I chose La Boheme because I was looking for that Bistro vibe – friendly, bustling, tasty, generous. La Boheme is all that, and, should I forget to actually say that, heartily recommended: Go There. Eat Things. It will Be Good.

The long time that’s passed in some ways helps bring into focus what stood out the most: the staff. Service with an attitude, a big mouth, a sense of humour and a firm set of opinions. Service with enough chutzpah to keep us with the rowdy cracker bunch, and give us a run for our money. This does not mean it was perfect – I vaguely recall moments when we would have liked to get the waitress to our table but could not find her – but given the large personality and great investment in our meal that we got the rest of the time, this was totally forgiveable.

Another stand out was the wine – it’s a wine bar, so after some deliberation we left our own wines in the car (wine-bars sometimes get a bit huffy about bringing your own). I remember the wine list being large but navigable, and struck on the Satyricon from La Vierge on the grounds that it sounded cool. It’s an extremely lovely blend of strange foreign grapes with a naughty label, and when we got home we phoned our local wine store and bought a case of it, that’s how good it was. It’s drinking extremely well right now, and now, and again just now.

The food is a mixture of tapas, starters and mains, and I believe there was some sort of special combo deal that we probably ignored as usual. The menu is chalkboard and apparently changes often; here is a snap of what we were faced with:

We had the tapas for starters: the chorizo in red wine, the white anchovies, gnocci with roasted tomatos and the honey-glazed little ribs. All absolutely mouth-wateringly good, with the white anchovies (milder than the little black ones, and bigger, lovely flavour) and the gnocci the stand outs. Everything was fresh, rich, and beautifully balanced, excellent start to the meal.

We followed up with mains – unfortunately, these came from a third blackboard (yes, there were more blackboards!) which we got no pic of and which, curse the passage of time and the death of little braincells, I do not remember very much of. I know I had the duck: done in an Asian vibe, with fine noodles and a sweet sauce. It was nice, but I do recall being terribly jealous of everyone else’s food, so there it is: everything else was BETTER than Asian duck. Nums. The portions were extremely generous, it must be noted, and we really felt that we got excellent value for money.

Last note on the atmosphere: La Boheme and Bruxia have essentially merged into what is quite a large restaurant, and on a Friday it hustles and bustles and can get a tad loud. Let’s say the cracker team in full guaffing swing was not stared at by other diners trying to have a quiet meal – quite the reverse, at times. The concensus around the table was “loudish, but not in a bad way” as I recall.

OK, drum roll:

Atmosphere: 7 / 10 (Friendly, bustling, noisy!)
Staff: 10 / 10 (The kind of waitress you want to take home with you and introduce to your friends.)
Service: 8 / 10 (Some random disappearing acts, but brilliant when found.)
Food: 8 / 10 (Bistro vibe at its best)
Wine:8/10 (Great menu, good choices.)
Value for money: 9 / 10 (Excellent food, reasonably priced)

The inside is quite charming. You quite clearly get the feeling of English husband and Thai wife: he runs the bar in the front room and she runs the kitchen of nummy food (although my familiarity with the cross-cultural set-up may be tinting my glasses on this one.).
There were bits and bobs of Thai ele- and paraphanelia on the walls and tables that add an air of more Thia-ness to the place: I approve!

The food was really good, but not knock my socks off amazing. Tastes and flavours were, to my buds, quite authentic. Tastiness always trumps authenticity, but it’s nice to have both.
The portions sizes, of the main courses especially, were very generous.

As you may expect from a Thai meal, the sauces were excellent.  A great mix of flavours and strength.
Winning dish for the table was the Duck Red Curry (Kaeng Phed Ped Yang on their menu). It was, pardon my language, amazeballs. Jo became somewhat obsessed over the course of the meal with deconstructing the ingredients and preparation method (“Why is my curry not this good?” was the cry. Fret not, your curries are also amazeballs! Um… That felt weird to say.). (Upon more sober reflection, it was (sort of) decided that the WIN was at least partially due to Duck Fat ™)

(Note to self, must take CrackPicting more seriously!)

