Carl’s Beef with Bulawayo
THANK you all for following this column on my Beef with Bulawayo which takes an in depth look at everything regarding food in my time here in Bulawayo.
I have recently completed a consultancy with Carne Casa exploring the links between food in Brazil and the link with Bulawayo (I shall be sharing this with you soon). After this romance with steak, I have started another project which is building a test kitchen in the suburbs called Jacana Private Homestead.
This new project is set in an idyllic rural inspired set of town houses where I shall be working on a new book called Elevated Zimbabwean cuisine (working title).
This is an ode to Zimbabwean food, dishes and ingredients but elevated to five-star levels in a beautiful 100-page cook book destined for people’s mobile devices or dare I say it hard copy by the festive period.
Why all this waffle? Well, as I moved into my new residence, I came across something very fresh which is a farm fresh produce store and a restaurant serving farm to table cuisine called Po’s Organics.
The significance to my project is almost a God-sent as I worried about going out to get fresh produce from the farms for my book and yet there is a store right in my neighbourhood. But let’s take some time to talk about this new restaurant for a second.
The setting is very beautiful, the food tasty, fresh organic and straight from the farm, a slight detour into the expert hands of their chef and then onto our table. Having lived for a year in rural Victoria Falls our appreciation of fresh produce form our garden vastly improved my cooking.
The fact that the food didn’t pass through all sorts of chemicals to be packaged in all manner of plastics losing all their flavour and eventually ending up in most of our kitchens.
Po’s organics farm to table restaurant definitely takes the chemicals out of the dining experience giving you really vibrant tasty food. The respect of the ingredients has caused all manner of inspiration for my cooking.
Zimbabwe certainly has the expertise and desire to deliver healthier choices of food to its people and we are seeing evidence of some healthy alternatives in the dining circuit in our cities of Bulawayo, Harare, and Victoria Falls.
It was a great afternoon having a dry white wine and the cob salad and my wife tucked into the chicken liver salad before we tried out some of their pressed juices, I think I had something with watermelon and ginger which was very refreshing. The rib eye steak is my favourite to date (done rare) with the buttery roast potatoes.
The pork chop has a beautiful chutney and buttery mash to match. At this point my wife and I were sharing everything the chef was churning out. We finished off with no space to spare for dessert because of the filling chicken schnitzel.
Great start to a new restaurant! We will definitely be back!