It is necessary to breach the barrier of mine dumps, drunken road design and prejudice that separates Johannesburg from the southern suburbs to get to the acclaimed faux vine entwined Restaurante Parreirinha Bar and Beer Garden in La Rochelle. But it is well worth the journey, because there are few better places to enjoy the discreet (and indiscreet) charms of the local Portuguese community.

Restaurante Parreirinha Bar and Beer Garden

 La Rochelle is home to third generation Portuguese, as well as refugees from Angola and Mozambique. The latter bringing with them fiery peri-peri chillies, the key ingredient in the East Coast variant of their national cuisine. And there are few places better to enjoy this style of cooking than at the Parreirinha, converted from an old prison.

In the courtyard wizened old men, with stubble on their chins, sit around a table pouring liqueurs into richly perfumed coffees, gesticulating madly and all talking together in a language that sounds like poetry, but delivered at a few decibels higher than normal hearing requires.     

Pardon Me

At an adjoining table a man slowly slides down his chair and under the table. His companion appears not to notice, until a waiter appears and says, ‘Pardon me, but I think your husband just slid under the table.’

The woman calmly looks up and replies, ‘No he didn’t. He just walked in the door.’

Portuguese Cuisine

Many argue that the Parreirinha is the finest Portuguese restaurant in Jozi. I’m not going to disagree, though I do think The Radium Beer Hall in Orange Grove is its equal.

Here you can enjoy chicken livers or giblets in a peri-peri sauce, oysters, kalde verde soup or sardines grilled in olive oil for starters. The restaurant is famed for its seafood offerings and you are urged to try their various prawn dishes. My favourite main course is their lemon drizzled seafood espetada; a lavish affair layered with calamari, prawns and fish with a bowl of clams on the side.

What makes any meal even better is the fairly eccentric owners and setting. You can either be seated in the old prison courtyard under hanging ties confiscated from anyone entering a little too formally attired; or in a much more intimate old holding cell.

Pub & Beer Garden 

Off the courtyard, in what was once the old charge office, is the dimly lit wood-panelled pub decorated with Portuguese football memorabilia, tile mosaics and a flag bordered mural embedded with empty wine bottles. Here a whole range of concoctions are served, each of which the barman assures are a national drink of Portugal.

Particularly unforgettable is caipirinha, a blend of lemon, sugar, cane spirit, and the potent Aguardente Bagaceira, which many foolishly use to douse raging peri-peri induced infernos. One of these is a bleary-eyed man singing at the end of the counter, his arms and head movements giving operatic effect to his strong voice.

‘Hey! This is not a fado house,’ cautions the barman.