TGIFOOD

FUNCHAL IN JOZI

The disappearing act of Madeiran cuisine

The disappearing act of Madeiran cuisine
Fresh produce at a market in Funchal, Madeira. (Photo: casc from Pixabay)

Most of the families of Portuguese people that I know in Jozi came from Madeira. Why’s their cuisine disappearing?

The only place I’ve eaten Madeiran food in Johannesburg is at 1920 in Hyde Park, and I’ve been going there for many years, ever since it was tucked into a Ferndale shopping centre, in a brown room that could seat 48, full of old Madeiran photographs, striped tablecloths, a mural featuring the thatched A-frame houses of Santana, quaint maps and homely cosiness. Manny and Ana Paula Barbuzano have been hard at this work for a decade and a half, she in the kitchen, Manny front of house.

Manny and Ana Paula Barbuzano have been hard working at their restaurant for a decade and a half. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Many of the dishes would be based on her own family recipes from Madeira. There would be codornizes, quails, grilled or fried, with a raisin, pine nut and sherry sauce. There could be cabrito estufado, the goat stew with wine and cinnamon. Pork belly would be used in the carne de vinho e d’alhos, with its vinegar and garlic. Manny has removed many rustic Madeiran dishes from the menu because of less interest in them and, now that he’s moved 1920 to the Sandton border, he finds his customers don’t like fatty meat, so no more pork belly either.

However, he has retained Ana Paula’s dobrada, the luscious Madeiran tripe and beans dish as well as her lingua da vaca. These are under Dishes of the House, the extraordinary dishes not for ordinary eaters.

About three years ago 1920 moved into the much bigger place, a 120-seater at the Hutton Court enclave in Hyde Park. It has two glass sides and an enormous outdoor area. This latter feature has proved pretty useful during Covid times. The vibe is very different, less cosy of course but so much more sunnily open. The clientele is loyal though the locals are different.

I’m here on a Thursday at lunch time and the place is nigh full, large as it is. The patrons seem to be a mixture of Portuguese people, mostly Madeiran in origin, and well-heeled locals. The Portuguese patrons are eating in couples, as families and fairly commonly as men-only tables.

My former greengrocer, the locally well-known Carlos de Freitas of Scala Fruiterers in Melville, was my fruit and vegetables ally and supplier, adviser and hero. We shared the excitement of grown ingredients and how to cook or eat them. What would we do with cherimoyas, nashi and the then new carambola or star fruit, with dragonfruit and pomelos? He used to make sun-dried tomatoes for himself and for me on the roof of his Melville house porch, when they were still not easy to come by. When I desired Congo Blue potatoes, he had someone grow them a season in advance. When I wanted to thread and cook minced prawn “sausages” on sugar cane stem sections for grilling, Carlos had a contact cut some for me, for the occasion.

A warm wheel of Madeira’s own flatbread, cut into slices, revealing its sandwiched molten garlic and parsley butter. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

I depended on him mightily and couldn’t envisage my food life without Carlos in it. His wife was “the best” Madeiran cook, he had told me. He also told me he’d always planned to retire to his Madeira farms. He did and I’ve not ever really recovered. Then Carlos’ daughter, Alessandra, also a friend, sold the house her dad had given her and planned to move to Madeira to see if she and her husband could live there. They left just before international travel was halted for Covid lockdowns. I was devastated again but we are in Facebook contact and she supplies me with in situ food information. She also recommended 1920 as the best restaurant source of such cuisine she’d known in Jozi.

I have a whole, warm wheel of Madeira’s own flatbread, cut into slices, revealing its sandwiched molten garlic and parsley butter. It’s called O Bolo Do Caco A Madeirense and the semi-sweet potato bread seems like part of a good starter. Luckily I also have a curious friend here today, with whom to share this and some carne de vinho e d’alhos, pieces of pork fillet pan fried after being plucked from a soaking in the vinegar and garlic of the name, tenderly served with pickled vegetables and a few flecks of red chilli. I look fondly at the pickled vegetables interspersed, also such a beloved veggie feature on Italian tables. 

The question is, if customers are dictating to restaurants at a somewhat alarming and increasing degree, what do they want to eat, instead of eating what is unique at the restaurant they have chosen or what it does best? What do they want to be served here, for instance?

‘Mr George’ Farria who arrived from Funchal 66 years ago, here with Manny Barbuzano. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Manny introduces “Mr George, a true Madeiran”. He’s spry and eloquent. Oh and he’s 85. Mr George Farria who came here from Funchal 66 years ago, explains, “I drink wine. But your brain has to be young if you’re going to last”. He awaits a group of men that includes “the ambassador”.

Madeirans emigrated here mainly from the 1900s until the years of Mr George’s arrival, dissatisfied for the most part about the raw fiscal deal Madeirans had from Portugal. They’d been creating their own cultural identity and cuisine for 500 years before they reached us. 