My only complaint was the speed of the service: a little bit too slow to be called leisurely. We got the impression that a lot of the other clientèle were regulars, and the fact that they were in and out while we were still there gave the impression that they were being favoured over us a bit. To be fair to them, the lady owner did say that our mains took a while longer because of the steamed fish. To be fair to us, if we’d have been told that we would’ve asked stuff to be brought out as it was ready. Not a train smash, but something to bear in mind.

So, these score thingies of which you speak…
(I’m trying to score more harshly than the other Crackstefarians: 5 means average. 10 means OMGBBQ. 1 means killmenow.)

Atmosphere: 6 / 10 (Pretty Thai things, mood lighting, sturdy but not soft furniture)
Staff: 8 / 10 (Friendly, smiley, and chatty peeps)
Service: 5 / 10 (Good, but slow)
Food: 8 / 10 (Authentic and tasty Thai food. Different enough from the other Thai places to be worth a visit)
Wine: 7 /10 (A low R20 for Corkage, and a decent and reasonably priced wine list)
Value for money: 8 / 10 (Bit of a thumbsuck, but I seem to remember we were all pleasantly surprised, especially given the amount we ate!)

Fork is in Long Street, one of those long, skinny places behind a small street front. It has face-brick walls and a lot of dark wood, and ends up feeling cosy and warm. There’s a bar downstairs and a really long flight of stairs up to the main dining area, where there are booths along one wall in addition to the normal tables. At 7pm we were a lot earlier than the bulk of diners, and scored a booth, which is absolutely the best environment for eating. Salty Cracker can become a bit loud and hilarious, which is not ideal in posh places, but we fitted in perfectly here; the room filled up to become noisy and cheerful, but the booth means you can still hear yourself conduct noisy, cheerful, weird conversations about non-linear time streams, and economic narrative theory, and vampire symbols in a therapy context. And nanobots. Apparently we’re still with the nanobots.

As with Knife, you get a giant dish towel as a napkin, which is very useful given the amount of finger-eating you do. They suggest eight dishes for four people, and you order them in a giant wodge, after which they trickle them out to your table in twos and threes at appropriate intervals. It’s very nicely judged, and was conducted with cheerful and amused efficiency by our lovely waiter, Jorge. (He’s from Chile. The accent is very sexy, and he responded very well to our characteristic waiter harrassment. Of, I hasten to add, the non-sexual kind. Mostly.) Being what you might call hearty eaters we ordered nine dishes up front, then another four, then three desserts.

Pork belly in a mustard and parsley crust

The perfect thing about tiny bite-sized portions is that you can really fit in dessert. Their flourless chocolate cake is to die for, and the sticky toffee pudding is to commit suspicious acts of desperation for: the slightly gritty butter/sugar topping is horribly moreish. The rest of the table insisted on ordering white chocolate mousse with a raspberry coulis, which was nicely textured but a bit bland and arb in only the way that white chocolate, instrument of the devil, can be. I felt smug.

I also have to mention the wine. One of the drawbacks of Fork is that they don’t allow you to bring your own wine, which is one of Eckie’s pet hatreds, and which triggered (a) a spirited discussion on whether a wine-bar/tapas joint is really about food-as-an-accompaniment-to-booze rather than booze-as-an-accompaniment-to-food and thus is more justified in wanting to make money on the booze bit (I still maintain it is); and (b) a decision to add a new category to the Patent Jo Scale of judgement. The lack of corkage facility is really not an issue, though, because the winelist (slightly eccentrically presented by region rather than type, which is rather fun) contains a plethora of options which are both excellent in quality and reasonably priced. We had a Rickety Bridge rosé, which was lovely – fragrant and slightly cranberryish, and everyone else raved about the Bon Courage shiraz, which I didn’t taste as this stupid Warfarin regime limits me to one glass of wine and I love rosé.

