A night of delicious dishes at Mahogany

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Friday March 12, 2010 00:00

Starters here, main course there,  a variety of dessert also plentiful as well as  wines and drinks  flowing non-stop, the Mahogany Restaurant  absolutely turned on the style as they announced their brand  new dishes and wine flavours  for Gaborone diners.

Management is upbeat their unique brand  new dishes and wine flavours would go a long way in establishing them as a force in the city amidst a growing list of fine restaurants treating city diners to mouth-watering offerings.

Mahogany management believes that with the new dishes they have pulled  an ace up the sleeve and should established themselves as the finest in the city in the art of dish making. Of course time will tell. 

The fact is that  the re-launching comes at a time when  Gaborone city  is seeing so much delicious dishes being offered by  many restaurants to dinners at Game City, Riverwalk, Molapo Crossing, Main Mall,  as well as several  Chinese restaurants  offering their  popular dishes; forcing the likes of Gaborone Sun to  reinvent themselves or watch diners go elsewhere.  The Gaborone  Sun Hotel & Casino's restaurant would  have us  believe  that  every single dish they unveiled on Monday  evening is only unique to themselves, while the wines were also carefully selected to go with their secret of dish making unveiled on the night, at least according to the GM.

Their widely travelled French sous chef, Sanchez Guillaume swears that the  city has never seen anything like this after showing off tens of  their brand new dishes for the hotels' prestigious  restaurant (Mahogany) on Monday night.

So confident is the  Gaborone Sun management about their new found flavours that  the marketing  manager, Andrea Duplesis,  announced they have decided that during the Maitisong Annual Festival  next month, their chefs would  be present to demonstrate to the public the art of dish making, while  some food would be sampled to the public, as well as being sold during the festival as a way of advertising their new and unique flavours. During the festival lucky volunteers would be taught how to prepare some of these Mahogany dishes on the spot, and then sell some to  the Maitisong public, says Duplesis.

Perfecting these new look variety of dishes  has been a process that took over two years to complete, according to the Gaborone Sun's GM (?) Dish scouts were sent out to  'spy' on all restaurants in town to study what is and what is not available in the market, to eventually help the   would be  new dishes makers  with vital information to  revolutionise  the  art of  dish making, according to Sanchez.

The   Gaborone Sun's new look menu at Mahogany  is said to have been inspired by the  Italian, French, Japanese, Thai,  Pakistani, Singapore, Indian  food Cultures, as well as tapping on the  local and  Zambian dish knowledge  which were integrated into some dishes.

According to the Frenchman Sanchez, it has been possible for them to  create  brand new flavours   drawing from their creativity and knowledge of what is there in the world around them. ' It is very possible to create something out of this world, with the knowledge of dish making we have; we just had to use our imagination, and we  did tonight, this is what  diners would now find available here, and you can't find it anywhere else in Botswana,' said the confident looking chef, who says he has been in the business for over 10 years in Europe and Asia, before coming to the Gaborone Sun two years ago.

One of the new-look Mahogany  dishes that the Gaborone Sun  GM is so upbeat about  is the  not so  familiar but  enjoyable desert only known as  Mahogany Chocolate Foundue, a  velvety chocolate dessert made to  dip marshmallows, nougat, sponge cake and fresh fruit.  Here  a pot of chocolate is heated on the table  to melt the chocolate to enable the diners to start dipping their  sponge cakes,  fresh fruit, marshmallows, and nougat. The pot is ideal for   a couple or friends.

The chocolate fondue was undoubtedly everyone's favourite dish when it was unveiled for the first time to the media this week.  The good thing being that the whole pot and its side items come for P95 for two  people. It is  a French dish

It was an evening of chopsticks as  the guests had to sample the mainly sea food dishes  such as  prawn fritters: crispy deep fried prawns in tempura butter, served  with  an oriental shredded salad, sweet Soya and chili dipping sauce. Along with  a starter called three-cheese salad, sushi vegetable,  and sushi fish, the  new look Mahogany restaurant is confident it will excite the city taste buds with something brand new.

Then it was time to sample  some of the  new flavours in the main courses such as beef Teppanyaki, a Japanese dish which is actually a fillet of beef  griddled on a hot iron plate with  Japanese teppanyaki sauce, ginger, garlic and deep fried onion rings served  with what is called nasi goring crab rice and wok vegetables. This one goes for P110.

Along with another dish called Bouillabaisse( a classic rustic  French fish stew made with veggies, prawns, mussels, dams and line fish served with croutons, grated gruyere cheese), the beef teppanyaki seems to one of the  restaurant's triumph card.

Kung pao chicken(it comes with noodles) was also passed around, another delightful oriental dish.