Gourmet SA

Fast Food

By: The Cobbler King

So the Australians beat us comfortably in the cricket tests in Johannesburg and KZN and to my mind there is only one kind of comfort eating that can take away that kind of pain and it comes in the form of really good fast food.

At times we all like to top up our grease and salt quota with the good Colonel or Ronalds’ stores products, but neither of those institutions can really be classified as good fast food. I would say that they can be called adequate at best. I also find the high after consumption doesn’t last long and feelings of guilt and anti Western World sentiments on American fast food hegemony soon intrude on any pleasure. I accept that this might not be the same for everybody, but I know my reader out there feels the same way so I’ll proceed in this vein.

So what do I mean by good fast food? Here in South Africa the whole culture of good fast food is either still to be born or has already died a silent death. Apart from the iconic Boerewors rolls and and occasional hot dog stands, biltong shacks and localised - but nevertheless ubiquitous- “tuck shops” and Spaza stores, we are singularly under resourced in access to good, nutritious and inexpensive takeaways. The last meat and gristle pie sampled at the Shell garage store stands as a sad but powerful metaphor for state of our South African fast food culture.

In New York they comprehend the idea of good fast food and it seems that every street is inundated with tastes of India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, to name a few. It’s a place where street vendors and markets abound, offering a bewildering choice of soups, sandwiches, “road food”, sausages, omelettes, noodles, rice dishes, pies and so on and so forth. I cannot understand why, in a country with so many really good ingredients on offer, we have so little choice.

On quiet days, I sit back and remember a food stand in downtown San Francisco that offered 47 varieties of sausage, including the one of Polish origin (possibly not imported that day) that was made up of strong herb and paprika laced meat - absolutely delicious and, of course, totally fat free. Thoughts of Indian road food (which I discovered in isolated Uganda) comprised of delicate pastries with aromatic and beautifully spiced contents wakes me up at night. It is a memory of the subtle blends of flavours that were best appreciated by shovelling large quantities of the dainty mini pies into ones mouth.

The European continent offers interesting and varied fast foods. Hot chestnuts with salt on the River Thames, the excellent hot dog stands in Norway and Sweden and mussels, chips and mayonnaise in Holland all spring to mind. How the dour Dutch came up with such a divine combination of flavours is a real mystery. In England there are the winkle and whelk stands where you can get jellied eels, which were always part and parcel of any visit to what we called the sea side. By the way, f you have never eaten a whelk and you come to your first opportunity it will take considerable will power to take that first bite, but trust me it is worth it! Seasoned with a bit of malt vinegar and white pepper and life cannot get much better (especially when combined with a sunny day in the UK)!

Fast food requires little planning for and if thoughtfully prepared can provide rapid satisfaction and instant fuel for those who need it – it also adds a bit of variety to the daily snacks prepared in ones own kitchen. What we need to do is capitalise on the generation of the fast food nation and bastardise it South African style. Perhaps a traditional drive through with an abundance of freshly grilled braaivleis and varied salads served by a man in khaki, or how about an African extraordinaire with wholesome mielie pap and tomato salsa served in takeaway cartons with a choice of salted meat? Let the healthy, homely options kick in soon, so if – heavens forbid – the Ozzies ever teach us how to suck eggs on the cricket pitch again, we have a varied choice of scrumptious South African delicacies to comfort eat our way through the pain.