dyton mupawaenda
Stan Higgins
Ever fortunate to have a wide range of international cuisine styles among local restaurants, Harare diners can now, for the first time, boast of having access to the delightful cuisine of Jamaica.
This results from the creation this year of Sorrel restaurant in Avondale, already becoming highly popular with diners who enjoy some exciting spices and a taste of the islands. Sorrel is an interesting choice of name, but this restaurant is not named after the well-known sorrel herb that is found across Europe, Asia, and North America. It is, rather, named for the sorrel wine drink, a traditional Caribbean beverage made from roselle, a species of hibiscus.
Owner-operator Fitz Roberts came to Harare to create such a venue and it has turned out well. It’s easily accessed near the Avondale flea market and is stylishly designed with indoor and outdoor dining areas, oozing loads of charm and a warm ambiance. And, yes, sorrel wine is most certainly available at the bar, along with Jamaican beer and, of course, famed Caribbean rum.
We dined there on a hot lunchtime, sitting in the cool indoors and receiving top-rate service from our server, Ivy Nyambodza. Eager to try out things Jamaican, we started with a jerk chicken kebab for me and Escovitch chicken strips for my guest.
Jerk is a name given to Jamaican food that is coated with spice and cooked over fire or grill, giving it a superb smoky, spicy flavour, while escovitch comes from the Spanish escabeche, its influence coming into Jamaican from Spanish Jews who settled there.
The Escovitch style features white vinegar and spice. Both starters were outstanding and the portion size of the kebab – complete with chicken cubs, pineapple, and green and red peppers – was phenomenal.
For mains, my guest had huge tiger prawns in a creamy sauce accompanied by broccoli and rice with pumpkin.
I had brown stew snapper, a fish better known to southern Africans as red roman. This was a major success, in a highly flavoured and tasty sauce, accompanied at Ivy’s suggestion by okra, peppers, and a spiced rice with pigeon beans – known to Jamaicans as gungo beans.
Jamaican cooking is renowned for its fusion, having origins from the many people who have made their home on this warm, welcoming, and popular Caribbean island. Style influences include West African, Irish, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern, all of which combine to offer untold culinary joy.
The menu at Sorrel is highly varied, and will soon be complemented by a range of Jamaican-style desserts including, we were told, sweet potatoes with ice cream. I can’t wait for that!
The bar was well stocked with Jamaican, international, and Zimbabwean beverages and I sampled a cooling cocktail on a hot day, made with flair by Cephas Chamisa and Tafadzwa Msabengana: it was a Blue Sky, made up of coconut rum, blue Curacao, cane syrup and pineapple on ice. I gather the favourite on the huge cocktails list is the Bob Marley, with a mix of white and dark rum, blue Curacao, orange juice, and strawberry syrup.
Fitz is doing an amazing job and huge kudos to him and his team for bringing to Harare a superb new style of cuisine in this market, one that will undoubtedly impact well on the local dining-out scene. I’d love it if he could start some live Caribbean music accompaniment, the styles, and sounds of which – based around the steel drums – will take the whole ambience a step further.
Sorrel is on Bath Road just behind the Avondale shopping centre, with plentiful parking alongside the flea market.
It’s open daily from noon for lunch, afternoon, and evening dining. I’d recommend reservations as evenings and weekends can be very busy. Call 0789 421489 for information.
What cuisine styles do you like? Where have you had good and bad experiences over meals? I’d love to hear from you, readers. Contact me at [email protected]
Online Reporter