Indulge in ‘natas’ and comfort food at The Troyeville

Every pastel is made from scratch at the little casa. (Photo: Supplied)

By Marie-Lais Emond

11 Nov 2022

In Jozi we have the two best-loved Portuguese food institutions, thanks to one man.

If there are two direct Portuguese gifts to Jozi’s from-everywhere cuisine, they are the pastel de nata and any Portuguese comfort dish at The Troyeville.

You know bitoque, the steak with the egg on top, the pork and beans dish feijoada and the bacon and clams dish, porco alentejana. There are at least two comfort dishes with bacalhau too but those steak or pork meals are the ones of nostalgia for not only the Portuguese South Africans.

Piri piri chicken and garlic prawns came later with the Portuguese settlers from Mozambique. The Troyeville's restaurant menu includes these dishes and they’re madly popular.

Of course you know the Troyeville, finally called that because that’s what everyone always called the Troyeville Hotel, anyhow. Raul Da Lima, who bought it with great fondness a year ago, is also the man delighting your life with your favourite pastries, from his other Casa das Natas outlets, like the one at The Rosebank Mall. They’re also loveable, in a different way.

Raul Da Lima bought The Troyeville with great fondness. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

However, at present I’m in his The Troyeville restaurant. Theo Sibanda, characterful host and manager-waiter, has just asked me if I’d like a katemba, “even just a small one?”, referring to the Mozambican red wine and Coke drink.

Da Lima’s parents came from Portugal, his father’s family from just north of Oporto near the Lima river, but there are lots of Jozi people from everywhere, who love Portuguese and Portuguese-related drinks and meals. He caters to all of us.

A woman at the table nearest me orders a steak. “Well done, thank you.” She turns back to her fellow workers, the other two at the table. “I don’t have to see anyone this afternoon, so!”

When her well-done steak with the egg on it arrives, it has the garlicky wine sauce with pan juices and an excessively high mound of what Theo calls “our speciality chips”. Over their piled plates, the three talk about sales and keeping someone, who for a moment I think is called Tamarind, but realise probably has a name more like Tammaryn, “in the loop”.

Theo Sibanda, characterful host and manager-waiter. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

“No, not wine for me! Lawrence, have you ever seen me drink wine? I might have a glass or two of rosé sometimes. But oh no, I can’t drink wine.” She has a giant can of Coke next to her glass and later she snaps her fingers high in the air in seeming panic, for immediate service. When a waitress skids over, she’s asked for “just another little Richelieu double”. For the Coke.

The restaurant alongside, very spacious, a TV-sport watching room with many screens, has filled up all around the edges with lunchers, mostly chatting business. One man, a regular I can see, is on his own. He can’t drink any wine either because he still has to see clients today.

The catering bus parked outside The Troyeville. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Long ago, before The Troyeville’s heyday, a friend and I used to come across town of an evening for the Portuguese cozido or stew of that day and a glass of vinho branco that came in what we called a vase, it was such a tall, chunky tumbler. The mixes of different meats, sausages, legumes and vegetables were utterly delicious and ridiculously cheap. The hotel was not a beauty then. The front always had a slight whiff of urine.

The front room, the Troyeville Cafe now, was at one stage the Flamingo Room, trendified by an Australian owner, Laurence Jones. He’d loved the place for its homely, authentic Portuguese food and the family customers of the area. Artist Braam Kruger knowledgeably recommended it 15 years ago as a hangout for the hungover.

The surrounding area is a little less loved than it has been, even beyond Ivan Vladislavic descriptions. More graffiti of a minor artistic genre decorate the electricity boxes. One of the entrances to Ellis Park is a block downhill. The old Italian butcher has gone but, across the road, is an old fish shop that seems well entrenched, on this part of Albertina Sisulu Road that older regulars knew as Bezuidenhout Street, an extension of Market Street back in the city centre.

I’d gone for a walk around the immediate area before lunch. People from northern Jozi always ask if places are “safe”. Nothing’s safe, not Jozi, not Lisbon, not a small village in northern Italy as I’ve discovered in the latter instances. But here it doesn’t really feel threatening. No one looked hungrily at my cellphone when I took pictures. En route are the arty and crafty Jozi buildings, Ellis and Morkel Houses.

The confection was created to use up as many egg yolks as possible. (Photo: Supplied)

The local bus station that occupies the block between the hotel and the rugby stadium is for transporting people to or from Angola and Mozambique, both Portuguese colonies once. I presume many of these travellers live in the area. The ‘hotel’ staff, as I am discovering, are almost all from the area, many of whom have been working at The Troyeville for decades. Visitors’ cars are well looked after by people also from the area, reliably associated with the establishment.

Another big bus is that of The Troyeville, itself, parked behind the establishment. It’s one huge mobile kitchen and, as Theo says, it’s busy at events and at embassies, particularly the Portuguese and Jamaican ones.

Inside The Troyeville, past the cafe and the bar, en route to the restaurant, I come across Bongani Moyo, who cleans shoes and fixes them. What a delightful man and service to have here. I value shoe fixers very highly indeed.

In the restaurant, I meet the only Portuguese speaking waitress, who’s also been at The Troyeville for yonks, originally from Matola next to Maputo. There’s nothing silly-smiley about her but she’s famously efficient, knows food and the Portuguese speaking customers. She also knows the Portuguese wines of which I see a great many new and different ones, in a sparkling large glass display, alongside Aguardente 1920, the famous old Portuguese brandy.

