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.
Showing posts with label african. Show all posts
Showing posts with label african. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Thursday, 28 April 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
London - Spinach and Agushi
Exmouth Market
London EC1R
Two stews and jollof rice (small portion): £4.50
As a nation, we regularly eat food from almost all parts of the world, but most people have never even thought to try food from African nations south of North Africa. This long-standing culinary ignorance may be because we associate Africa with famine, or because we're so busy shovelling curry, fajitas, kebabs, couscous, noodles, hamburgers and roasts into our mouths, that we don't have time to venture outside of our already broad culinary parameters. A meal at an Eritrean restaurant in 2007 opened my eyes to the vast number of cuisines I had not yet tried, but despite the substantial African communities in cities and towns across Britain, it is still difficult to find restaurants serving Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ethiopian and Somali food in most places.
Spinach & Agushi, a food stall in London's Exmouth Market, is bringing African food - their dishes are Ghanaian - to the mainstream, as evidenced by the long lines of City workers queueing for jollof rice, plantains, pepper beef, chicken in peanut sauce, and spinach and agushi (ground melon seeds) each lunchtime. Taking my place in the queue, I noticed that most of my fellow line-dwellers were white and, judging from their clothes and the smart phones clutched in their hands, wealthy. There were six or seven choices of stews to be served with a ladle-ful of jollof, and all were disappearing at an equal rate - there were no "safe" options, and people were gladly accepting large quantities of fiery chilli sauce on top of their already well-spiced dishes.
I ordered jollof rice with spinach and agushi and chicken in peanut sauce. Despite ordering a small portion, I would not have needed dinner had I not been intent on getting a Jamaican patty. The chicken was korma-like: rich and creamy, with large chunks of tender chicken smothered by a nutty sauce that provided only a slight spice-infused tingle. The spinach and ayushi provided a contrast with a dry mixture of a granular agushi paste mixed with a large quantity of baby spinach. Being new to agushi, I had no expectations, but its slightly bitter and nutty flavour lent itself well to the spinach, preventing it from tasting too much like the wilted salads you can find in every other swanky cafe bar around the Square Mile.
The only disappointment was the jollof. I have eaten a substantial amount of this tomato, pepper and rice dish in my time, both from restaurants and my own kitchen, and Spinach & Agushi's version was too dry and contained few flavours beyond the chilli skins I kept finding. A good jollof retains strong tomato and onion flavours that could not be found in this version. In addition, it was too dry, and while jollof is not meant to be sloppy, it is often moist, making it stand out as part of the meal rather than being a foil for the stews and vegetable dishes served alongside it.
Now that African food is moving into the mainstream, I want to see more stalls and restaurants serving food like Spinach & Agushi's. Their introduction to African food is flavourful but recognisable, not scaring off the uninitiated with too much chilli or too many unfamiliar ingredients. Maybe soon, people will start going out for a Ghanaian or an Ethiopian on a Friday night.
London EC1R
Two stews and jollof rice (small portion): £4.50
As a nation, we regularly eat food from almost all parts of the world, but most people have never even thought to try food from African nations south of North Africa. This long-standing culinary ignorance may be because we associate Africa with famine, or because we're so busy shovelling curry, fajitas, kebabs, couscous, noodles, hamburgers and roasts into our mouths, that we don't have time to venture outside of our already broad culinary parameters. A meal at an Eritrean restaurant in 2007 opened my eyes to the vast number of cuisines I had not yet tried, but despite the substantial African communities in cities and towns across Britain, it is still difficult to find restaurants serving Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ethiopian and Somali food in most places.
Spinach & Agushi, a food stall in London's Exmouth Market, is bringing African food - their dishes are Ghanaian - to the mainstream, as evidenced by the long lines of City workers queueing for jollof rice, plantains, pepper beef, chicken in peanut sauce, and spinach and agushi (ground melon seeds) each lunchtime. Taking my place in the queue, I noticed that most of my fellow line-dwellers were white and, judging from their clothes and the smart phones clutched in their hands, wealthy. There were six or seven choices of stews to be served with a ladle-ful of jollof, and all were disappearing at an equal rate - there were no "safe" options, and people were gladly accepting large quantities of fiery chilli sauce on top of their already well-spiced dishes.
I ordered jollof rice with spinach and agushi and chicken in peanut sauce. Despite ordering a small portion, I would not have needed dinner had I not been intent on getting a Jamaican patty. The chicken was korma-like: rich and creamy, with large chunks of tender chicken smothered by a nutty sauce that provided only a slight spice-infused tingle. The spinach and ayushi provided a contrast with a dry mixture of a granular agushi paste mixed with a large quantity of baby spinach. Being new to agushi, I had no expectations, but its slightly bitter and nutty flavour lent itself well to the spinach, preventing it from tasting too much like the wilted salads you can find in every other swanky cafe bar around the Square Mile.
The only disappointment was the jollof. I have eaten a substantial amount of this tomato, pepper and rice dish in my time, both from restaurants and my own kitchen, and Spinach & Agushi's version was too dry and contained few flavours beyond the chilli skins I kept finding. A good jollof retains strong tomato and onion flavours that could not be found in this version. In addition, it was too dry, and while jollof is not meant to be sloppy, it is often moist, making it stand out as part of the meal rather than being a foil for the stews and vegetable dishes served alongside it.
Now that African food is moving into the mainstream, I want to see more stalls and restaurants serving food like Spinach & Agushi's. Their introduction to African food is flavourful but recognisable, not scaring off the uninitiated with too much chilli or too many unfamiliar ingredients. Maybe soon, people will start going out for a Ghanaian or an Ethiopian on a Friday night.
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