Kudu on a chilli potato mash

On the Patented Jo Scale:
Atmosphere: 8 / 10 (Warm, noisy, relaxed, booths! we like booths.)
Staff: 9 / 10 (Jorge was great, attentive and efficient and appropriately amused)
Service: 7.5 / 10 (Stv was short of wine at times, but food comes to the table at appropriate intervals and in appropriate amounts)
Food: 8 / 10 (Excellent – rich, nicely presented, interesting flavours)
Wine: 7/10 (they lose points for not allowing BYO, but good wine is available at reasonable prices)
Value for money: 8 / 10 (Excellent value for a meal, probably a bit pricey for snacks-with-drinks)

Bistro 1682 is a beautiful beautiful place, all modern and tall and shiny and splendid. The glass-fruit chandelier in the bar and the awesome “alien creatures grazing” statues on the grounds of the Steenberg estate are notable standouts. It was a sunny day but just a smidgen too cold to actually sit outside, which is a pity as they have great outside – shallow pools and geometry.

Their winelist is quite reasonable is you stick to their own stuff, so we had sparkles to start (as we meant to carry on). The menu is a mix of fine cuisine and lunchtime favourites (the steak roll with fries next to veal sous vide, that sort of thing. Starters I remember in this time-delayed review are Eckhart’s beef tataki, the white risotto, and the fish brandade. The tatake is kind of a signature dish – when they took part in Taste of Cape Town, the recipe was published in a magazine and I have it cut out at home. It is fantastic. I chose the risotto which was delicate but did not quite hit the spot – the trouble was tasting everyone else’s meal and spoiling my palette, I suspect! Jess and Stv had the fish brandade which they enjoyed, as I recall.

I chose the veal sous vide from the impossible menu – so many options, all sounding too good. It was probably the weakest choice. Jess’s pork belly with asian, sweet and sour flavours was brilliant and unusual, Eckie’s steak and chip roll looked divine. Steve’s charcuterie was impressive but the flavours weren’t quite different enough and the truffle sauce had a slightly odd texture, like cold mashed potato.

Either their portions are small (but they really are not) or because it was lunchtime and we stretched the meal out more, we all, for a change, had desert. There was something with a chocolate nemesis and cherry jelly, and another with toffee themed things (that was mine). I found the deserts a little too bitty and nouveau – too many tiny portions of various flavours, rather than an indulgent composition in itself. But desert, so not my thing.

The service was lovely – a waiter with a sense of humour, always good. They did forget to make Steve’s charcuterie which was a problem  it took only 5 minutes to prepare but that’s 5 minutes of him sitting hungry while our food arrived (no, we didn’t wait… we did feed him though!).

Atmosphere: 9 / 10 (Gorgeous setting, great architecture)
Staff: 8 / 10 (Funny, helpful, reasonably attentive)
Service: 6 / 10 (Knocked down by forgetting that one main course…)
Food: 7 / 10 (I made the wrong choices – I suspect other Crackerees will score this higher)
Value for money: 7 / 10 (Prices a bit upmarket. Total was high, but then we DID have desert for once.)
Nanobots: 111!!!!eleven/10

The menu is extensive, and the starters and side dishes rise more than somewhat above the usual steakhouse array, both in breadth of choice and in composition: interesting flavours, spices, combinations of ingredients. Two of our table started with the panfried peppered calamari with a bacon vinaigrette (I suspect the bacon vinaigrette sold them), which was delicious; my mother also raved about her Creole mussel curry, in a spicy tomato sauce – excellent. My salad was perhaps the low point of the starters, perfectly adequate, but rather low on the beetroot/goat’s cheese elements which were supposed to define it. Everything in this course, however, was beautifully presented, fresh and tasty.

Our main course choices ended up mostly divided between rump steak and ribs, served with chips; the chips are one of the basic tests of a steakhouse, and Knife does particularly good straw-cut french fries. The rump-eaters were inclined towards the belief that this was the best steak they’d had in Cape Town – excellent quality meat, cooked to perfection and perfectly to order. The choice of sauces included at no extra charge is a nice touch. The rib-orderers were equally happy with the smoked, marinated, barbecued ribs, which I have to agree were tender and flavourful, and moreover left a gratifying pile of bones heaped in the middle of the table. I’m still a bit lacking in appetite after all the medical experiences and wasn’t up to heavy red meat, but my southern fried chicken was wonderful, offering tender meat and crispy, spicy breading. You can order extra side dishes, which are again slightly more interesting than the usual steakhouse creamed-spinach-and/or-mashed-butternut – we had wilted greens and roasted broccoli, both very good.