Next Friday I’ll be returning with a bevy of fans of Portuguese comfort foods. Today I’m eating solo in the restaurant, not the steak with the egg on it, as next to my table, but very eager for today’s Feijoada. It arrives directly after a freshly baked classic Portuguese roll made in this kitchen. Why is it that these super-crispy rolls with the airy white interiors have become so difficult to find in Jozi?

The Feijoada is composed of pork cuts, long-cooked ones, including trotters, cabbage, carrot, sugar beans, various chunks of chouriço and Morcela, the blood sausage, usually cooked in a Portuguese clay pot. Of course it’s wonderful, wholesomely typical, just what I want.

Feijoada of long-cooked pork, cabbage, sugar beans, chouriço and Morcela. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Theo suggests I try some fish before I go: “It’s hake and very fresh.” I tell him I’ll be back for bacalhau inter alia, but he gives me some of that, not the shredded eggy version but the assado, with boiled potato, green pepper, onions and olives with oil, as well as some of that fresh and simply plate-grilled hake with a really good finely-cut tomato salad, to try as well. He’s the perfect salesman, full of fun, charm and information.

We talk a lot about the food, the various beans and chickpeas, about what I’m not having but must have next week, like the luscious Dobrada of slow-slowly cooked tripe with white beans and carrots. The Mozambique-style dishes like the polished hot-red chicken look lovely too but I’m here more for the trad comfort stuff this time and probably next.

While I wait to pay, Theo disappears and returns with something I “should at least see”. One section on a plate is a “vanilla ice”, another some date-enriched toffee pudd. The third one, made with leftover Portuguese rolls, is called a bread-and-butter pudding but is actually something pudim-tasting, milky, custardy but individual. I love the fact that these wonderful rolls get to reappear in another guise and aren’t wasted.

The deli in front sells the pasteis de nata that have become so very, very popular. I live near Tyrone Fruiterers and know that a truckload of homemade pasteis are unloaded and packed every Friday for customers, few of whom are more Portuguese than anything else in Jozi. Yet they sell out in a day.

No one just buys a single pastel at a time. (Photo: Supplied)

It strikes me that the locations for Raul Da Lima’s Casa das Natas are so unlike that of his other business. Troyeville is the gritty edginess, charming to be sure but not obviously “smart”. However, Da Lima has chosen quite upmarket places for the pasteis de natas outlets. The one I know is slap bang in the entrance of the Rosebank Mall in its pretty housing. It’s busy, no one is just buying a single pastel at a time. There’s one in Sandton City. He says there’ll soon be another at the Mall of Africa.

I’m fascinated by the overwhelming popularity of pasteis de nata in Jozi. He says it’s becoming the same in Lisbon. You can sit at the counter and the coffee is excellent, the perfect accompaniment or is it the other way around? The cups, pots and packaging are all beautifully designed.

Now these pasteis come in different flavours. (Photo: Supplied)

Now these pasteis come in different flavours. The Lisbon Classic ones are as we know them, creamily rich custard, further caramelised in the blistering of its surface, in luxuriously buttery puff pastry cases. A delightful flavour that convinced a dubious me is the Happy Berry one, with a little section of whatever fruit is in season dotted on top of the custard, the jammy filling below that. I’ve also had a Matcha-natcha one, prettily green. Da Lima prefers the Decadent Chocolate one with Nutella in it and the Apple Cinnamon version. This latter has an attractive green dot of Granny Smith apple peel on the top.

Every pastel is made from scratch at the little casa or cafe. Da Lima brought over a fifth generation Lisbon baker to train his staff. The baker stayed for six months, speaking very little English but demonstrating to the trainees better than anyone might in words. The super-buttery dough (without that butter for the vegan versions) is made up here, rolled and filled here. The pasteis are baked in the very hot ovens within sight of the counter.

Every pastel is made from scratch at the little casa. (Photo: Supplied)

It’s interesting that, in Sandton, more people request “other” flavours so a few more will be added, even a Christmassy one. The customers in Rosebank prefer the traditional Lisbon one and the chocolate version.

Originally pasteis de nata were made in the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos at Belem just outside Lisbon. So many egg whites used in the days of the monks starching linen meant a lot of egg yolks that could have been wasted. The confection was created in 1837 to use up as many as possible.

In Portugal we used to have ours for breakfast with coffee but in Jozi and now also in Lisbon, I believe, people are ordering these delicious Portuguese pastries for dessert, for afternoon tea, at any time, even with no excuse.

When I sit with Da Lima in the front coffee shop of The Troyeville, he tells me, “We have people coming for meals, especially on Sundays, who tell us stories about their parents and grandparents who came here to this place, to eat these typically Portuguese dishes decades ago. That’s kind of why I bought the place. It’s become a Joburg tradition of sorts and it’s kind of fun to do that even if your family isn’t Portuguese. And now it’s a nice place to come to again.”

There’s a delicious-looking pic on a poster behind him. It says: Life is Short. Eat a Nata. DM/TGIFood

The Troyeville | 1403 Albertina Sisulu Rd, Troyeville | 079 612 0125

Casa das Natas | Rosebank Mall and Sandton City | www.casadasnatas.co.za

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here.

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