Food is an essential part of having a good time at the National Arts Festival. Here’s a tastebud-teasing overview of some of the tantalising options available at the many food stalls at this year’s Fest.
Food is an essential part of having a good time at the National Arts Festival. Here’s a tastebud-teasing overview of some of the tantalising options available at the many food stalls at this year’s Fest.
Limebar Cafe is a funky stall at Fiddlers Green run by Adriaan Engelbrecht from Somerset West. The bar is family orientated with different selections on the menu and there are barmen on hand to hand mix and blend the drinks.
For children there’s a selection of smoothies, then there’s a cocktail or two for mom and a choice of drinks for dad.
“I see my business as a tool for entertaining family units and promoting socially responsible drinking habits,” says Engelbrecht.
On a regular basis when they are not at the Festival, the bar sets up camp at corporate and private functions.
Braam Raubenheimer and Hannes van Rensburg, two of the barmen at the café, say that they have also been to other festivals including like the Lagoon Festival in Langebaan and the Wacky Wine Festival in Robertson.
Another food stall with a totally different taste is Afro Pizza, which is also at Fiddlers Green. Owned by Glenville Allard, who hails from Wetton in Cape Town, the stall is a mobile pizzeria.
According to waitron Robin Swartz, the stall is proudly African, the food has soul, it is authentic, organic and fresh. They go by the slogan Sustenance for the Soul.
They cater for all pizza lovers, irrespective of age and he feels that their pizza is good value. Swartz feels that business has been slow at this year’s Festival, citing the World Cup, the public viewing area and the fan parks taking away a lot of the visitors and that Fiddler’s Green has a lot less visitors than Village Green.
A stall with a Hellenic taste for food is the The Sweet Greek. They make authentic Greek sweets, desserts and pastries.
Situated at the Village Green, which had a visibly larger attendance than Fiddler’s Green, the stall is run by the Koushis family, of whom the patriarch, Savvas, is of Greek origin so it is clear where their tastes lie.
The family have been running the stall at the National Arts Festival for the past eight years and he says that their confections sell very quickly.
All their ingredients and methods are handed down from generation to generation and all the recipes are from Cypriot and Greek descent.
Their stall caters for sweet tooth connoisseurs of all ages. They also make phyllo pastries, which are very thin and difficult to make.
Savvas says that only a few people in the country have mastered the art of making real phyllo pastries. “People come afar to buy our products and they often come back for more” adds Savvas.
For a more local, feel at home cuisine, Siyamthanda Tsotsobe’s stall, aptly named Umntu ongu mama (a woman, a mother) which means when you include its slogan: “Indlela eya kwintliziyo yendoda ihamba kwisisu sayo.
Lonto yaziwa ngumntu ongumama,” which when translated to English is: The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That is known by a woman.
Tsotsobe is from New Brighton in Port Elizabeth. It is her first time operating a stall at the Arts Festival, but her business has been going for three years.
In those three years her business has been serving the Port Elizabeth area. She worked at McDonald’s as a manager but then left to start up her own business.
Tsotsobe says that it’s the white people and especially the tourists who enjoy her food, as she believes that Xhosa food is new to them. “I also cater for vegetarians, where I serve them pap and veggies or samp and beans,” she added.