We couldn’t fit in dessert, which is a pity as I would have loved to continue on my American South kick by trying their key lime pie. Alas. Another time.

This was a truly excellent meal, but beyond the sheer quality of the food, I have to say what made it was the obvious thought that has gone into constructing the restaurant’s spaces and service. Half their tables are booths, which is the best possible dining experience, insulated from the noise of other diners; the tables are generously proportioned, leaving you elbow room to really get at those ribs. The walls are covered with beautifully-carved wooden plaques in a variety of slightly retro shapes, offering meat-enthused slogans with cheery, cheesy goodwill. The menu has a children’s section, and advertises various colouring-in and other activities available for kids. Your napkin is not a napkin, but a checked dishtowel of generous proportions and high absorbency, a thoughtful trend continued in the plastic aprons and, later, moistened towels provided to rib-eaters. We expect, the ambience says, you to be enthusiastic about your food. I was particularly taken with the serving arrangements: your server arrives with your dishes on an absolutely giant round tray capable of holding about five plates without overlapping. To serve, they plonk this down on the handy-dandy folding collapsible table legs they have previously set up next to your table with a flick of the wrist, and proceed to serve you, and afterwards to clear the table, in comfort, efficiency and style.

They passed both the water test (alas, no jugs, the only minor niggle in an otherwise perfect evening), serving tap water by the glass without turning a hair, and likewise remaining calm and pleasant in the face of diners who insist on bringing their own wine. (I forgot to check if they charged corkage, anyone remember?). And the value for money is excellent, considerably cheaper than Nelson’s Eye and possibly even slightly cheaper than Hussar, hitherto our gold standard for happy steakhouse eating. This was all in all a Good Experience, TM. Will definitely go again.

On the Patented Jo Scale:
Atmosphere: 7.5 / 10 (Comfortable, cosy, a little bit cheesy and inclining to glitz)
Staff: 7 / 10 (Calm, intelligent, amused, efficient)
Service: 8 / 10 (Good, unobtrusive, creative, very aware of your comfort)
Food: 8.5 / 10 (High quality: transcends “steakhouse” comfortably and with style)
Value for money: 8 / 10 (not over the top, and worth every cent)

The decor inside is that classic “basic but clean” look. Slightly skanky lookin’, to be honest. I have a particular penchant for places that have good food but very simple decor (such as Jewel Tavern when it was in the docks). The other Crackernauts tend to err more of the side of posh, which only encourages me to bring the skank back in. It enhances that “hidden gem” feeling for me.

We often like to get recommendations, and the staff at Xiang Yuan were friendly, helpful, and made excellent suggestions. Alas, it has been a few weeks since we were there, and my memory of individual dishes has faded. We had a mix of Dim Sum from their big and varied menu, and added the much-loved duck and pancakes combo to the table. Everything was excellent, and the prices were good (and very reasonable compared to big names like Simply Asia or Tong Lok).

Atmosphere: 4 / 10 (Not great. TV on in an unavoidable place. Lights kinda bright.)
Staff: 7 / 10 (Friendly, slightly surprised, very helpful with the recommendations.)
Service: 6 / 10 (Good, but not great. Solid, but not shining.)
Food: 7 / 10 (Good Dim Sum (wide selection, all tasty), excellent duck.)
Value for money: 8 / 10 (Competitively priced)

Although this is a Korean restaurant, the décor is really more English cottage chintzy than anything else – painted wooden furniture, cottagey still lives on the walls, odd bits of Victorian bric-a-brac, floral cushions on the chairs. It has a lovely, relaxed vibe, and the stainless steel stove tables for the hotpot really don’t feel as incongruous as you’d think. The staff are Korean and absolutely lovely – attentive, warm, relaxed. I had the impression that our table guy was (a) probably the owner, (b) probably the chef, and (c) really loved what he was doing. He apparently exports wine as another venture, and it’s entirely possible that Park’s is a sideline he does purely for his own enjoyment. If so, it shows.

