Africa Cafe
OK, this one is a bit out of the way for Nottingham locals, 6300 miles out of the way to be exact. But I wanted to write about my trip to Cape Town.
If you had asked me beforehand I could have given you any number of reasons to go to Cape Town but the food would not have been amongst them. South Africa is essentially a country created by the British and the Dutch – a recipe for blandness in cuisine if ever I heard one. The British were at least good enough to import large numbers of Indian people into the country but then they promptly exiled them to “coloured” townships where they could not bother white people with anything as frightful as curry. The Dutch stuck with what they knew; puritanical Calvinism and pea soup.
As for the Africans, the development of a refined cuisine does not appear to have been high on their list of priorities – what with losing 80% of their land to the onslaught of arrogant, belligerent racists from the North. Their staple diet is based around mealie pap, a grey porridge of maize which is, if anything, even less appetising than it sounds.
But how wrong can you be? The food in Cape Town was astonishing.
The first surprise came at Africa Café on Shortmarket Street. You get something like 16 courses in the form of an African feast and can eat as much as you like until you either give in or explode. The whole continent is represented, from the deserts of Morocco through the jungles of the Congo to the bounty of the winelands. I would give much to know what went in to the Ethiopian Iab, a white curd cheese with herbs, something like an Indian raita. I was certain that nothing could redeem mealie pap, but they managed it – mixing it with spinach to create delicious char-grilled patties.
Typically for Cape Town, everybody eating at the Africa Café was white and everybody waiting at table was not white. It really is incredible but Cape Town is the whitest place I have ever been to. A black person eating in a restaurant would have turned heads, would have stuck out like a pterodactyl or a Martian in fact.
The reason for this becomes all too clear when you visit the black townships. Jesus… so these are the fruits of victory 12 years after the end of apartheid. For this Mandela spent 27 years in jail. All the Cape wines that as a student I ostentatiously refused, the dreadful bands I listened to at ANC benefit gigs – it was all for this. 1.8 million people in Cape Town alone are still living in conditions that are simply appalling.
I suppose there are some signs of progress. There are schools in the townships now which look quite nice. There is electricity. But the cables festooning the miles of chicken-coop shacks seem to reflect a grim resignation – the shanty towns are here to stay.
After 3 hours in the townships even I was ready to become a revolutionary communist. The disparity of wealth between the black majority and the whites is just stunning. The whites live in vast mansions, surrounded by deep green, sprinkler-fed lawns. There are horses in the paddock, a soft-top Mercedes in the drive and razor wire around the perimeter. It was hard to understand why the Africans didn’t rise up en-masse, pour out of the townships like a black tide and sweep them all into the sea. All South Africans it seems, have something to thank Mandela for.
If you had asked me beforehand I could have given you any number of reasons to go to Cape Town but the food would not have been amongst them. South Africa is essentially a country created by the British and the Dutch – a recipe for blandness in cuisine if ever I heard one. The British were at least good enough to import large numbers of Indian people into the country but then they promptly exiled them to “coloured” townships where they could not bother white people with anything as frightful as curry. The Dutch stuck with what they knew; puritanical Calvinism and pea soup.
As for the Africans, the development of a refined cuisine does not appear to have been high on their list of priorities – what with losing 80% of their land to the onslaught of arrogant, belligerent racists from the North. Their staple diet is based around mealie pap, a grey porridge of maize which is, if anything, even less appetising than it sounds.
But how wrong can you be? The food in Cape Town was astonishing.
The first surprise came at Africa Café on Shortmarket Street. You get something like 16 courses in the form of an African feast and can eat as much as you like until you either give in or explode. The whole continent is represented, from the deserts of Morocco through the jungles of the Congo to the bounty of the winelands. I would give much to know what went in to the Ethiopian Iab, a white curd cheese with herbs, something like an Indian raita. I was certain that nothing could redeem mealie pap, but they managed it – mixing it with spinach to create delicious char-grilled patties.
Typically for Cape Town, everybody eating at the Africa Café was white and everybody waiting at table was not white. It really is incredible but Cape Town is the whitest place I have ever been to. A black person eating in a restaurant would have turned heads, would have stuck out like a pterodactyl or a Martian in fact.
The reason for this becomes all too clear when you visit the black townships. Jesus… so these are the fruits of victory 12 years after the end of apartheid. For this Mandela spent 27 years in jail. All the Cape wines that as a student I ostentatiously refused, the dreadful bands I listened to at ANC benefit gigs – it was all for this. 1.8 million people in Cape Town alone are still living in conditions that are simply appalling.
I suppose there are some signs of progress. There are schools in the townships now which look quite nice. There is electricity. But the cables festooning the miles of chicken-coop shacks seem to reflect a grim resignation – the shanty towns are here to stay.
After 3 hours in the townships even I was ready to become a revolutionary communist. The disparity of wealth between the black majority and the whites is just stunning. The whites live in vast mansions, surrounded by deep green, sprinkler-fed lawns. There are horses in the paddock, a soft-top Mercedes in the drive and razor wire around the perimeter. It was hard to understand why the Africans didn’t rise up en-masse, pour out of the townships like a black tide and sweep them all into the sea. All South Africans it seems, have something to thank Mandela for.
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