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IT’S nice to find a new (or newly revamped, refurbed and re-branded) outlet that can be recommended to readers with confidence.
Brento’s is the latest in a line of restaurants/coffee shops… wine bars even… all boasting different names, that either flourished or failed dismally at what was the former Honey Dew Farm, opposite the Red Fox in Greendale.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that Brento’s Coffee Shop — trading since November 17 — is operated by Chantelle Brent, a bubbly, blonde 23-year-old. Maiden name Wilcox, her family has run the farm for 34 years.
When the thatched market-style building sold largely what the family grew on the rich, well-watered, Greendale soil, punters raved about the freshness and crispness of crops picked maybe minutes earlier, no more than a few hundred metres away. A dream of a green carbon footprint, 20 years before the term was coined.
In recent years, the Wilcox’s leased the operation to the CFI conglomerate —who made a total horse’s backside of running a business desperate for the hands-on TLC it had enjoyed when family-led. Later it was indigenised!
While I’m not implacably opposed to indigenisation, the less said about that pathetic period in its history — with no stock, customers boycotting the place — the better!
A couple of years ago, a terrible fire raged through the complex and could be seen kilometres away. On a Kariba houseboat at the time, I was one of seven passengers who had late night cellphone calls alerting us to the tragedy.
The place has dramatically bounced back, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of disaster. The name Honey Dew Farm seems to have — officially — disappeared; replaced by the more prosaic Food Lover’s Market (pedantically, shouldn’t that be Food Lovers’ Market?)
But I suspect that after three-and-a-half-decades as Honey Dew, the name will still be around 10 years from now.
Zimbabweans are a conservative lot. Rainbow Towers and Conference Centre I still hear, almost daily, referred to as “The Sheraton”, five years after the international chain left this country; Bulawayo Sun is often called “The Vic” probably 40 years after the Victoria Hotel in our second city ceased operating!
The food market side is in partnership with South African chain Fruit & Veg City, expanding from its single Zimbabwean store at Borrowdale Village.
Stock is mouthwatering: not only the eponymous vegetables (they have wonderful crisp rich-green crinkly Savoy cabbage at the same price — 75c — as the usual boring types) and fruit… but exotic fish and seafood, bread and bakery, butchery, dairy — including an astonishing range of cheeses and good yoghurt. There’s an ice-cream section and fresh, fruit rich, vitamin-filled smoothies are made to order.
There’s a garden centre and nursery, selling everything from pansy and Icelandic poppy seed packets, peas and seed potatoes to very rare Lowveld-grown exotic palms, with price tags in three figures.
There’s a brightly painted safe, supervised, children’s play area; the petting zoo loved by my children (now 30 and 32!) is back.
Brento’s Coffee Shop was about two-thirds full at any one time when we brunched there on a drizzly “dreich” (a lovely Scots onomatopoeic meaning gloomy, miserable) grey early Friday morning twixt Christmas and New Year.
Smart, alert waiters ushered us to a table of choice on a wide stoep, which would have been cool and shady had weather warranted it!
Sorry I didn’t have a light jersey in a voluminous camera bag, we scanned a brightly decorated laminated menu, which uses a fair-sized typeface for old toppies like me who leave “readers” at home.
None of us was terribly hungry. Sunrise Breakfast at US$6 was bang on the money, featuring two eggs as bright as a child’s painted suns, crispy bacon, grilled tomato. At US$3 more, the Full English adds pork sausage and baked beans. And at US$12, the Biggie Breakfast is sure that: all previous components, plus steak, mushrooms, chips and a fried banana.
Herby scrambled eggs on toast was just US$4 and declared “scrumptious”; the hungriest member of our party went for what he called the best beef hamburger eaten in years, with excellent piping-hot crinkle cut chips.
Smoked salmon croissant (oddly, inaccurately, depicting the international symbol for vegetarian dishes on the menu) with creamed cheese and chives looked superb at US$8, while below it, creamed mushrooms on toast — which are vegetarian, but the sign’s missing! — was US$6.
There’s a wide selection of light lunches, goodies on toast, baked spuds, pasta, savoury (and sweet) pies and the like on a refreshingly unpretentious list, plus waffles and cakes, hot and cold drinks. Teas and coffees are just US$1.
A pancake stack, in which crepe layers were separated by cinnamon, maple syrup and fresh cream (topped with a glace cherry) proved as delicious as it looked at US$5.
Impis of staff constantly asking “Is everything OK?” gets well and truly up my nose (I’m sure they’re rarely answered truthfully!) We were asked three times; that included proprietrix, Chantelle, whom we called over to ask for a second cappuccino and a passion fruit juice.
A former Dominican Convent gal, she tells me that (like many folk in the trade) she has no formal training or qualifications in hospitality or catering, but is fulfilling a lifelong dream to run her own bijoux, boutique coffee shop.
And, believe me: doing a first-rate job.
Brento’s Coffee Shop, 16, Greendale Avenue. Tel 497505. E-mail
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