.
Johan Muller and Dagan Gradwell at Mo-Zam-Bik at Gateway. Picture: Peter Duffy
Residents of the new Gateway Hotel certainly have an array of dining options right on their doorstep, with restaurants in the huge shopping centre popping up around every corner.
Just a few metres from their door is Sevruga and, next to it, the much more casual MO-ZAM-BIK, an offshoot of the original restaurant in Ballito.
It seems to have gone national, with branches now also in Hillcrest, Lakefield, Brooklyn and Beyers Naude, wherever they may be.
With bright but minimal décor, it’s a very basic operation, which is apparently what it set out to be – no-frills eating in the style of Mozambican beach huts.
The main diversion at lunchtime is to sit on the terrace tables overlooking the Wavehouse and watch children risking life and limb on the water rides.
Specials are on the blackboard and this week included items like calamari in a creamy sauce, prawns and crayfish Thermidor, and prawn curry. A crab curry might have appealed on another day, but it was too hot to get down and dirty.
So, not very imaginatively, it was peri-peri chicken giblets and prawn rissoles for starters. The first were tasty and blindingly spicy, the rissoles stodgy, with an unremarkable, slightly dry filling.
Strike those. Olives stuffed with cashews and marinated in chilli and lime olive oil, or calamari tubes with chouriço and green olives might be more interesting.
The crispy calamari tentacles are enjoyable, and you can also have chicken livers, trinchado (beef strips), chicken rissoles, grilled chouriço and a chicken liver and calamari mix.
Grilled fish of the day was kabeljou, but we once again rather unimaginatively went for the peri-peri baby chicken and a combo of prawns and calamari.
The chicken was good. Maybe not the best in town, but well-marinated and thankfully nowhere near as hot as the giblets.
The prawns were just right, the calamari needing more browning (I sound like a stuck record), the whole made more interesting by tasty rice flavoured with coconut.
For the rest, there are steaks, espetadas, several versions of chicken, including a deboned one, and pregos.
Some dishes deviate from the norm, like grilled linefish with a coconut milk, chilli and lime sauce, or a mix of green bananas, mango, coriander, shallots and coconut milk.
The vibe is cheerful, the staff engagingly friendly. So I might head back there to try the espetada of calamari tubes and tentacles. I had that in the early days of the original Mo-Zam-Bik in Ballito and it was a memorable dish.
Prices: Starters R27 to R65; mains R48 to R220.
Opening hours: Seven days a week from noon.
Telephone: 031 836 1574.
Last time we ate at Ton Hoi in Glenashley we rather enviously watched the next table tuck into a plate of big, crispy salt and pepper prawns.
So they were a must this time round, and were so crunchy you could have eaten the shell and most of the head. With a plate of fried rice and another of bok choy, it was an ideal meal.
Pasha’s, the bustling little venue a couple of doors down from Ton Hoi, is doing so well they’ve opened a takeaway (with a few tables) on the other side of the Chinese restaurant.
The focus here is on fish, with an array from linefish to hake, sole and calamari. And even squid heads and “prawn pops”. There are also sauces, salads and specials.
And apparently a deli is also planned.
The number is 031 572 5922.
