Restaurant aims to give inmates a lock on careers

By Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune

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Behind the kitchen door, the cooks sport orange jumpsuits and tattoos. Tips to waiters are carefully controlled. And through one of the windows, behind a row of blooming trees, is a 30-foot-high fence of electric razor wire.

Pollsmoor Prison, the notorious lockup where Nelson Mandela served part of his 27-year sentence, has dressed up a cafeteria formerly used by guards and opened the new restaurant to the public.

Diners who don't mind a car search and a bit of questioning about their motives for visiting can enjoy surf and turf or a dozen other specialties, cooked and served by inmates.

The idea is to provide job training for some of Pollsmoor's more cooperative prisoners and break the cycle that lands most ex-cons back in jail when they can't find work.

"If they can't get jobs, crime is always an option for them," said Abraham Bruintjies, the restaurant supervisor. "We want to make sure when they leave they have options."

The restaurant, a short drive from Cape Town along one of the region's famed wine routes, is quickly gaining a cult following, not just for its cheap and succulent T-bone steaks but also for its unique ambience.

Open for lunch seven days a week, and for dinner two evenings, the restaurant features a menu that includes buttery snails on toast, chicken cordon bleu, a seafood platter and desserts. There's a "kiddies" menu, and diners eager to imbibe can choose from beer, spirits or some of the superb South African wines produced at the wine estates near the prison.

Just as enticing as the food is the chance to chat with waiters in jail for home invasion, theft or other nonviolent crimes.

"Inside [the cellblock] there's so much stress. You come here, and it's nicer," says Masheza Peter, 25, who's doing six years for stealing cars. "This is good work. You meet a lot of people and you get tips."

Inmates chosen for their cooperative attitude start work in the restaurant's kitchen washing dishes and scrubbing floors and then move on to grilling, frying or other cooking tasks. Eventually the most talented — those with the best English skills and most polished manner — become waiters. Most are nearly indistinguishable from their colleagues on the outside.
 
"Would you like a starter with that?" Peter asks as he pours sparkling water for a customer. Later, he delivers dessert with poise and flourish.

"When these guys arrive, they know nothing about being a waiter," Bruintjies said. But after taking part in a training course or simply learning from other inmates, the restaurant's workers quickly master everything from steaming mussels to touting wines, he said.

Many who come from the poverty-stricken Cape Flats townships outside Cape Town have never eaten at a restaurant before, or tasted a steak. Gladman Thembalani, one of the waiters, admits he has developed a passion for calamari. One of the cooks, Ronald Fergotini, has become a wizard at frying them.

"I like it very much. It's changed my life," said the 32-year-old, his face covered in scars from knife attacks. Now, with a cooking certificate in hand, he hopes to find work at a small hotel kitchen when he's released next month.

Prison staff members have worked hard to improve the former cafeteria's rather industrial ambience. Burgundy curtains adorn the windows, wooden chairs surround tables swathed in laminated floral cloth, and potted plants dot the corners.

Still, there are reminders that this is dinner behind bars. A small box on the menu warns that "it is illegal for any inmate to be in possession of money," so tips should be deposited in a box at the front, to be converted to credit at the prison commissary.