MZOLI'S

Every Sunday in Cape Town, Mzoli’s is the place to be.  This is a meat butchery in the Gugulethu township outside of Cape Town where tourists, college students and young professionals gather for the live music, a party atmosphere and of course the meat! Out of all the meat I have eaten since being in Cape Town, this is by far the best. Sunday was the third time I have been at Mzoli’s and we had a group of about 12 people with us.

To order the meat you have to go in and pick out the raw meet from the window at the front.  Once the meat is chosen (options include steak, pork, chicken, beef, and my favorite Boerewors, which is an Italian sausage), you take your huge tub of meat to the back where they braii it on the massive grill they have.  The timing for food to come out is completely unknown to the customer, but once it does, the drunken people dig into the meat as if they have not eat for days.  Everybody uses their hands and there are no napkins or plates.  This may seem unsanitary to some people, but everybody is in the moment of eating all the meat their stomach can hold and do not care about the germs from the people around them.

Once the bucket of meat is devoured, the partying in the streets becomes close to overwhelming.  By 5pm, the streets surrounding Mzoli’s is packed and everybody is socializing.  People are drinking, having a good time, and going hard one last time before the workweek begins.




The interesting thing about the concept of Mzoli’s is the lack benefits the town receives from it.  Mzoli’s makes great profits, but the town never sees any of this.  They have to deal with the drunken people who roam their streets and the mess to clean up when the day is over.  Mzoli’s only have a few locals working for them, which also seems unfair to many of the locals.