Shamwari – Author’s cuisine

By ear, the name takes time to be memorised. We change the letters in this unconscious process of trying to make the pronunciation something that is more believable to us. We need to arrive to absorb it: Shamwari. Located at 171 Rua Mateus Sansão Mutemba, it’s living its second life and, like people, the second life of spaces is lived with greater intensity. Perhaps the greatest example, if we want to personify it, we will find in Gilda Langa, the chef who would prepare the octopus spaghetti we would taste. Very talkative and with a physique reminiscent of a boxing fighter, but with the gentle touch that says a lot about the dishes she makes, she is Shamwari’s alma mater. She speaks with the confidence of someone who knows what she’s doing, the ingredients and the quantity, the obsession with detail that is so necessary in signature cuisine, without fear that we will steal the recipe from her. “The secret lies in the chef’s sensitivity,” she tells us. When the dish arrives at the table, the wider flavour gives way to the smaller one, as if it were a kind of matryoshka. We feel the spaghetti, the cream and the Parmesan, the mussels and the octopus, the touch of white wine, the garlic… And we finish, with the fork and knife on the plate in a horizontal position, giving birth to a new myth: octopus will only allow itself to be (well) cooked by women.

Gilda Langa is Shamwari’s alma mater

Issue 71 Jan/Feb | Download.