The Sunday News
Carl’s beef with Bulawayo, Carl Joshua Ncube
I was at Hillside Dams in Bulawayo for the first time ever on a Sunday two weeks ago.
I was amazed that for the price of a US$2 entrance ticket you could create your own restaurant experience at the many well placed braai stands.
Granted I am a celebrated chef and I can easily create a culinary experience wherever I am.
The point that I am just making though is that people keep complaining about the cost of going out when facilities like this exist. The only thing lacking is one’s imagination.
Take the fact that one could easily download a recipe and source ingredients from their local markets and shops.
Imagine the implications of such thoughts if people found it more affordable to create a world class eating experience outside their favourite stadium for example?
The agenda here is not to do an anti-restaurant article, but instead to offer the reader a plethora of options from their back garden to local shopping area to local parks to restaurants.
This would give visitors to our city such a great set of options on where to heat and what to cook.
As a person that is accustomed to having guests come to my rural homestead in Victoria Falls and pay from US$50-US$100 for a rural culinary experience I believe that great food is a combination of ingredients plus local context.
What sets you apart from everyone is to offer amazing well prepared food with the trimmings of an appropriate local narrative.
If you think about it a Zambezi may be a well-crafted beer, but unless it is served from a cooler box, and a road trip of 100km to the nearest body of water placed on a boat and then a local story about Carl Joshua Ncube’s childhood in Southwold on Stroud Avenue playing darts at Bellevue sports Club with my father and the lasting memory of a crisp beer then the beer ceases to be transformative in taste.
Hillside Dams was such an experience for my food.
My childhood, my tours, my experiences and my hopes for an amazing City of Bulawayo came together in sweetcorn with garlics lemon and butter, served with rare steaks seasoned only with salt, chickens with a special basting from Carne Casa with cold drinks and friends.
I encourage you, go out and make Bulawayo amazing again through food spaces in areas like Hillside Dams or our parks or even your backyard or even outside the Barbourfields Stadium before and after a Highlanders Victory!
