regnum.
In May 2012 I got word, separately, from two sound “assets”— one a reporter, the other a diplomat — that the eatery again served great food to an appreciative mob, this jaundiced journalist set off to investigate and concurred.
I revisited this week; it’s run by the same caterers from 13 months ago, — surprise, surprise — not a government department, but Laiza’s Food Services, outside caterers who also do the grub at Chapman Golf Club.
I’ll always remember Nomsa’s wonderful, thick, rich soups, with croutons and garlic bread: lovely, steaming hot on a winter’s day and was sad new management didn’t list it on a compact, typed, polythene-wrapped menu. Well they may not list it, for reasons best known to themselves, but they certainly served a fine clear vegetable soup, probably five or six veggies, finely chopped, sliced or diced and superbly seasoned which, with two slices of gossamer thin toast and salted butter was sensibly priced at US$3.
Botanic Gardens isn’t licensed (to sell grog). I’ve often enjoyed a glass of chilled, crisp, white Cape wine there or shared a six-pack of Golden Pilsener lagers with fellow diners, but this time I drank Sprite lemonade (US$1,50 a can). Beautifully chilled from the fridge, but sadly no ice or lemon slices were offered.
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From a no fuss menu, I chose succulent flaky grilled fillets of Kariba bream with gorgeous, golden, hand-cut big square chips, crisp and crunchy on the outside, hot and floury within which, with a tossed green salad — better dressed than me — was a reasonable US$8.
Corner-cutting?
Last year this dish came with pleasant lemon-butter sauce, the plate decorated with lemon wedges. On Tuesday I had to make do with piquant sauce tartare and malt vinegar. Corner cutting?
Nothing’s really dear at Botanic Gardens, with steak, egg and chips at US$12 (but on the breakfast menu!), summer fillet of beef, US$10; skewers (kebabs) of beef, chicken or fish at US$10. All with chips or rice and salad.
Beef burgers (amusingly misspelled “burghers”: Is there an Afrikaans influence here?) are US$5 or US$8; grilled quarter chicken is US$6 and half US$10. Mouthwatering-sounding Mongolian stir fry costs US$7.
I probably ate more breakfasts or brunches there in the old days than any other meal and my waitress said these were served all day from US$4-US$10 with scrambled or poached egg on toast at US$3 and nice sounding omelettes US$5.
I also recall excellent puddings: Fine fresh fruit salads, apple-and-sultana pies with custard or cream and light-as-air sponges. They now do a double scoop of vanilla ice-cream at US$2, but it’s not listed.
Bottom line: good soup, a very fine, substantial fish, chips and salad, ice-cream and chocolate sauce, two cool drinks and rooibos tea with honey: US$17.
Chef Mugabe (Samuel, he runs the kitchen, not the poor old country!) who’s 70, but doesn’t look or act it, worked at the old, much lamented, Cellar Restaurant in Marimba Shops, which speaks volumes — if not libraries — to anyone with an educated palate who regularly ate out here 12/15 years ago and at the also much missed Dublin Carvery, Fife Avenue, under the late Brian d’Aquino.
He trained at Meikles Hotel, worked for Heath Stewart (now a Padre) on demanding menus at the Thai/Zimbabwe steakhouse Blue Banana/Baobab Grill operation at Newlands and also had much experience “Down South”.
Senior citizens A few drawbacks to eating here are that the gardens themselves are looking as bedraggled and neglected as the economy and the rest of Zimbabwe, but you must pay to enter them: US$3 a car, senior citizens free Mondays (half-price other days.)
What was a lovely, cool, shady stroll from the car park to the eatery is now marred by broken-bricked paths ankle deep in twigs, branches and leaves.
Two large neatly stacked piles of dead leaves were close to the restaurant when I arrived, but after lunch (mine…and presumably the sweepers’?) they’d all blown back where they had started from (One way of avoiding redundancy!)
I wandered through calf-length grass checking on a few trees before eating. They were planted in June 1966 and March 1973, respectively, according to metal tags naming specimens in Latin, English and the vernacular.
As I sat at the comfortable solid wrought iron garden tables in hit sun, I mused whether it would be possible to find any tree planted post-April 1980 in these rolling acres just seven minutes from the CBD, but felt it most unlikely!
Birdlife is plentiful, but hard to see in thick vegetation. I did spot a flock of about a dozen blue waxbills, some dowdy house sparrows, there was a flash of colour as three red-winged starlings took flight in alarm, I heard a couple of grey louries and was just about to photograph a ground-scraper thrush when all hell broke loose.
A giant shaggy Alsatian dog (the size of a bear) decided to gap it from where two ladies were eating. However, he was chained to a cast iron chair which he scraped on the rough slasto flooring for 20 or 30 echoing metres before his mistress caught him. You could have heard the row at Reps and there probably wasn’t a bird left this side of the racecourse!
Botanic Gardens Restaurant at National Botanic Gardens, 5th Street Extension. ([email protected]) Opens Sunday to Friday 9am-5:30pm, Saturday 8:30am-5:30pm. Phone 0772 843 273/2918262. l [email protected]
