The Humble Gourmand

Mzoli's
NY 115, Shop 3
Gugulethu, Cape Town 7751
South Africa
+27 21 638 1355

Website (not complete yet)

Cuisine: Barbeque

Price per kilogram ranges from R28 – R120 (US$4-$16)

BYOB

Cape Town’s number-one spot for barbeque* and booze isn’t signposted, but after 2pm on a weekend, it’s easy to spot thanks to the bass-pumping cars lining its street. Located in Gugulethu, a township about 15km southeast of the city center, Mzoli’s primarily plays host to Xhosa-speaking locals out for a jol, with a smattering of white tourists also filling the plastic chairs.

Mzoli’s features a specialty menu offering meat, meat, and more meat. To create a well-balanced meal, bring your own sides — salads, starches, fruit — though mealie pap (a porridge made from corn or maize) can be purchased on site, and the nearby convenience stores supply bread and chips. But in truth, the braaied-to-perfection meat needs no accompaniment.

There are no hosts or waiters at Mzoli’s, so it’s up to you to stake your claim for a table. An indoor bar and seating area exists but most of the activity happens outside, where enormous round tables stand in crowded rows under a corrugated tin roof, the shade from which is a welcome respite from the midday South African sun.

We pulled up around 1:30 and found the place half-full. In typical Capetonian style, the rest of our party arrived an hour later, at which point the restaurant had filled up and the noise drowned out any possibilities of a full-group conversation. Sometimes, a DJ sets up shop nearby, but on this Saturday, the rowdy Xhosa and English voices were the only music.

While waiting for the latecomers, two of us had wandered across the street to purchase some soda, and other members of our party bought several six-packs at the neighboring liquor store, though we still weren’t a match for most of the other patrons, guzzling glasses of Jameson and chilled bottles of Castle lager.

While the people-watching (we spotted a local TV personality a few tables away) and party vibe are integral to the Mzoli’s experience, the highlight is the wood fire-grilled meat. Inside the butcher shop, we faced a large display case piled with pink, fleshy raw meat. A small sign on the side wall lists prices per kilogram. We opted for chicken drumsticks and thighs, sausage, and and beef steaks, for a total of R190 (US$25) for 11 people. The apron-clad women behind the counter began gathering handfuls of the slimy cuts and placing them on the scale. After each batch was measured, she layered them on a checkered tray, added a bowl of marinade, and passed the order on to the cashier.

Receipts in hand, we headed down a narrow hallway to the fire-room in the back. Three sweating men stood at long braai pits, each in different stage of preparing the meat. Stacks of wood burned on the edge of the pit and as coals formed, they were shoveled across to heat the grill. We placed our tray on the table and one of the cookers took our ticket, doused it in sauce, and stuck it to the tray. With a final backward glance at a coil of sausage balanced precariously on our tower of meat, we squeezed our way back outside and sat down for the wait.

Forty-five minutes later, we again picked our way through the crowds to find out if our order was ready. Ten minutes passed in the oppressively hot room as we tried to get the attention of the man who appeared to be in charge. Taking note of the other patrons’ behavior, we stuck our copy of the receipt into the air. Finally, he took a look.

“Five-two-five. Ok. Maybe it’s ready just now?”

He went out into the yard, where more fires burned and came back holding a tray with significantly less meat than we remembered handing over.

“Oh. This is five-two-three.”

So we waited some more. I worried that our tray might have been snatched up by another table, but my fears were assuaged as we saw our lusciously sauced chicken drumsticks in a pile next to an outside pit. “Just the sausage. Five more minutes,” we were told.

We placed the tray in the middle of our group’s table and the digging began. No plates, no cutlery — just fingers and eager tongues. I started with a chicken thigh, which was disappointingly cold, but the tang of barbeque sauce and wood smoke compensated for any shortcoming in temperature. The meat was juicy and I picked every morsel I could off the bones. The sausage, which one had to rip from the coil, was hot and well-seasoned. For my third course, I tried the beef, whose prime bites were a little more difficult to access without a knife, but also managed to fill my mouth with tastes of sweet spice.

As I chewed my way through piece after piece, I amassed a steadily growing pile of bones in front of me (and a number of saucy reminders on my face). Luckily, everyone was eating with equal abandon. The edifice of meat suddenly shrunk to a final few pieces which were shortly polished off, and I licked my fingers in absence of a napkin.

Eating at Mzoli’s won’t do much for your health, but it will offer you an enjoyable afternoon with friends, and a chance to experience one of the Rainbow Nation’s proudest achievements: its talent for barbecuing meat.

*But you’d better call it braai if you’re talking to a South African
Jol = party

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