Spring is in the air at Alliance Francaise

 With chairs set up around a central ramp and lighting hung from the high roof it makes a great venue for Zimfashion Week.  A bar and café set up on the large open pavement gave Harare a positively European pizzazz. Its nice to see the city opening up and being used at night – but still a challenge to navigate the non-working robots, chaotic combi drivers and double parking clogging up the traffic and blocking easy access to the pavement.
Zimfashion Week showcases the work of local designers along with this year’s special guests David Tlale from South Africa and Black Trash from Botswana.  Local favourites included Colin Ratisai, Alice Knuth, Joyce Chimanye, Sabina Mutsvati and Terence Chipembere amongst others. With a space also for upcoming young designers Zimfashion week is becoming an important part of Harare’s annual arts calendar and its great to see space opening up for this fun arena. Don’t miss it next year.
With spring in the air its not only fashion stepping out. Local restaurants are offering spring menus and one of them is Café Niche Bistro, newly opened at Alliance Francaise advertising spring salad specials. 
Alliance Francaise has been working on their garden and Café Niche now overlooks green lawns and flowers making for a cooler outlook than the previous raked gravel.  I popped in for lunch with a friend ready to sample something a bit French – not immediately apparent from the menu.
It’s a small space – but with the verandah tables full and some inside tables also occupied the sole waiter seemed stretched. Firstly we were told we couldn’t have baguettes – the only French sounding item on the menu – I assume because there was no bread. Neither of us felt like a large main course (all around US$15) and sifting through the menu there was no immediate sign of the advertised specials.  Even the printed flyer that went out on the e-mail would have helped.
The description of the salads from the confused waiter didn’t sound that appetising – chicken, bacon and pork salad (?) – but it looked much better than it sounded when I saw one delivered to a neighbouring table. In fact the actual food was much better than I expected from the menu and service. Eventually we were told baguettes were now ‘on’ – and so ordered one beef and one chicken. The eggplant parmigiana was apparently not available because of a lack of mushrooms, a conversation that had us bewildered – with a detailed description of how the unavailable mushrooms were stuffed and served. I am still not sure how they were an integral part of the eggplant parmigiana baguette! Service was extremely slow and we waited almost an hour for our baguettes. (US$8)  When they came they were good – served with nice French fries and interesting sauces – caramelised onion and béarnaise with the beef – avocado and mayo with the chicken. A friend at another table had the fish which she declared very tasty and also much better than she had expected – though she thought the fish portion very small.
Café Niche is open from 7:30am, so one of the few places where one can grab an early breakfast.  The breakfast dishes looked nice – the usual English breakfast suspects, French toasts and eggs benedict. Surprisingly no croissants for a French place, we didn’t try the coffee and the home made juices advertised on the e flyer were not in evidence.
Good potential though and nice food but more attention needs to be paid to the service and main menu presentation.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com