I have to digress a moment. They brought us kimchi and bean sprouts as nibbles while we swigged rosé, and I have to say: kimchi? why has no-one ever told me? It’s marvellous stuff. This was quite bitey, but in a really good way, and the bean sprouts had a subtle spice thing going on that was also excellent. I am a new convert to Korean food. Bring it on, preferably instantly.

We stretched this out into three mediumish courses rather than the traditional starter/main, and had dumplings to start with. I adore dumplings, and these were particularly good – we had the steamed chicken and the fried pork ones. The fillings were distinctively spiced, and the fried pork dumplings were excellently crispy. Probably the best dumpling experience I’ve had in Cape Town, actually. I’m wishing I still worked at home, so I could head down the road and have lunch there. Often. I am fast developing a love affair with the Korean spicing.

Phase one of the mains comprised two of their dishes, Galbi and Ssambap, and I have to add in parenthesis that I’d be madly inclined to eat a lot more Korean food not just because the flavours and textures are lovely, but because the names are too. Galbi is an odd concept, beef rib that’s basically been long-stewed so it’s soft and tasty, but served in a broth with a lot of vegetables that have clearly been added at the last minute. You get the best of both worlds – tender, falling-off-the-bone stewed beef with crispy vegetables. Really excellent. The ssambap was probably my favourite, though – a spicy pork/rice thing which you ladle onto lettuce leaves and eat like a wrap, with various spicy sauces. I love self-constructed finger food, and this was a particularly good one, with very much what seems to be the signature Korean thing of lightly-cooked, low fat dishes with interesting spices. The portions are generous, we were starting to be full after two starters and two main courses between the four of us.

Phase 2 of the main course entailed a move to one of the fancy hot-plate tables, for hot-pot. They bring out a stainless steel dish with a sort of off-centre yin-yang curvy partition in it; sweet broth in one side, spicy in the other. Then the nice waiter main struggles out from the back with a giant trolley laden with raw food – mussels, prawns, crab sticks, bok choy, mushrooms, tofu, and a huge plate with carefully-rolled strips of thinly cut pork. The broth simmers on the hotplate; you have chopsticks and a couple of ladles, and you fling the food into the broth and cook it lightly before dipping it in peanut and/or chilli sauce, and noshing like mad. When you have, in defiance of the enormous meal you already ate, polished off the entire contents of the platters, you tip the last of the peanut sauce into your bowl with scoops of broth, and drink it like soup. This was enormously good fun, and I rather fell for both bok choy and tofu prepared thusly (the tofu explodes in a shower of broth when you bite into it), but in comparison to the flavours in the more conventional main courses, I found it a bit bland. (I may also be biased in that I’m not a huge fan of seafood). This will not, however, prevent me from instantly trying to emulate it at home with a fondue pot. Oh, no, indeedy.

It was a lovely evening. I really like this place, and propose to upgrade it instantly to the status of “neighbourhood hang-out”. I also note, with sadness and disapproval, that it was almost empty; it deserves to be popular and bustling and disseminating its culinary happiness to a much wider clientele. I therefore exhort anyone reading this to rush off immediately and eat there. If you don’t it may go under, and I’ll be devastated.

Assessment on the Patent Jo Scale, with a terribly uniformity because I really had a great time:
Atmosphere: 8/ 10 (a warm and distinctly original vibe)
Staff: 8/ 10 (lovely people, attentive and engaged)
Service: 8 / 10 (quick, attentive)
Food: 8 / 10 (large menu, lovely cuisine, nicely prepared)
Value for money: 9 / 10 (good lord, it’s absurdly cheap)

I will digress briefly and slightly contradict myself. Latest discovery about self: despite years of training and hard work, a tasting menu is too much for me. I must face facts. We have had a number of opportunities to test this recently and it’s all coming together. Last month at Overture, we tried the tasting menu (8 courses, tiny). Then, for a hen party, the 6 course menu at Myoga (excellent range of options, really good value). And now 6 courses at La Mouette. In all cases, I am experiencing two problems:

1. It’s too much food to be able to enjoy all the flavours. Towards the end, I’m saturated.

2. I miss out on reading the menu properly and thinking about the flavours and combinations. In two of the above (La Mouette and Overture), the tasting menu is fixed – no choices. That’s not a problem in terms of variety or getting something you don’t like – it’s all good – but it does mean I don’t look at the menu with a serious and discerning eye. I think that removes some of the fun of anticipation and appreciation of the more trace ingredients.

