Natalias at Long Cheng Plaza

Wining & Dining
The last time I drove west down Samora Machel Avenue for lunch was to the much-missed and long-lamented Cellar Restaurant.

The last time I drove west down Samora Machel Avenue for lunch was to the much-missed and long-lamented Cellar Restaurant — a fine dining establishment in every sense of that phrase — which was at Marimba Park Shopping Centre.

Eating Out with Dusty Miller

In those days, Marimba was relatively clean and tidy; the owners of luxury limousines parked outside The Cellar wouldn’t worry that their vehicles may not be there after the last morsel of imported cheese and a snifter of port or brandy.

When I drove past on Tuesday the place looked and sounded like something out of the slummiest of West African slums. In the past third of a century we’ve gone downhill rapidly. And, thinking about it, how can a country so desperately, miserably poor be so damned expensive to live in?

I’d heard from sources that a Portuguese-style restaurant in the hideous new Chinese-built, owned and largely occupied Long Cheng Plaza was well worth a visit.

The eatery — Natalias (they can’t afford an apostrophe!) was indeed worth calling at and sampling — but what a pity it’s hidden away on an upper storey of this Oriental blot on our landscape? It’s very hard to find, unlike the otherwise almost empty but enormous Long Cheng Plaza which, I can imagine, can probably be seen from the moon!

The complex looks about as much part of the African landscape as a kraal of mud huts would in St James’s Park, London! Row upon row of empty, gaping potential shops, offices, warehouses, supermarkets, doctors’ surgeries and God knows what else are waiting for tenants who, under normal circumstances would probably be staying away from this location in droves anyway, but under the present situation, where Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd looks just about to go into liquidation and face prosecution for trading illegally, wouldn’t move there for all the tea in China!

And if supermarkets do eventually move in, will punters follow? Long Cheng is not exactly sitting in the middle of Zimbabwe’s most prosperous housing areas.

Residents in the immediate catchment area are feeling the pinch of Zanu PF’s disastrous economic and financial mismanagement as much, if not more than everyone else.

Arab-style I hunted to find Natalias, passing an Arab-style eatery where posters announced chicken with stew or sadza (takeaway only) cost US$1. A New China Garden chop-suey joint was closed downstairs but a branch above had three or four customers eating. Is this anything to do with the ghastly China Garden (amusingly called “Garen China” on a street-sign) in Milton Park? Or the even worse China Garden which operated briefly where Mélange used to be, near where Enterprise Road meets Glenara Avenue North?

Natalias is operated by the eponymous Natalia Attwell, who’s only 24. An ex-pupil at Gateway High School, Harare, I first met her when she was working with Ant Behrens at Antonio’s, Borrowdale.

She studied hospitality with Professor Mike Farrell here at the Rotary Centre, near the US Embassy; cousin Stacey Attwell runs the fabulous Antique Rose at Golden Stairs Nursery. Natalia is half Angolan-Portuguese and half local, which explains the Lusitanian culinary theme.

Bad news is that the outlet isn’t licensed (to sell grog) and is now strictly halaal food-wise which means no cooked dead pig. She did offer to send a runner to Marimba Shops for a couple of cans or bottles of Golden Pilsener Lager, which I appreciated, but declined.

The eatery hasn’t been open long and is operating on a very tight promotion menu. It was even more compact given that neither the Portuguese caldo verde soup nor creamy bean soup served with focaccia, (both US$4) were actually “on”.

Starters available were Portuguese-style chicken liver or giblets with focaccia bread, prawn mousse filo tartlets, chicken croquettes with a sweet chili dipping source or deep fried crumbed haloumi cheese also with sweet chili, all US$5.

I settled on the latter: three generous helpings of the famous Cypriot half goats-milk, half ewe’s milk cheese with a wisp of salad and pleasant dipping sauce. Washed down by a can of Sprite, I thoroughly enjoyed the starter dish lapping up a gentle breeze on a hot, humid day looking over what had once been protected woodlands and wetlands, alive with birds, flora and fauna before “someone” gave planning permission for Chinese developers to throw up this grey concrete architectural monstrosity.

I looked across a totally empty bouncy-castle playground with oddly written signage which looked like “AmuSemeno Park (or Bark?) For Children” to the also Chinese-built National Sports Stadium. The original plans for this hadn’t included a car-park! (No one in China owned cars then.) Twenty-years ago it was so badly cracked that I then refused permission for my children to attend school events there.

Long-drops At Long Chen Plaza the developers, architects, builders have turned the clocks back a century by equipping all the men’s public loos (possibly the women’s too?) with unhygienic long-drops that a generation or two of people mainly almost certainly don’t know how to use properly.

Can you believe that? I know we’re Africans, but Southern Africans…and this is 2014!

At first I was the only punter at Natalias. Then a local businessman arrived, bellowing into a cellphone and working his way through a large fillet steak and salads; then a family of three Chinese (mother heavily pregnant: “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again!”) who spoke little English between them; then a group of local Muslim men. A half piri-piri chicken was exemplary, cooked exactly as ordered and it came with acceptable if not great chips (sadly no boiled or baked spuds) and a really smashing salad replete with black and green olives and cheese.

On the sound system a rather good Portuguese tenor gave way to Brian Addams, but I could hardly hear the Canadian pop-star who was due in Ha-ha-ha-rare (Africa’s fun capital) for a sell-out concert three days later.

With the piri-piri huku, Natalia served me a non-alcoholic (can you believe it?) cocktail, which proved to be a Malawi shandy, on the house. Other main courses are grilled prawns with chips or salads at US$18 or a range of pizzas. (There’s a very impressive little wood-burning pizza oven installed.

It wasn’t on the menu, but I was offered a pudding called strawberry heaven: loads of plump ripe sliced berries, crushed fruit or a coulis, meringue and cream. I had this with a creamy cup of Illy’s cappuccino and glanced out of the large sliding windows wondering where the NAM memorial copse of trees had stood before they were bulldozed to make way for this ill-supported shopping centre.

During the Non-Aligned Movement conference here in 1986 all world leaders present planted a tree apiece in the then pristine vlei to commemorate the occasion.

When “green” groups protesting against the proposed building (it was originally due to have been a hotel) quoted that grove of trees and the globally accepted urgency to preserve wetlands, usually conservation-minded Zanu PF tourism minister, Walter Mzembi, retorted that we couldn’t have a few frogs and lizards holding up development.

As much as I enjoyed Natalias food and service (starter, mains, pudding cool-drink, coffee: US$22) I wasn’t impressed with Long Chen Plaza itself and I’d much rather still have boggy vlei, birds, trees, butterflies…and lizards and frogs!

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