Friday’s Featured Food: Kampango Fish Fillet With Nshima At Cape Maclear, Malawi🇲🇼

“Wish upon a wave that hides the sand” – Noel Gallagher.

Cape Maclear (Chembe) is meant to be the nuts. The coolest spot in Malawi and one which backpackers could rave about for years to come. I won’t be doing that, as it fell slightly short of my expectations but at least I got to see Cape Maclear, bathe in the classic waters of Lake Malawi and have a delicious lunch here, and I mean delicious. This was the best dish on my entire MMM Hat-trick tour in April 2023!! I didn’t actually sleep in Cape Maclear though, I was based just over an hour’s drive, at Mufasa Eco Lodge in Monkey Bay.

Fat Monkeys Bar, Cape Maclear

Cited as a hub for backpackers, a hive of activity and a place to really be, I headed to Fat Monkeys Bar at Cape Maclear by Lake Malawi. When I got here, I was the only tourist here. During my entire time here (6 hours), I was the only tourist here. Yes indeed not another backpacker in sight and not a single other person to be met who wasn’t from Malawi. I feasted my eyes on the lunch menu after my swim and dander down the gorgeous beaches by Lake Malawi at Cape Maclear.

Here’s the menu at Fat Monkey’s Bar in Cape Maclear.

As I was in a town known for fish, it had to be a seafood dish and I chose the Kampango Fillet. I had never heard of it before but I was loving the idea of trying it. I had fond memories of seafood when backpacking Africa before, including the fish at Black and White Bar at Plage N’Gor in Senegal and the seafood platter at Walvis Bay in Namibia (both were very tasty and a little bit mind blowing for a non-food geek like me).

With the Kampango Fillet, comes Nsima/Nshima – this is a lovely local maize porridge, smoothed into potato shapes on the plate. It came with a few vegetables and a tasty sauce. To add to this, I added some lemon to the fish and some really top notch spicy sauce (I am a spice geek actually!).

The price was 9,500 Malawi Kwacha (£7 Northern Irish pounds) and though that might sound dear, I was totally okay with paying that, trust me.

I washed it all down with a Kuche Kuche, Malawi’s beer which is also made from maize and truly mouth-watering and thirsty-quenchic.

The end result? I devoured it. I smashed it and loved it. I stayed for a few more hours in and around Fat Monkeys Bar as well as visiting two more bars in Cape Maclear itself, before the fading sun and my dreams of moving fast took me out of the calm waters and back to my base at Mufasa Eco Lodge in Monkey Bay.

I left some dreams hanging around in Cape Maclear, of that you can have no doubt.

Here are some videos I made at Cape Maclear in Malawi. Unfortunately this trip had some issues and now that I am down to having only ONE mobile phone (all other phones or cameras were lost, broken or stolen), the sound microphone is gone in that phone so these videos don’t appear to have any sound…: