One of the only memories I have of my father is him eating a steaming mutton curry at a seafront restaurant on a humid summer lunchtime on a hotel veranda on Durban’s esplanade in the 1970s. The curry was so masochistically hot that he was simultaneously sweating uncontrollably, smiling with joy at the glorious gastronomic explosions of pain, and dousing the flames with frequent draughts of ice-cold Castle Lager. Streams of sweat seeped through his lamb chop sideburns while his long-sleeved white cotton shirt was transparent with perspiration. The memory is so old that it appears in black and white.
Curry and KwaZulu-Natal go together like cumin and coriander. Even by the 1970s, while the descendants of Indian indentured labourers were denied a vote on account of their skin colour, their food had assumed a central role in the province’s culinary heritage. Large rural weddings held in village farmers’ halls, whose guests were as white as the bride’s dress, would routinely be catered by the local Women’s Institute with a watered-down interpretation of mutton curry and sambals served as the main course.
South Africans of South Asian descent have had an interesting history in KwaZulu-Natal since being shipped out from 1860 to cut sugar cane. Mohandas Gandhi was here as a young lawyer, sharpening his game in the business of equal rights for all before returning to India, in between acting as a stretcher bearer for the British Army at the Battle of Spionkop. How his treatment by the brutal SA police convinced him that satyagraha was the way forward is an anomaly?
A strange tension exists between the Zulu and Indian communities in coastal KwaZulu-Natal in the uncomfortable humidity among the coral trees, jasmine and coriander. This found expression in the Durban riots in 1949, when Indian South Africans were targeted — with the latest example being the 2021 riots.
As a young professional learning the ropes in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1990s, I relived that early memory with my father many times at various hotels up and down the coast with a group of enthusiastic co-conspirators. We would routinely test the chef in furiously hot orgiastic feasts framed by banana trees and the Indian Ocean that would have delighted Dionysus, Annapurna and Hades. This preceded the days of deliberating whether riesling or chenin blanc was a better alcoholic accompaniment to curry. In those days, beer and curry had a symbiotic relationship — curry to fire the thirst and beer to douse it. When something stronger was called for, the bottle tops containing the spirits were light blue, and the results spectacular.
These were exciting times. We were partly aware of a third force fuelling a civil war to disrupt negotiations that had begun between the ANC and the National Party government. And we had finally been exposed to the glories of international sport and travel after years of sanctioned isolation.
The curries at Seabelle were the finest around. The restaurant is situated on Tongaat Beach, north of eMdloti, between La Mercy and Westbrook, in a seafront area formerly reserved for South Africans designated as Indian under the laws of the previous regime. It was established by the Govender family in 1975, and its appearance can never have been objectively described as anything other than seedy. One certainly wouldn’t have picked it out from the road as a desirable place to dine.
An inviting exterior wasn’t necessary because the curries did the talking. We had been let into the secret by friends who had spent countless evenings in the 1980s sleeping in the family car outside the Seabelle while their parents enjoyed a fiery meal and a few drinks on the way back to their sugar farms across the Tugela after watching rugby at Kings Park.
I went back to the Seabelle in September. The Govenders still own it. The exterior remains seedy, though I can’t be sure if it is any seedier. The interior has been upgraded. The red velvet-covered chairs and mirror balls have disappeared, and the formerly dingy dining room is now reasonably light and airy. The wall on the way to the loo is adorned with pictures from the Seabelle epoch.
An outside section, with all-in-one prefabricated wooden tables and benches that you would normally find in the beer gardens of English pubs, appears to allow punters to dine while staring out at the ships moored in the ocean and at passing schools of porpoise in the cool ocean breeze, adjacent to a car park.
We sat inside to preserve tradition and to provide the opportunity for proper comparison. The wine list is sparse. For example, there was no opportunity to explore the growing claims of grenache as the superior accompaniment to meaty curries. A Cape sauvignon blanc was the only viable option. We ordered a mutton curry and a prawn curry with the idea that we would share. Regrettably, and no doubt, to my father’s omnipresent disappointment, I had to order the medium versions. My lunch partner is an athlete who lacks the constitution required for a hot designation. Though I suspect this choice was more humane, given that I was about to spend two hours in the compressed company of 150 others on an aeroplane.
The waiters were excellent and chatty. The bar has remained where it always was. While we waited for our food, a group of flash alpha males arrived with a growl of exhausts in a fleet of up-specced shining vehicles. One car had a blue light underneath it, giving it an alien appearance. It appeared these fellows had been playing golf. They were certainly organised. A bottle of brandy and four small Cokes were delivered to their outside table within minutes of their arrival. Four mutton bunnies followed shortly afterwards. They ate and drank quickly before filing past us into a back room. Perhaps they played billiards.
Then our food arrived, and anthropological observation transformed into internal appreciation. The prawn curry looked like a handful of white mopani worms on a bed of hot magma from the bowels of the earth. The dark red sauce of the mutton curry suggested the outer limits of medium. The rice came separately in a large bowl. A complimentary achar accompanied our meal. The presentation of the dishes was functional rather than decorative.
I don’t understand why lamb has replaced mutton in so many of the curries that appear on menus today. Mutton is far tastier and cheaper, and any toughness disappears after a few hours in a pot and decent marination. This mutton curry was tender and deliciously spiced, though I regretted the medium designation – more chilli would have transformed it into great. The same applies to the prawn, where somehow the lack of heat allowed the sweetness of the tomatoes to dominate. The lasting effects on the taste buds and the body were the opposite of evanescent. The savvy B held up well under the circumstances.
The Seabelle is an authentic cultural icon to be celebrated by those of us who appreciate our collective heritage. If you drive past to another cookie-cutter restaurant in a mall for a medium-rare steak, you are missing the essence of life.
