Take the euphoria at Tamasha, some roast and dry-fry from Nerkwo, mix in some music from Mercury, pick out the dress code at Blankets and Wine and then throw in the ultimate BYOB house party, and ladies and gentleman you will have yourselves the beginning of a very very good time!!
Chant: Nyama! Nyama! Nyama! Response: Nyama! Call: Ya Shisa? Response: Nyama!
Shisa is Zulu for ‘hot’ or ‘burn’ and Nyama well, is Swahili and Zulu for ‘meat’. Shisa Nyama therefore is a popular and ultimate Nyama Choma (burn) joint in Midrand, SA, about half an hour’s drive from Johannesburg.
If you have the chef or manager’s number, do call in and order your meat so that it’s nice and ready when you get there. Ask the bouncer also to reserve an area for you and your crew to roost, because on a nice sunny weekend, you are bound to miss out on space!
Shisa Nyama resembles a spacious cement front yard with branded picnic umbrellas providing shade in the hot sun. Along with a few plastic chairs, benches are provided and some chopped up logs that can fit at least two persons.
If there’s no space, you can huddle around in a circle or sit on the side of stone steps leading into the main building at Shisa Nyama, which houses the kitchen and hundreds of kilos of meat.
Make sure you have a good view where you perch because you will want to see the beautiful people walking into Shisa Nyama, and those bumping to the beats blaring from gigantic speakers!
The DJ is cordoned off from the rest of the party people, and patrons carry their own drinks from the bar. The drinks are placed appetizingly in cubes of ice that are laid out like sand in empty beer carton boxes.
Kenyans like goat, but in South Africa beef is king! A typical order consists of roast beef steaks, roasted Boerewors (sausage), succulent roast chicken, big blocks of Pap (ugali) and a fried mixture of beans, cabbage and carrots.
If you’re a foreigner and need to make friends, put in a kind word to one of the bouncers or the waiters and they could help improve your social ineptitude.
“This is how South Africans like to hang out,” says one reveler. “We come early and leave early too, especially on Sunday. How do you like it?”
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