Cuisine worthy of deity?

 At the time a group of residents anxiously approached the businessman, the City and the relevant water authority – but to no avail. It is apparently fine for one person to use up a public resource. Since then millions of cubic litres of water have been trucked out of the area, and our neighbourhood – which fifty years ago had a navigable stream running through it – is on its way to becoming another city desert.
The City allows apparently unregulated water extraction for resale and at the same time approves building plans on what remains of the city’s wetlands and vleis – which stifles the renewal of the underground water supply.  I believe plans are in final stages for a huge shopping mall on the Borrowdale vlei next to Dandaro.  How many wealthy shoppers are still out there needing more retail outlets and restaurants? Where will water come from in a city already failing to service existing residents and businesses? Do city planners still exist?
Harare Mayor says the new shopping mall will go a long way to relieve congestion, something not noticeable mid week at Papa’s in Newlands – which now boasts three adjoining restaurants – Butlers, Papa’s and Bejazzled – none of them busy. We sat outside on the verandah on another scarily balmy night with still no sign of much needed rain – and worried about water.
We had left our dark home on another evening without ZESA, with bad news from an engineer friend who had come to check our spluttering borehole by torchlight with generator power. The borehole is starting to pump air, and as the City doesn’t supply Greendale very often with water, this was scary news indeed.
We were in need of good sustenance.
I have tried to eat at Papa’s Meze and Grill (once Italian Fat Mama’s) a couple of times before but on both occasions found it closed for one reason or another. Now sporting a Greek identity, a couple of Italian favourites (ravioli and spaghetti bolognaise) remain on the menu from Fat Mama days
We chose a selection of meze and started with a substantial Greek salad for a hefty US$8 accompanied by a trio of dips (US$5) – skordalia, tsatziki and a new one on me, tirosalata – a piquant mix of feta, chillie and pepper.
We followed up with more meze – one of my favourite ways of eating.  The calamari (US$7) was delicious, as was the grilled haloumi (US$6) with sweet chillie. I wasn’t sure about the dolmadakia (US$4) – described as a herbed rice filling parcelled in endive leaves. Swiss chard rather than endive was the wrapping and it would be nice just once to find authentic grape leaves. Not so difficult surely.  The filling could have done with more flavour. We completed our meze with fasoulia – in this case herbed butter beans. (US$3)
‘Order any six meze for US$34′ says the menu. But if you add up our choice of six the total is US$27!  How is this a special?
Mains  from a wide choice (both US$14) were very large portions and nicely cooked – souvlaki was a char grilled chicken kebab served with curly chips and stithos, a large chicken breast with a choice of not very Greek sounding  sauces – mushroom, Cajun or pepper.
The dessert we wanted, ice cream with halva was not available so we finished with a good expresso and called it a night.
Service was good and friendly – though the extra seven bucks left a sour taste and spoiled what was an otherwise very nice meal.

– g.jeke@yahoo.com