Hey everyone hope you're having an amazing day. It's mark wiens, i'm in durham north carolina, which is home to one of the few or one of the. Only zimbabwean restaurants in the united states we're going to meet chef zweily we're going to watch some of the cooking and see how some of the dishes are prepared, and then we are going to have a zimbabwean food feast, that is the zimbabwe platter at zueles. In durham north carolina, i'm going to share all of the food with you right now.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Let me introduce you all to chef zoily, very nice to meet you. Thank you.

So much for having us and you're gon na get right started. Jumping into cooking good thanks: how are you so? This is uh sausage? Okay, it's uh fifty percent beef. This is the grand pork, okay and um. It's actually infused with some exotic southern african seasonings.

All right, so i have a bucha locally. Who actually makes this sausage for me, which is actually from zimbabwe too, so it's um, authentic zimbabwean, as soon as that hits the grill. You can already smell that aroma coming off of it teddy petty chicken cool and are those seasoned yet or is that so those were marinated in our house: uh, periphery, marinade, okay, again our cherry perry, uh peppers. We have them grown locally here for us and uh.

We have somebody that grows them and uh, they grind them up for us and we use them yeah, very cool, okay and then on the stove here, okay, but we actually make this out of our dried beans. We also have some oh yeah raised oxtails. These are braised for about six hours: okay um, before we uh cook them for sure before we have them for service. Okay, this is actually the finished product and we have here something really interesting.

These are derby collard greens. These are colored ways smothered in a peanut butter. Sauce right here we have some salsa is known back home in this is independe in the develop language. This is its trial, ground, cornmeal, that's steamed literally tunnel and water, and they stand up until it gets very nice and soft.

Oh so that's it yep! That's what would be similar to east african uganda. Yes, that's very similar to bukali, okay, same exact thing: okay, cool dishes have probably been cooked for a long time already like the oxtails right have been braised down, but i love. Oh, it just already smells so good. I love it.

I love it. I can already see the mule coming together that we're gon na be eating, and so there's almost two sides to the different dishes: the grill and then the the slower cooked, stews and meats and vegetables. So is that cornmeal? Yes, this is uh out of the cornmeal. Okay, and do you have mainly the same dishes every day or do you rotate some dishes? So it's every day we have just different um items on the menu, but everything is pretty much every day.

Okay, we have a pretty expensive menu. It's most of the. I would say about 90 percent of the dishes are authentic dishes that you will find back home in. Actually, where did you learn to cook and get most of your recipes for my mother? Yes, so my parents are still in zimbabwe and uh growing up.

I watched my mom and my aunts making some you know traditional survival food and i just had a and a passion and an interest in it, and that was part of the reason you really wanted to start yes, really to introduce people to the you know aftercare Way of eating to the african food, so would this be the the main staple of yes, this is the main staple all right of zimbabwe cool. Oh man, kitty pity chicken wings just smell incredible, they're marinated, and then she just sprinkled it with some of the. I think the pity pity sauce, yes, like a chili based sauce, some chili powder and then sprinkled them with salt. Oh man, it's gon na be so good that oxtail smells incredible exactly how my grandmother used to to eat them.

Okay, when i was looking at your menu and looking at what looked awesome, i saw the zim platter and i knew it had to be the zoom platter because it just it's huge. First of all, it's huge. Second of all, it includes a little bit of everything that you serve here, so you get to taste like she said this is zimbabwe on a platter and i think she's still putting some things on the tray, but so far we've got the oxtails, the pita beer, Chicken, the samosas, the vegetable and the sausage is there, let's take a look that is the zimbabwe at zuely's. Yes, thank you chefs.

This is amazing, but we are heading to go eat right now. Okay, you want to wash your hands. Thank you very much all right. Thank you micah.

You want to wash your hands all right. Thank you. I like hot water. Okay, here you go.

Thank you very much so sitting down with leo and chef zweily for for lunch today or kind of a late lunch late night food looks incredible all right. Thank you. Oh that looks incredible. We have the oaks tail.

I was looking forward to it, which has been braised in what kind of first seven hour bruised and what kind of like uh, spices or sauces in it. There's curry base okay, yeah freshly grilled. Thank you a sausage. It's like a snake daddy! Thank you very much.

It does so the way we eat our sata is a fila. Okay, there's no taste to it. It makes you fall and it absorbs the flavor of whatever it is you're eating all right. So then you can either dip it in your sauce.

So you kind of make like a little a little patty and then kind of scoop up with that. Okay, almost mold it into a little into a little bite at the tips of your fingers. Yes, you can feel it's more and then you kind of scoop up. Okay, we'll start with the the vegetable all right, oh yeah, so that's the peanut butter, uh and alcohol greens immediately.

You taste the nuttiness, the peanuty flavor of it and then the crunch of the collard greens. Okay, got ta. Try that oxtail next, though, break into a piece: oh it just slides off the the tail braised for seven hours in the curry, sauce and then some of that sauce, oh wow, yeah cocktail is amazing: the depth of flavor, the tenderness of it just melts in your Mouth so much flavor, just a really rich sauce with a very like harmonious blend of curry powder spices. And then how would you normally eat the sausage, so you just break it and just break a piece: okay with the sides, so you eat it with the sad size, literally anything with every bite.

Take a little bit of the sauza, then mix in with some of the sauces or mix in with the sausage. Okay, you said it was half beef and half pork 5050 and you could see when they were grilling this just one up in a flame and then you kind of like put out the flame. You can definitely already tell it's going to have an amazing smokiness to it cool, oh yeah, that sausage is incredible. It has this amazing very, like dense texture to it compacted in its.

