Flatdogs is pretty unique in many ways, one of which is certainly our à la carte restaurant! There are no set meals or set meal times — guests are able to order what they’d like, to eat when they’d like to eat it.

The restaurant seats around 50 either inside under the thatch, or at our tables in the courtyard and garden area looking overlooking the river.

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Breakfast menu · Main menu

Our Chefs

Our in-house trained chefs have worked with us over the years to develop a bistro-style menu with the emphasis on simple things, done well. Isolated as we are, everything is made from scratch; our bread, our nachos, our fiery chilli sauce and tangy onion marmalade. We use as much locally-grown and -raised produce as possible. One of our favourite vegetarian specials is the Chillied Butternut Parcels — crispy phyllo pastry filled with spicy roasted butternut and a dash of homemade pesto, then served with a fresh mushroom sauce (opposite).

Daily Specials

We try to make our Daily Specials Board a mix of Flatdogs favourites and new recipes our chefs want to try (we are used as guinea pigs first so don’t worry too much!) to keep things interesting (interesting in a good way we hope?!). Here are some examples:

• Corn and bacon chowder with homemade sesame crackers.
• Wild rocket, pear, walnut and feta salad with a lemon dressing.
• Beef Wellington – tender fillet of Zambian beef with homemade chicken liver pate wrapped in golden puff pastry with marsala sauce served with creamy potato bake and mixed vegetables.
• Pork fillet with apple sauce served with sautéed potatoes and onions, spiced cabbage and green beans.
• Homemade ravioli – homemade pasta filled with white bean and leek in a creamy sauce and served with a white wine and tomato sauce and parmesan shavings.
• Spiced Chicken Meatballs – chicken meatballs in a fragrantly spiced broth with vegetables and noodles.
• Chicken and Almond Curry – tender chicken pieces marinated in yoghurt and flavoured with almonds and spices, served with local rice, chutneys and a coconut chapati.

Desserts

At the top of our “all time most popular” list is the Flatdogs chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce… choc heaven! Other home-made specialities include gingerbread ice-cream with maple syrup and pears baken in filo pastry served with cream and chocolate sauce!

Fresh, Local Produce

As we said before, we try to use fresh local produce where we can, often picked only hours before it’s eaten. This is not only better for the taste and goodness, but eating our greens also helps people in the local community! One of the people we help is a local farmer called Rodgers who can be seen here delivering his veggies by bicycle. He is happy to make the 40 km round trip two or three times a week to ensure our guests get the freshest veg in the Valley. He employs two other people so he now supports three families from his garden business. Flatdogs helped him build a well and provided a pump to irrigate his garden. We help in planning his production for the year and sourcing seeds for the more unusual western veg we ask him to grow for us.

Our Gardener

Donald Banda, our chief gardener is responsible for growing and caring for our well-protected veggie garden. The garden is surrounded by an eight foot high brick wall with an extra strip of electric fence around the outside, as one October our resident elephant herd, led by the inimitable Mrs Wonky Tusk, managed to push down the wall to get to the pawpaw and lettuces! The top of the wall is covered with diamond mesh to slow down the baboons and monkeys trying to help themselves to the tomatoes and broccoli. So Donald has his work cut out for him, but his green fingers give life to our herbs, lettuces, rocket, sorrel, tomatoes, broccoli, beetroot, pak choi, spinach, cauliflower, runner beans (first crop soon!), the passion fruit vines, pawpaw trees and even some melons when we have space. He’s incredible!