Harare

Dining in Harare — The Essential Guide

Zimbabwe’s Capital at Table

Harare is a city of extraordinary resilience — a capital that has survived decades of economic turbulence with a dining culture intact and, in its finest restaurants, genuinely excellent. The Meikles Hotel’s century of providing Zimbabwe’s most formal hospitality, the city’s steakhouse culture powered by the country’s superb cattle farming tradition, and the garden restaurants of Eastlea that serve traditional Zimbabwean cooking with the warmth of a personal invitation together constitute a dining scene of genuine character.

Zimbabwe’s food culture draws on the Shona and Ndebele agricultural traditions, the British colonial influence on the formal dining room, and the game meat tradition of the surrounding bush: the impala steak, the ostrich, the crocodile, and the kudu that appear on Harare’s most distinctive menus reflect a cooking environment that no European city can replicate.

The Zimbabwean Table

Sadza — the stiff maize porridge that is Zimbabwe’s staple food — is the foundation of the Zimbabwean table. Eaten with stews of game meat, vegetables, or relish, it is the dish that defines what it means to eat in Zimbabwe. The finest Harare restaurants (Victoria 22, The Goose) serve it with the pride of a food culture that regards sadza as a national symbol rather than a poverty-era survival food.