aMadoda Braai, Woodstock – Flamed Flesh, Beer and The Devil’s Work

Good lord I’ve been trying to write this godforsaken article for quite some time now.  I must have started it and restarted it around, let’s see…. 7 times now.  You see the thing is we were with great people; the place was great; I thought the food was great; the music was awesome; the other patrons were great…

But the owners weren’t as welcoming as the other places we’ve been to.  And so Litte Al and I first struggled to decide whether or not we should write about the place, and once we had decided that we would I’m now struggling to get the writing done.

So I suppose the best thing to do would be to just put it out there.  The point of these adventures is not to review places, and definitely not to review human souls.  The point is just for us to have an adventure, photograph, write and share it with others.  But here we are, only 3 adventures down and I’m pretty OK to do some soul reviewing.  So I’ll say it –  the owners are kind of a bunch of knobjockeys.

For this time round we wanted to do things a little differently, mostly we wanted to go somewhere where we could get a little liquored and make some trouble.  We got together a great group of people Mandrax, K-Hate, B-Rad, Sos, Josie, Mr. T, Little Al and I and we decided on aMadoda Braai on a Friday night.

There were a few reasons we chose it, the biggest one for me being the fact that it’s in Woodstock, which means it’s close to home, which means the liquor could flow.

The way I see it the idea behind aMadoda’s is based on two South African institutions: shebeens and meat.  Doing it on a more commercial scale and targeting a wider audience was first done at Mzoli’s Meat in Gug’s by Mzoli Ngcawuzele in 2003.

The idea behind Mzoli’s is a butchery, he doesn’t have a liquor licence and so you bring your own or you buy your booze at the neighbouring shebeen or bar across the road.  I haven’t been to Mzoli’s yet but from what I gather it seems to be a smart idea to bring your own napkins, glasses, plates…. Whatever else you think you’ll need.

You choose your meat, it gets secret sauced, flamed, and then you feed.  The place apparently heaves, with hundreds of people getting down and the dance floor turns into a place where the devil’s work thrives.

aMadoda Braai is pretty similar but a little more geared to the customer – they have a licence, there is a menu, they provide whatever you might need, and so on.  I imagine they would be especially popular for corporate type functions.

We called ahead to book and when we got there we met Terry the manager and we introduced ourselves, told him what we’d be doing and made sure that taking some photo’s would be ok.  He was really helpful and friendly and seemed really stoked to have us there.

It seemed the devil had made a turn here too because there was a girl on the dance floor who looked like it was her last night on earth and she was going to shake that thing till it either fell off, or the night ended.

There was a gang of boys around her getting their minds blown by that thing she was shaking but she paid them no mind: her ass and that dance floor had some business that needed attending.  It was pretty awesome.

We started getting our liquor on, we ordered our food, they were out of sheep’s head so that kind of sucked, and it was around about this time that the knobjockey element arrived and Little Al was told to stop photographing, that we would use our photographs to steal their concept… For realz!?

As tempting as it may be for us to use our photographs to steal aMadoda’s never before seen concept of applying fire to flesh and consuming tasty liquor… well, I think it’s an idea that’s best left in their (and every other meat/beer fueled South African’s) capable hands.

My meat was awesome, I can’t remember the name of the combo, but it was great and really well priced.  Mostly everyone else enjoyed their meat too but the bread and chakalaka was spectacular, so, so good.

We hung out a little more, had some laughs, Little Al managed to get some more photo’s on the sly and then meat o’clock arrived and it was snooze time.

It was a fun adventure and aMadoda’s is a cool place, we just got our sulk on a little bit because we weren’t able to take as many photo’s as we’d have liked to, but all round it was a good night with great people and that’s the point really.  I hope to make a trip to Mzoli’s soon so some real mischief can be made.

 You can find aMadoda Braai at Strand Street in Woodstock, behind Miss Lyn on Albert Road.  Their number is (021) 447 2133