Restaurateurs’ and Hoteliers’ Group at DV8
THE relatively recently resuscitated Zimbabwe Restaurateurs’ and Hoteliers’ Group continues to flourish, with 41 members attending the April monthly lunch at DV8 Restaurant, Kamfinsa Park, Harare on Monday April 20.
Host members have to provide a three-course menu with choices for US$20 and proprietors James Davies and Mike Moore certainly did a sterling job.
Attendees had a choice of starter courses: marinated chicken livers with lemon; fried Cypriot Haloumi cheese with lemon and sweet chilli or the mushroom delight I chose.
These were five fairly large button mushrooms with bacon and garlic butter. Thick slices of the restaurant’s trademark individual crusty cottage loaves and butter were superb for mopping up the delicious juices.
Cape Wines of Msasa provided free KWV entry level wines and introduced a range of effervescent low alcohol (5,5%) flavoured Spritzertype wines from Arniston Bay vineyards in the Cape. The aromatic botanicals in the three varieties I tried were wonderful. This product will be a big hit with the lovely ladies who lunch languidly and they would be superb at a wedding reception.
Arniston Bay is the most southerly vineyard in Africa and I have had the pleasure of visiting it. I have also been to the continent’s most northerly vineyard, at the far tip of Tunisia and can assure you the wine from the Cape is a far superior product!
Main course dishes were a 200g export quality grass-fed beef fillet steak, or half a plain or piri-piri chicken, or a 200g gourmet beef burger served on a fresh roll with lettuce, gherkins, tomatoes and fried onions or beer-battered line fish (hake) and chips.
I went for a brace of thickly cut flash grilled juicy pork chops, which came with onion rings, hot apple sauce and a baked jacket potato.
DV8 (you had to de-vi-ate… geddit? to find its predecessor at Groombridge) doesn’t usually open Mondays, but did so especially for the hospitality group. A few local regulars sat in the well-stocked cocktail bar sipping and watching sport, but I was amazed to see would-be walk-in casual diners being politely refused service in our present bleak economy.
Desserts were the really excellent South African speciality Malva pudding, which is a syrup-soaked sponge served with ice-cream, or the ubiquitous ice-cream with chocolate sauce or strawberry crunch: a Pavlova-type dish. We finished with what is indubitably some of the best coffee served in Zimbabwe.
Next function of the Group will be lunch at The Fishmonger Restaurant, East Road, Avondale, Harare on Monday May 11.