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Equatorial eats >>
Choose cuisine from across
the When this restaurant decided to open right across the street from another place that offers a similar Pan-African dining experience, it was hard to tell if the attitude was the more the merrier, or let’s do away with the competition. It’s not that the cornucopia of food from all over the continent isn’t varied and intriguing enough to warrant two restaurants—it definitely is. It’s just odd that these two high-end African eateries traversed the world to wind up as neighbours in the Plateau. Launched this spring, Afrika can boast a particularly eye-catching space, once occupied by a styling Asian eatery called Pacific. The distinctive rounded walls and dark wood beams are still there, now accented with bright colours and tropical accessories. And so voilà—the venue has been reincarnated as something more suitably Saharan. It makes for a dramatic backdrop to explore cuisine of Senegal, Cameroon and Mali, among others. The list of dishes is extensive and interesting, making this the kind of place where you spend quite a long time blinking at the menu, then at the person across from you, then at the waitress. I suggest you order a couple of exotic beers to get you in a laid back mood during this process. The aromatic Mossi or apricot-perfumed Galla go for $4.50 a glass, and are light and round on the tongue. The table d’hôte changes on a weekly basis. On the night we stopped in, it started at $17.50 and went up to the low 20s. The lowest-priced entry, PDG chicken, turned out to be a good deal. We never did find out what the acronym stood for, but it was listed as a Cameroonian dish. The grilled breast was topped with a tangy, tasty, wonderfully spiced tomato sauce full of perfectly tender onions. (African cooking does something magical with onions that imparts a whole new flavour to them.) It was served with a sculpted mound of rice that echoed the architecture around us, as well as grilled veggies like red pepper, carrot, turnip and moist plantains. The table d’hôte comes with either a soup or the Alexandria salad. This last was not very Egyptian but definitely fresh and crunchy, made up of lettuce, Moroccan olives, sliced cucumber and shredded carrot in a citrus-tinged dressing. The special also includes mousse or crème caramel with shredded coconut for dessert. I went à la carte, starting with a Pépé-Sous soup ($5.75) from the Côte d’Ivoire, which I chose because I liked the name. It’s made with seafood and cream, and I was warned that it would be “piquant.” Well, it wasn’t exactly spicy and although it was tasty, I wouldn’t order it again. The squid was strangely resilient, the scallops and the mussels not much better. Your appreciation of it will definitely depend on your tolerance for chewing soup. For my main course, filet mignon ($20.75) seemed like the way to go. It was supposed to come with stuffed eggplant and two tapenades, which turned out to be an olive spread and a chickpea spread. The generous piece of meat was cooked with respect, but the abundance of grilled veggies didn’t exactly make up for the fact that I couldn’t find the eggplant anywhere on my plate. No explanation was offered for the missing element, but then again I didn’t ask. Overall, the meal was somewhere between haute and earthy, high on presentation but a little lacking in charm. A final note for vegetarians: there’s also an intriguing Ethiopian-inspired meal called ingéra falacha babylone, that’s kind of like lasagna made with lentils, cream cheese and berberé sauce ($14.75). : Afrika |