It doesn't fall apart in your mouth. You have this amazing density to it. You taste the spices in there, the meatiness of it and the smokiness of it. Oh man, that's so good and while we're eating, i wanted to ask chef zueli a little bit about how you got started with the restaurant.

How you? Because i know you you're originally from zimbabwe, you're born in zimbabwe yeah. How did you come to north carolina and then how did you start zueli's? So i originally came to north carolina for school, okay, um and i wanted to do culinary that so badly but durham. I did at that time did not have a culinary program for me to do so. I ended up in hospitality and to a reason at north carolina central university.

So it is hospitality, it is part of food, but i always you know just went came back to the kitchen, that's my comfort zone, that's my comfort area, so i worked for restaurants after graduating. I worked for restaurants for years before actually um my husband and i taking a leap to starting our own restaurant and um. So it was a a process just to take the leap of faith into what kind of cuisine we're gon na serve because uh, if you are italian, you open an italian restaurant. If you're trying this, you open a chinese restaurant, so i was like well, i'm zimbabwe need to open this love, one, restaurant and um.

What better representation you know of who i am than to serve flavors that i grew up eating. So when we opened the restaurant, i just started thinking back and talking to my mom about what we grew up eating or what she grew up eating and we decided to come up with a menu of things that we could find here locally. Something that i love about, chef, zueli and leo is that right off the bat you can tell that they're. This is what they're passionate about the love in the food, the family recipes and then also the the like love for the community and what you guys are doing is what makes a difference.

That's absolutely awesome and i can't wait to dig into the video chicken wing freshly grilled she sprays on some sauce sprinkles on some chili powder up in a heap of in a cloud of smoke and fire. Oh man, oh yeah, immediately before i even took the bite, i could smell that the aroma of the chili, a hint of sourness. What also really stands out, though, is the smokiness, because that skin is just it kind of like ignites for a few seconds, then it's put out then ignites, and so you got that real smokiness on the skin and those spices, oh yeah, that's so smoky and um. You know we didn't put peanut butter in our colors, but we had collard greens.

There were so many similarities. We had oxtail coming up. You know oh yeah cause that's a big yeah southern southern food, but also also the similarities between african-american food culture, uh-huh and african food, and that's what our next restaurant is going to. Tell us going to tell that story.

Very bright cool, refreshing, tomatoey, little tomato. It's our red, pepper, okay and the red pepper. I'm gon na try the the samosa next. I think i got the veg, oh, which is oh it's incredible, though, is it mainly potato or squash? Mainly potato? Oh, you taste the amazing spices, a curry powder spice to it oh yeah, so good.

This brings me back to my my childhood. When samosas were my favorite single snack every afternoon i would eat samosas. Can i just pick up that that oxtail? Oh, the oxtail is it's all good, oh yeah. Actually i was going to say the oxtail is one of the best things, but then the peter beauty, chicken wings and the bottles like they're, all three, absolutely incredible, yeah.

Definitely when you come here, you do want to get the the zim platter, because you don't want to miss any of it. There's nothing! You would want to take away from your meal here, please how many times as we're sitting here eating and then the sausage uh leo's just going to share with us such a cool story about the borrowers where it comes from and how how they get it yeah. So this uh, this border sausage here, is actually made by a zimbabwean family who migrated to north carolina in 1974, and they are in the middle of nowhere in this in the rural part of the state. They make this sausage for us by hand and zoey, and i travel about two hours east to get it and we cook it here over over open fire and that's why it's so fresh and so good that sausage is amazing, the borders and that is cool.

Now. You're also supporting a family yeah in the middle of the countryside in north carolina originally from zimbabwe, making sausage okay, it's time to to load up on some more food, oh yeah, i could eat this all day. I love the bar wash so much flavor. You taste the fire in it and just that blend of spices yeah.

I love the peanut butter. I love how it just enrichens, the collard greens. Oh it's so meaty, it's so tender, but just come. Take a look, close up.

Look at that! It's so tender! It's so jiggly, oh oxtail is amazing. It's the perfect vessel for picking up some of the sauces picking up some of the vegetables, some of the different meats, because it kind of acts to scoop. But then you can also absorb all. At the same time, one last piri piri chicken wing, oh man, i love how this is a real chicken wing, real texture, i'm gon na pour on some of the pour on some of the piri piri sauce.

Oh yeah, um. I've just been loving our time here. Hanging out talking with leo talking with chef, zoe lee one of the things that you'll notice when you're here is just how homey it is, how personal it is. So many of the things leo was telling me they built these tables for the restaurant.

They brought the decorations from zimbabwe, um chef zweily's uncle made the drums. The tables are still cool. Everything is custom in here when you're eating. Here you are family and that completes our meal at zuely's in durham north carolina.

The food is just outstanding when you're in durham, you have to come to zoeli's again there's this location. They have a location at duke university, they're, opening a future location in downtown durham as well, which is going to be a little bit of a different concept and going to be extremely cool as well. Next time, i'm in durham, i will definitely check that out as well. I want to say a huge thank you to chef zweily and to leo for just the warm welcome the incredible hospitality and the delicious food and i'll have all their information in the description box below.

Thank you very much for watching this video. Please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, leave a comment below i'd love to hear from you and, if you're not already subscribed, make sure you subscribe now for lots more food and travel videos thanks again for watching goodbye from durham north carolina And i will see you on the next video.