The Sunday News
Carl’s Beef with Byo
The Best Ever Food Review Show team recently visited Zimbabwe and filmed a few amazing episodes of their experiences.
I thought to point out 10 significant things about the impact this will have on our food culture in Zimbabwe.
1. Zimbabweans were never going to believe: When it comes to food Zimbabweans are not the most adventurous or inventive people and so trying to create a food movement will only work if the international community celebrate what we do then the Zimbabweans will follow.
2. Burgers, Chips and Quarter Chickens: Zimbabwean food in the commercial sense has fallen into the trap of serving Chips, Chicken and Burgers and discarded or been lazy to try local ingredients and elevate them to fine dining levels.
Working as a restaurant consultant having run restaurants in Victoria Falls, Kadoma and Bulawayo, my biggest fight with owners is the lack of inclusion of local dishes for the tourism markets.
3. Sonny and his Best Ever Review Show Team have given me a platform to fight for local ingredients, local food, sustainable cooking practises and this will be an amazing opportunity to use even my international platforms to popularise my country through food.
4. Sonny and his team insisted on seeing us despite many haters trying to block us meeting.
The horror stories I heard about who didn’t want me on this show surprise me till this day!
I am happy for social media and inboxes and my strong legion of fans who insisted I was the person to meet
5. The first airing of this episode has had an absolutely profound effect on my speaking and cooking demo engagements for the year.
6. For the past year I have been working on a fast food franchise system I call Kanga Fry which hopes to assist people wanting to create elevated fast food experiences with local ingredients and traditional recipes to be able to get a franchise like system to set their businesses up.
7. The Best Ever Food Review Show team were very gracious to allow me to cook at the local growth point in my village.
From using Mai Gari’s butchery and her facility to cook dishes to supporting the local community we were at the growth point for hours buying drinks trying out so much food from most of the stalls showcasing how a growth point could be a tourist hub.
8. I have received many booking requests for the food experience I gave the Best Ever Food Review Show team in Victoria Falls which includes Accommodation, Bizarre Foods Tour, Village Tours guided by Carl Joshua Ncube…how awesome is that?
9. I finally got to articulate the effect colonisation has had on Zimbabwean food.
We don’t understand the gravity to which our culture hand our food has been reduced to onion and tomato to dried food yet we were much more than that as a people.
10. Internationally my brand as a food guide to Zimbabwe has been growing steadily but this episode has just given me a shot of adrenaline in the arm and believe me there will be a huge impact of Zimbabwean food globally!
