Keep in fine fettle with luscious oxtail and mutsine from The Place Restaurant.

Slow-cooked guru, dovi rice, crisp kapenta and mutsine.

A  Matter of Taste with  Charlotte Malakoff

IT is literally a walk in the park to reach The Place Restaurant in the Social Security Centre, a 16-story high rise building in the CBD. Stroll through Harare Gardens to reach the side entrance, or find the ground floor plaza via the front entrance in Sam Nujoma Street to this largely unoccupied building. If it’s close to lunch time you’ll see an orderly line of hungry people queuing up for traditional fare outside The Place, giving orders for take aways. Pay a little more and you can sit in the spacious restaurant, and eat your meal in comfort.

There’s a great selection of dishes on offer, ranging from pork chop to Road Runner chicken, from sugar beans to oxtail. Friday’s special is crisp-fried kapenta, my current favourite. It runs out quickly, so last Friday George and I left the office for an early lunch, just before mid-day, taking the scenic route via Harare Gardens to The Place.

All seemed to be peaceful on our walk, until we reached the obelisk commemorating the dead from the First and Second World Wars, where a large number of riot police were milling around, primed for action. We skirted them, turned left and arrived at The Place in good time to place our orders.

No sooner had smiling wait staff arrived with warm water poured from a jug to wash our hands, than lunch was served. Flavoursome maguru (tripe) stew, one of Africa’s favourite foods, was served in a rich tomato and onion sauce, alongside a generous portion of rice dovi (rice with peanut butter). I had my first taste of mutsine (blackjack leaves) gently simmered with onion and tomato. High in fibre, this tasty vegetable helps control diabetes and guards against heart diseases.

Next we tried slow-cooked and luscious oxtail, falling off the bone, steaming white sadza, more mutsine, this time cooked with dovi, and the hero of the meal, a bowl of crisp-fried kapenta. A salsa of fresh, red hot chilli peppers tempered each mouthful of this feast. In the words of Irish singer Feargal Sharkey, ‘A good heart is hard to find’, but rich, traditional Zimbabwean dishes paired with super vegetables kale, mutsine, bonongwe and cabbage will keep you in fine fettle for years to come.

We finished our meal at leisure, but the queue for take away meals was longer than ever. Clientele at The Place Restaurant comes partly from the sparsely occupied offices at the Social Security Centre, but mostly from surrounding enterprises in the city centre. Business people in suits can often be seen clutching cartons of food from The Place, as they hurry back through the park to eat lunch in the office. Re-tracing our steps, we saw that the riot police were still in evidence, although no longer on the alert. Dressed in full riot gear, they were wilting in the hot sun, waiting, as I discovered later, for rumoured politically motivated protests that never materialised.

We turned into the rain forest (now dry) and the beautifully constructed miniature Victoria Falls and Zambezi Gorge (minus the water), once a tourist attraction and place of leisure for Harare residents. The Gorge is now littered with decaying rubbish, and the former beauty spot is frequented only by courting couples seeking privacy behind the boulders and in the shadows of the trees. Before the Ministry of Tourism ‘scours fresh jungles for tourism’ in Zimbabwe, it might consider restoring to their former glory the treasures once to be found in the Sunshine City, now going to rack and ruin.

Flanked by a neglected park and a tenant in a ghostly high rise, The Place Restaurant and Coffee Shop nevertheless remains a great destination for well-priced traditional cooking at its best. Our meal for two, including a mineral water and a Minute Maid orange drink, came to $17.25.

Comments to: cmalakoff@gmail.com

The Place Restaurant and Coffee Shop
Social Security Centre
58 Julius Nyerere Way/Sam Nujoma Street
Harare