Sarah Buitendach: Love, longing, and lunch

In the 8th season of his TV show Parts Unknown, the late rockstar chef Anthony Bourdain visited Houston, Texas. As the show kicks off, Bourdain says, “Texas — Houston in particular — is a very different place from what you might imagine from the stereotypes and the sound bites of its national political figures. Immigrants, refugees, and non-white Americans have in fact been transforming the city, the food, and culture of Houston for years. Welcome to America, people.”

Over the course of the episode he meets members of this diverse immigrant community. There’s Yen and Bryan Tran, who are expats from Vietnam. At their store-cum-restaurant, they ply the chef with a hybrid of Vietnamese and Hispanic dishes, including rich brothy pho with brisket, eye-round beef, meatball and tripe, and tacos with eggs, jalapeños, and tomatoes.

After a game of cricket (yes, cricket in Texas!), Bourdain sits down with Indian-subcontinent native Kuldeep Patel and the rest of his team for tandoori chicken, curried goat, and potato masala dosas.

In another segment, he eats a stew of sausage, shrimp, dried mackerel, and Malabar spinach over fufu, and Texas beef brochettes with ratatouille. This is prepared by Congolese refugees Gertrude and Albert Lombo and Gimoule and Constant Ngouala. Apart from feeling uncontrollably ravenous, the episode left me melancholy.

Sure, it was comforting to see these people happily and successfully forging new lives in a country. It was a proper “American dream” interlude, but I felt a real sadness about this mishmash of humans being so far from their original homes, their friends and family, their own languages, culture, and landscape. You realise, watching it, how food becomes a critical tool to evoke what you hold dear and what you pine for when you are a “foreigner”.

Perhaps the show hit my heart so heavily because I am not sure I’d have that kind of courage — to leave a place I love, based on some kind of hopeful, uncertain promise of things being better. People go because life is untenable, dangerous or limited, but that decision still requires untold bravery and resilience. I’d always be one of those who’d long for what they’d left.

In my case, that is Joburg. I can hear you sniggering about my probably misguided and possibly tragic devotion to this mixed-up, hard and, in parts, crumbling city. Of course, the irony is that everyone who calls this weird place home either came here from somewhere else for the opportunities or is the descendant of someone who struck out for Joburg and its mythical gold-lined streets. It’s one of the main reasons to despise xenophobia and the populist nonsense of anyone in this town who spouts it. But it’s also the reason we, like Houston, have such a rich culture of good graze.

I’m not talking about 46-course foam-filled degustation menus. That is not our main skill. I mean baklava from Olivia’s, whose owner John Killas’s forefathers came from Cyprus. Or injera eaten in the Ethiopian quarter downtown. If I’m lucky, it’s proper Durban mutton curry made by my friend Shaun’s mom-in-law, who’s visiting from there. Or sadza and muriwo made by the parts of our family who come from Zimbabwe, and my Dutch cousin’s completely addictive gevulde speculaas biscuits.

Uproot me to London or Perth or Toronto and I’d have a tear about the seasonal seafood pasta suggested by Paolo Scalla from Mastrantonio in Illovo or the legendary chilli bites that my sister’s bestie’s mom, Mrs Pond, makes in her Randpark Ridge kitchen. It’s the meals made by the great people of this city that I love.