KZN’s beach shack joints go nationwide and beyond

The sand between your toes, and in more inconvenient crannies, is thankfully missing. Otherwise you might be in a baracca, a beach shack in Mozambique. Artfully decorated, of course, with national flags, fish-trap lights, 2-metre beer posters, orange chairs and gold sunsets, turquoise seascapes. As colourful as a capelana. There are paper cones of warm roasted peanuts on every table, and psychedelic peri-peri sauce in Coke bottles. The rustic wooden deck is open to banana leaves and palm fronds; ageing skateboarders clatter down the road past the caravan park to the beach where the Ballito Pro international surfing contest is held every year.

This unpretentious, informal, slip-slops-and-baggies, eat-with-your-fingers, suck-on-those-prawn-heads joint is the original “store” of Swiss-trained chef Brett Michielin’s Mo-Zam-Bik group, launched in Ballito in 2005. There are now 14 MoZamBiks, including, why not, Bloemfontein. By the end of 2019, there will be 19. International interest is high (one offer has already been rejected).

And! Breaking news! Cape Town, you’re next. A lease on premises at the V&A Waterfront was signed last week. Moz will open there in June.

Back in Ballito, at the ancestral home, there are more tables in a covered courtyard beyond the rustic bar, where, somewhat unexpectedly, you will also find a full-sized dhow. (You can, if you like, book to eat on its deck.) This is not coastal-chic or an art installation. It is the real thing: The Spirit of Adventure, once sailed by local explorer-humanitarian Kingsley Holgate, he of the luxuriant white beard and good works all over the African continent.

His latest expedition ventures overland, into the most inaccessible corners of rural Mozambique; areas which were still waiting desperately for aid weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Idai. The initiative was named, obviously, Mo-Zam-Bik to Mozambique after Brett and company kicked it off with a contribution of nearly R100,000.

Yet again – he is the softest touch on the coast – Brett has been unable to resist a good cause. For example: he and some mates drove all the way from Ballito to cook for those battling the disastrous Southern Cape fires. He and other mates have bought a local farm on which they will train aspirant farmers. He and still others have launched their riff on super-serious surf contests: the Salt Rock King of the Shorebreak competition – fun and games in aid of animal charities. He is famously supportive of friends and budding entrepreneurs. And, just in case this is making him sound too boringly virtuous, he is also a renowned party animal.

A KZN beach boy at heart, he dreamed for years of becoming a professional diver. But when his father “retired” and set up a restaurant at the Bothas Hill railway station, son’s fate was sealed. Brett was drafted into the kitchen, learning how to cook “anything from sheep’s balls, to cow’s tendons and shark, and, because we’re Italian, litres of pesto. My father taught me the difference between a good white sauce and a bad one: Five seconds.”

Post-matric, he studied at the Swiss Hotel and Management School in Montreux; and so comprehensively aced the food and beverage exams that he ended up joining the lecturing staff. Cheffing in the UK followed before he came back to South Africa, to the hard labour of a top job at Ocean Basket. Big projects and hectic shifts became his food and drink; he wrote the group’s training manual.

But he still wasn’t, really, home. Until his brother-in-law brought a bottle of peri-peri sauce back from a holiday in Mozambique. It spoke, irresistibly, to Brett.

“First world hits third world, and it works!”

He bought into a tiny Portuguese bar-restaurant in Ballito, quickly bought out his partner, and proceeded to shift its main focus to eating Mozambique-style.

“More punch, more spice, more fun, more casual!”

And after some years of punishing multi-tasking and frequent-flying as the business has grown from beach holiday-village bar to a national group, Brett has hired his old Ocean Basket boss as operations director of Mo-Zam-Bik. So he can now stop running between branches and get back to the food.

Dishes are being fine-tuned in the group kitchen which he has established in Ballito to set the standards for all the restaurants, whether franchises or head office-owned. Here, sauces are refined, invented and reinvented. Recipes tweaked. (You might think the Mo-Zam-Bik calamari espetadas, with a hint of bay leaf, are the best anywhere, as I do, but Brett keeps checking, to make sure.)

Outside opinions are sought – latest to be submitted to other tastebuds is the prego sauce. The Zambeziana sauce, with coconut milk, is under constant observation. Customers’ observations and complaints (rare but they happen) are taken very seriously. The end-product of the mini-cement mixer which combines 100kg of spices every week, is checked and re-checked.

“I can now afford to try and test, make mistakes and correct them. Most young chefs don’t get such a chance.”

The signature peri-peri sauce, more than 500 litres weekly, is made from chillies which Brett buys at the end of their season, in January or February, destalks, vacuum-packs and freezes. When needed, he blanches for five minutes and blends with vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, bayleaves, salt. It is very superior indeed.

Added to a fine palate is his knowledge of every sort of produce. He gives us a mini-thesis on the different grades, sizes and provenance of prawns, including (who knew?) “the soft and broken of Argentina”. Currently, he believes, the finest are the wild Argentinian prawns imported by Glenryck, frozen at sea. The best “farmed” prawns, in his opinion, come from Ecuador.

And above all, there is Brett’s delight in food. Making it, eating it, reading about it. He collects cookbooks.

“People ask what it is, exactly, that I do. I am able to answer: ‘Anything that I want to.’ ” DM

There are Mo-Zam-Bik restaurants, currently, in Ballito, Gateway, Florida Road, Pietermaritzburg, Galleria, Linksfield, Randpark Ridge, Silverlakes, Bloemfontein, Moreleta Park, Eastgate, West Rand, Hillcrest, Klerksdorp.