Merhaba

Claremont Rd, at Claremont Primary School
Moss Side,
Manchester

Keye Watt: £4

Firstly, my thanks to TomG, who commented on my Dubay Caffe post with a recommendation for an Ethiopian place near Claremont Primary School.  I was in Rushholme buying cheap spices, so I schlepped up Claremont Road to find it.

The place that I presume he was talking about is a small Ethiopian and Somali restaurant.  The owner is lovely and kept coming over to chat and give me extra injera (a sour pancake-like bread).  On the walls are various posters and leaflets pertaining to Manchester's Somali and Ethiopian communities - a poster of Manchester City's Somalia-born Abdisalam Ibrahim figures prominently.

The food itself is cheap and plentiful.  I chose the keye watt - a dish of diced beef and onions in a spicy sauce with shredded lettuce and a dish of sauteed carrots and cabbage as accoutrements.  All dishes are served on a big disc of injera, which both soaks up the sauces and is used to transfer the food from the plate to your mouth.  No cutlery here (well, there might be, but I couldn't see any).

All of the elements of the meal were spot-on.  The keye watt's beef and onion pieces were tender and tasted like they had stewed in the sauce for just the right amount of time.  The spicing lent heat but did not overwhelm, and the double-whammy of sauce (first on the beef, then soaked into the injera) suited me fine due to how delicious it was.  The vegetables were sauteed in a light, yellow and mildly sweet sauce and retained their crunch and flavours.  The dressing on the lettuce was citrus-y and provided a nice contrast to the bolder flavours of the keye watt.  The injera appeared fresh - hot with crispy edges, but soft and spongy throughout.

I have no idea what Ethiopian cuisine was like prior to Italian colonisation, but I definitely detected Italian influences in my food.  Apart from there being small jars of olive oil on every table, the lettuce came with a dressing of olive oil and herbs, and the keye watt sauce tasted of a tomato base, not unlike a much spicier and thinner pasta sauce.

For £4, I was able to eat enough to last me for two meals (I didn't need dinner).  The quality of the food and the attentive attitude of the owner means that this place deserves more custom than it currently gets.

Dubay Caffe

Claremont Road,
Moss Side

Rice and Chicken: £4.50

Deep in the heart of Moss Side, further up Claremont Rd than most people ever go, past the Sudan Satellite shop and the cheap mattress places, is a Somali restaurant-cum-takeaway called Dubay Caffe.  Gathered outside are collections of Somali men and boys, inside is the owner - a cheerful Manc-Somali who doles out hefty portions and happily explained everything when I told him that I had never eaten Somali food before.

Until I read this review, I had never even thought about Somali cuisine.  Somalia, best known for its vicious civil war and lack of functioning government since 1993, does not figure on most people's culinary maps.  If Dubay Caffe is representative of Somali food, however, more people should get out of the Indian-Chinese-Italian rut and try some.  Somalian is a very accessible cuisine, seemingly drawing elements from Ethiopian (injera-like bread), Indian (pilau rice, rotis and chapattis), and Italian (spaghetti and tomato sauce) cuisines, in addition to using recognisable ingredients like potatoes and carrots and including little more than a tingle of spicy heat.  Nothing too scary, here!

I ordered the rice and chicken and the owner threw in a curry for free.  Each of these dishes filled its own take-away container, which is exceedingly good value no matter the cuisine.  The chicken came with large chunks of potatoes and strips of carrot, all covered in a dry rub of spices and salt.  Although a little too salty, the chicken was moist, the potatoes perfectly cooked, and the carrots retained both their crunch and taste.  The free curry was fruity and much less salty than the chicken, containing small pieces of lamb (not too fatty) and large golden pieces of potato that had soaked up all the juices.  The rice, unusually, was the stand-out dish featuring cinnamon and cardamom spicing, gloriously sweet slivers of caramelised onion, the occasional golden raisin, and a meaty undertone that lent it depth.

With Dubay Caffe now firmly on my list of new favourite places to eat, I hope to find other Somali cafes and restaurants to experience.  After I had eaten Ghanaian for the first time, I wondered whether African food could ever become mainstream in the way that Indian has.  If Dubay Caffe is anything to go by, African food should have no trouble.