Head chef Talent cooks for new generation of diners at Cresta Lodge

Chicken stew with peanut butter rice and chou moellier, at Chatters Restaurant, Cresta Lodge

THE beef short rib stew at Cresta Lodge is rich, brown, flavoursome and falling off the bone.
It’s also comfort food, at a confusing time when Zimbabwe’s new monetary policy is playing mind games with us all, and calling into question the value and the price of every commodity from a cup of hot chocolate to an airline ticket to Las Vegas.
Served with peanut butter rice and chou moellier (fancy name for kale) beef stew will be one of the delicious options for a Business Person’s lunch to be served from next week at Cresta Lodge’s Chatters Restaurant.
Other favourites will be chicken stew, oxtail and fried bream, all plated and priced at an affordable $18 (free soft drink included).
Head Chef at Cresta Lodge, Talent Mupendeka, joined us for lunch this week at Chatters Restaurant, and described his plans.
A graduate from the renowned Bulawayo Hotel School, Chef Talent is one of a number of gifted millennials cooking for a new generation of diners in Zimbabwe.
While keeping an eye on the trends for food and drink in 2019, Chef Talent values the authenticity of traditional Zimbabwean dishes, a key element in the country’s once-flourishing tourism industry. Although elite urban diners may be veering away from certain dishes, the goat meat stew, matumbus and tripe we grew up eating on farms in Gutu, Mudzi and elsewhere, will continue to be served at traditional buffets, celebrations and important national events.
While there will always be a place for visiting international chefs to share their skills in our leading kitchens, it feels so right when a home-grown student completes the rites of passage to becoming a chef, and can contribute to Zimbabwe’s culinary achievements.
Home boy Talent was born in Chitungwiza and studied for his ‘A’ levels at Seke 1 High School. ‘After graduating from Hotel School in 2007’, said Chef Talent, ‘I began my first job at Rainbow Towers, in the biggest kitchen I have ever seen.’
A year and a half later, he received a phone call from Miss Clare, a Zimbabwean living in Angola.
Miss Clare was looking for a talented patissier to set up a kitchen in Luanda’s CBD, and Chef Talent fitted the bill.
Before you could say Danish pastry or cronut (hybrid croissant/doughnut) Talent was on his way up north, to a country awash with diamonds and fossil fuels. A few weeks later, Milglow Kitchen in Luanda was up and running, supplying genoise sponges, eclairs, and cup cakes to five star hotels and restaurants in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
A short stint in restaurants and coffee shops in Tanzania followed the Angolan interlude, after which Talent came to Harare’s Cresta Lodge as a junior chef.
Promoted to sous chef, Talent moved south to Bulawayo, spending the next four years at the prestigious Cresta Churchill Hotel.
Back home at last in 2019, Chef Talent is now Head Chef at Cresta Lodge, Harare.
While most of us are trying to figure out the six degrees of separation between USD, Bonds and RTGS, Chef Talent and his team have been working on meal plans and prices.
At Chatters restaurant you can enjoy cereal, yoghurt, fresh fruit, pastries, and a full English breakfast, with a choice of hot dishes, for $55. A three course buffet lunch is offered for $70. The business person’s lunch at $18, for those managing to hold on to their jobs, represents great value.
While the service at Chatters was efficient and friendly, I found the decor dated, the garden dusty and dry and some of the paved areas around the outside tables looked unswept.
We decided to walk over to Cool Beans Coffee Shop after lunch, where you can sit comfortably on a cool verandah, sip a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate, and look out over a sparkling swimming pool towards smooth green lawns and thorn trees. If you consider $9 for a short hot chocolate over the top, give this a miss.
While there’s every chance that Zimbabwe’s monetary policy will begin to make sense, and the price of hot chocolate will come down, a ticket from here to Las Vegas will remain unaffordable for some time to come. By Charlotte Malakoff
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