Venue
- Picnic Area, Giba Gorge MTB Park
- Date: Sunday 5 October 2014
- Time: 13h00 - 14h00
The History of Bunny Chow
The bunny chow was created in Durban, home to a large community of people of Indian origin. The precise origins of the food are disputed, although its creation has been dated to the 1940s. It was also sold in Gwelo, Rhodesia, during WWII and is still sold in the nearby town of Kadoma, formerly known as Gatooma.
One story which provides an etymology for bunny chow has it that a restaurant run by people known as Banias (an Indian caste) first created the scooped-out bread and curry dish at a restaurant-cum-cafe called Kapitan's on the corner of Victoria and Albert streets in Durban. The food was a means to serve take-aways to excluded people. During the apartheid regime, Indians were not allowed in certain shops and cafes and so the shop owners found a way of serving the people through back windows, etc. This was an easy and effective way to serve the workers. The traditional Indian meal was roti and beans, however rotis tended to fall apart as a take-away item. So they cut out the centre portion of the bread and filled it with curry and capped the filling with the portion that was cut out.
Another story of the bunny chow's origin is that, as in India, merchants who traditionally sold their wares under the 'bania' tree (also known as the banyan, or Ficus bengalensis) were called 'bania'. The use of this name is known in India going back to antiquity.
Stories of the origin of bunny chow date as far back as the migrant Indian workers arrival in South Africa. One account suggests that Indian migrant workers from India who were brought to South Africa to work the sugar cane plantations of Kwazulu Natal (Port Natal) required a way of carrying their lunches to the field; a hollowed out loaf of bread was a convenient way to transport their vegetarian curries. Meat based fillings came later. The use of a loaf of bread can also be ascribed to the lack of the traditional roti bread, in the absence of which a loaf of bread would be acceptable as an accompaniment to curry.
