Kate Wilson
It used to be that food was only considered authentically African when consumed in a boma with 40 American tourists suitably appalled at the prospect of dining on the kudu they’d gleefully photographed on the game drive an hour before.
South Africans’ first experience of the West African staple, Jollof rice, was probably as a Louisiana jambalaya. Believing Keith Floyd’s pronouncement that “there is no cuisine as such in Africa”, many probably think that everyone beyond the Northern Province lives off Impala curry made in a wheelbarrow.
Restaurants serving traditional African dishes are forced to market themselves to tourists tired of tripping about Thailand and getting wasabi up their noses, while the local market still worships The River Caf. China Kondlo and Ken Wainaina of Ubusuku be Afrika are two gastronomes prepared to challenge the stereotype of African food as tourist exotica or primitive fodder, and introduce South Africa to the rest of the continent.
Ubusuku runs the kitchen at Sea Point restaurant Waka Mundo (2 Clarens Road) as well as catering for dinner parties and larger functions. Their menus and buffets are an intoxicating combination of dishes from Kenya (Wainaina’s birthplace), Nigeria, Ghana, Lamu, Tunisia, Mozambique and other countries.
An evening spent in the wooden interior of Waka Mundo will be fragrant with smells of steamed bread with fennel seeds served before Sushi be Afrika, salmon rolls with pap as an African substitute for vinegared rice. Under Kondlo’s direction, salads are sweetened with oranges and walnuts (Tunisia) and baked vegetables are smothered in a rich mango sauce. Rice is flavoured with peanuts (Uganda) or coconut (Zanzibar), chicken and beef casseroles are piled over Kenya’s stiff corn porridge and dessert skewers of fruit are spiced with peri-peri.
Apart from the fact that the food is unspeakably delicious, Wainaina believes that the novelty surrounding African cuisine is similar to the worldwide patronage of south-east Asian establishments. “It’s not going to be promoted by us, but by markets in Europe or America where you’ve got a second or third generation middle class who have disposable income and who are bored with the bland and the usual and are looking for something new. So the Thai rage ends and south-east Asia ends, and where else is there?”
He acknowledges the fact that the spread of south-east Asian cuisine was significant beyond adding chopstick proficiency to the Feng Shui-addled lives of bored South Africans. “It influenced how people prepare food. Every other person has a wok and is stir-frying everything. The way we eat has changed. Now, this move towards more wholesome, organic food is something that African food can bring out.”
Signature dishes include mukimo, a Kikuyu dish of mashed potatoes, garlic, split peas and ripe bananas served with all the main courses; kebabs in peanut or mango sauce; Nigerian Ogbono stew with shrimp, pumpkin seeds and spinach; and the ubiquitous Jollof rice -paella, to the hopelessly colonial — which combines vegetables, chicken, shrimp and rice with shittor, a hot spice made from dried shrimp.
Despite the fact that the restaurant market in Cape Town is predominantly white, Wainaina resists having his food labelled exotic. Most of his dishes are African staples, (Ogbono is Nigeria Sunday lunch) adapted by Kondlo into indigenous masterpieces.
Apart from the food, which ranges between R18 and R45 for a main course, Waka Mundo is initiating a series of renaissance evenings, with live music and speakers from across Africa. On Wednesday evenings Midweek Thoughts will invite patrons to engage in impromptu performances, complementing the local art exhibits colouring the walls and encouraging a more diverse clientle.