Hanging out in a flavour café

HAMMING IT UP: IN FAMA, THE MEATS ARE CURED USING AN OLD ROMAN METHOD

Each week, Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she’s hooking up with some slow hams.

Within the JoburgPretoria megalopolis, containing the cosmopolis of Joburg, is a jamonopolis. It’s true: Heather and I are in it.

Fama is in an interesting part of Lorentzville. On the opposite corner is a gnome and succulents garden I like, surrounding a kota and chips place, and round the corner, Wines of the World. Fama’s sign, Bienvenidos a la Jamonópolis de Johanesburgo, is above the entrance in Viljoen Street.

It’s typically Joburg, our cosmopolis of people from all over the world, this jamonopolis having a half-Greek urban claim though its real name is Fama, famously Spanish.

It was previously owned by a Spanish-speaking man, Roberto Sa Gimenez, who learnt and then practised everything about producing Spanish and Italian cured meats, and then passed that valuable knowledge on to Nuno Fernandes, a Portuguese South African. As you can imagine, it is the only such place in South Africa.

The meats are cured using an old Roman method. Heather and I are in a dimly lit vastness, too dim for pictures, so imagine warm, humid Mediterranean air in a shadowy cavern of rows and rows of heavy shapes suspended, our brushing against their swaying, salty sides. These are the 12 000 slow-curing Serrano-style hams, hanging about on hooks like this for at least a year. Fama is certainly a natch for the Slow Food Movement, to which they belong.

We move among all these developing tastes and also get to prove them when Nuno slides his Victorinox knife into five-monthold Italian style coppa, equally old Spanish style lonza, Calabrese salami, salamis Felina and more, Alentejano chorizo, Napoli chorizo and paprika-rich Chistorra, all slowly produced right here.

As we taste and discuss the differences, customers from some very impressive restaurants arrive and phone constantly for their wares. I now know where to get straight or rolled pancetta. Who wants nitrates-ridden supermarket bacon when they can have the properly cured item?

Having recently returned from munching sweetly perfect San Daniele prosciutto in situ, I am interested to hear Nuno say he considers the Iberico version nuttier, juicier, the first from Italy and the second Spain. Apparently it’s not only a matter of boars versus pigs but whether they eat chestnuts or acorns.

Heather says she can’t taste anymore. I tell Nuno I can.

Fama Delicatessen Products 011 618 3048