A Restaurant In The Bush

Flatdogs Camp has always had a different way of doing things. When we started life, our guests were mostly independent travellerswho liked to be able to pick and choose what they wanted to do. This extended to the way they ate; so of course we gave people what they wanted. Choice! Now people expect to have great food when they are on safariand luckily this fits in with our love of food and cooking.

We are one of the few safari lodges that has an à la carte restaurant,enabling us to reallymake the most of the fantastic local produce available. By working with suppliers in the area, we have helped create a new supply chain that we could not have imagined ten years ago;and we serve fresh vegetables grown by local people who are benefiting from tourism. Depending on the season, we can get everything from asparagus to zucchini!

All our beef and pork come from a farm in Chipata, where the animals are raised free range.We source free-range eggs from a youth development centre who teach local youths methods of farming - as well as building and carpentry skills. And we have some of the best beef products in the world that come to us after being dry-aged for over 20 days.

Recently, we have found a free-range duck supplier in Lusaka, and some locally-raised rabbit was on the menu a few days ago. And we offer a variety of different cuisines as well. See below an example of what we might have on the ‘Specials’ board.

By: Adrian Coley Photos: Flatdogs Camp Rabbit Ravioli – home-made pasta filled with herbed rabbit, served with a sherry and mushroom-cream sauce Pork Meatballs – Asian-style meatballs in a fragrant broth with stir-fried vegetables and egg noodles

Our chefs are all trained in-house, and during the busy months in camp are serving over 100 covers a day as most guests eat in the restaurant three times a day. By having a ‘Daily Specials’ menu we change the choices offered every day, and this keeps the chefs constantly interested and challenged. Our chefs make all our bread, fresh pasta, cakes, nachos, tortillas, etc. We make our own chutneys and our famous chilli sauce and fresh mayonnaise to sell with the home-made fish cakes. We smoke our own trout fillets as part of a smoked trout salad, and we slow-cook beef cheeks for our home-made chilli con carne, workingconstantly with the suppliers to find new ways of using every part of the animals we are lucky enough to have available to us.

We have to remind ourselves that none of the chefs has ever eaten in a proper restaurant where they might be able to sample this type of food, but they eagerly acquire so much knowledge that we are constantly surprised; and our guests constantly spoiled!