Madeira is closer geographically to Morocco than to Portugal and sometimes I wonder about that sharing the use of cinnamon with meat. However their history started in Portugal or rather, from Portugal when Henry the Navigator somewhat recklessly allowed João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, two young sailors to sail a ship along the African coast. They landed at Porto Santo island because of a storm. To cut their adventure story short, they later found what they called Madeira because of all the wood there. They set fire to the trees as they left and those burned for seven years. They were bay forests and, in the north, some survived. Bay leaves are very much part of Madeiran national cuisine. The ashes of so many trees also made fertile for vegetable and fruit growing, the rest of the island.

The leaves are part of the Madeiran espetada, skewered pieces of rump rubbed with bay leaves, sea salt and garlic, cooked hanging from a bent bay branch over coals and served like that. Nowadays the bay or laurel branch is usually a metal contraption and the meaty drippings, as ever, land on the milho frito or whatever is below. 

Madeiran espetada was once hung from a bent bay branch, to be cooked over coals. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

That’s one of our dishes on the table, its milho frito being crispy-edged fried cubes of maize meal, also a national favourite. 

The other dish is served with Madeira’s maddeningly delicious hand cut round chips. It’s the trinchado, wherein the beef has been in wine, marinating with bay leaves of course, garlic and a little chilli before its pan frying.

I would love to have some of the Madeiran fish stew that’s two days in the making, full of wine, bay leaves, fennel, peppers and olives. There is simply no time and no space. There is none for any dessert either.

There are some dishes that are as Portuguese as they are Madeiran and vice versa. Like the bacalhau and the pica pau. And then there are very Madeiran dishes like the black scabbard fish, not available here, cooked in passion fruit and served with banana. For the most part, dishes on the menu, otherwise have a little of the Portuguese traditions and maybe a bit of the Madeiran influence. 

Then there are the prawns. There are not many of those in Madeira or Portugal for that matter but many South Africans have the idea that Portuguese food of any place has to do with garlic and piri-piri, prawns and chicken and lots of it. Some mainlanders from Portugal came out to South Africa between the world wars at the invitation of the then government, to swell the numbers of white inhabitants. But the prawn thing came from the other Portuguese settlers in the 60s and 70s, ex colonists who fled Mozambican independence and came into South Africa.

1920 serves a lot of peri peri chicken and huge quantities of prawns served with garlic or beer or peri peri or all of it. They do because “people want it.” Ana Paula even makes hybrid dishes like a super-popular dish of sliced, Portuguese chouriço, braised in port, with Mozambiquan prawns and chilli, as well as potato and tomato. Of course, it tastes great.

The fizzy Madeiran cooldrink often seen in travel pictures, called Brisa. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

I dither a bit about sharing some poncha with Manny. Despite being a wine producer of sound note, Madeira has its poncha, considered to be the typical drink. Because of all the sugarcane grown, many spirits are also produced. Poncha depends on rum from the village of Porta da Cruz. It’s a drink, supposedly once called poncha à pescador, to warm the Madeiran fishermen on cold nights at sea, made with rum and lemon peel or tangerine or orange water, sugar or honey.

Instead, I have the fizzy Madeiran cooldrink often seen in travel pictures. It’s called Brisa and I have the granadilla one. 

By the way, 1920 is named after the famous and now rare Madeiran brandy called “1920 Aguardente Velha” (Old Firewater) produced by Carvalho, Ribeiro and Ferreira in the 1940s.

By far the biggest number of Portuguese settlers to South Africa were the ones from Madeira and yet this is the food culture being fastest subsumed for a few reasons. 

‘Carne de vinho e d’alhos’, the meat treated in the vinegar and garlic of the name. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

The first one is ignorance by eaters, who consider Portuguese food, no matter where they have it or what the circumstances, to be the prawns and garlic piri piri sort. Another reason it seems, is that Madeirans eat better at home where the matriarchs make “the best” food, as opposed to “going public” with their cuisine and requiring Madeiran restaurants. It is interesting that there are quite a few Madeiran Portuguese eaters here at 1920 today though. And then there is the matter that a ruling government’s cuisine almost always negatively affects that of those being ruled. It happens everywhere but the political relationship between Portugal and Madeira has been another example.

When I ask Madeiran friends where their food is, apart from at 1921, I often see shrugs and hear mentions of Madeira Day or their grandmothers. I feel as though I’m a maniac trying to find Madeirans their own fading cuisine and get some for myself while I’m about it. DM/TGIFood

1920 Portuguese Restaurant, Hutton Court, 1 Summit Rd, Hyde Park. 011 326 3161 

There’s much more from Tony Jackman and his food writing colleagues in his weekly TGIFood newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Friday. Subscribe here. Also visit the TGIFood platform, a repository of all of 0ur food writing.

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here.

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  • John Weaver Weaver says:

    Great article, thank you. A few years back we went to Madeira for 10 days, 4 of the restaurants we went to for dinner immediately recognised our credit cards, and were upset that we had not introduced ourselves as South Africans. The Madeirans have contributed greatly to South Africa, unfortunately they all hanker to return to Madeira and buy a farm or restaurant. Our loss.

  • Georgina Pilkington says:

    I didn’t even know that 1920 was Madeiran. I have loved the meals I have enjoyed there.
    please keep on educating us.

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