So anyway, I think I’ll be sticking to a la carte for the foreseeable future. But back to La Mouette, because despite the rant above, that was a fine dining experience. The restaurant is set in a wonderful old house in Sea Point (right at the end of Main Road, near Shoprite). The decor is rich and baroque, and there was a roaring log fire that meant I went from toasty to I-need-to-go-outside-to-get-some-air (I was really close to the fire).

The staff is friendly, they bring tap water without any hassle (this seems to be the norm now, bottled water be damned), and generally looked after us very well. I had a half a victory: the set desert was the warm chocolate profiterole, but I hinted that I would have liked to try their gin-and-tonic desert, and they said no problem! When it came to desert, they brought me the profiterole though, and I was too full and tired to object. It was, in any case, magnificent (the almond icecream was nougaty and devine), so I squeezed it in, at which point the waiter apologised and wanted to bring me the ginantonic, and I had to say no. Self preservation. Anyway, mistake gracefully handled.

Ok, the set menu is here. Particular stand outs are their croquettes (they are famous for these things, wonderful cheesy little lovebites); the roast fish and risotto – brilliant, warm flavours, well combined; and the desert was just heavenly. The warm pimms-themed first course is more like a tiny palate cleanser, but all other five courses are full sized, armed and dangerous. The pork belly is perfectly done and rich, and the onion soup is creamy and cheesy. There is no getting off easy.

Oh, one final word of warning – skip the wine pairing. It’s relatively pricey (R180), the wines are nice but not brilliant, the portions are sufficient but not large. All of the pairings are white except for the pork belly’s match. I’d recommend a nice bottle of chardonnay for the meal and perhaps a glass of Merlot for the pork, it will be fine.

Scores:

Atmosphere: 8/10 (did I mention the table of blondes? It’s probably not a permanent feature, but the big function room table just in front of us was taken up by impossible number of impossible leggy blondes. Very distracting. Very mysterious. This does not affect the rating though. )

Staff: 8/10 (helpful, friendly, mistake made but fixed)

Service: 8/10

Food: 8/10 (brilliant but heavy going – proper winter food)

Value for money: 11/10. I’m not kidding.

Haiku was great. I’ve had my Japanese-Cracker hand forced slightly due to lack of availability (if you know a good Japanese restaurant in Cape Town, please drop it in the comments!), so I’ve expanded my general theme to Asian, preferably Japanese (because i like it), preferably not Thai (because we eat it at home a lot).

The place itself is tres chic. The bar at the front is particularly swish. We’re talking dark furnishings, a few shiny bits, and lots of spotlights (hung from the tall, tall, ceiling to head high (ish)). It felt a little too trendy for me, to be honest, but the staff were welcoming and friendly (and I’m not exactly Mr TrendyPants (as evidenced by me saying Mr TrendyPants)). The back 4/5 of the place is the restaurant, with a strip all the way down one side being the kitchen and the gaggle (pot? susan? broth?) of chefs, all specialists in their various bits.

The menu is big (and missing from their web site – boo). Three pages big, packed with tasty-sounding treats. It’s divided into sections by style more than by country, so you have stir-fried dishes together, tempura stuff together, and so on.
Roughly speaking, we had:

• veggie tempura (solid, but not amazing. Great sauce, though);
• soft shell crab tempura (very good. Crunchy!);
• Chicken and mushroom hotpot (a surprise star. Recommended by the waiter on the grounds of being a lot more interesting than it sounds. He was right!);
• Dim Sum (lots of dim sum. I think I may have found a place to return to regularly for Dim Sum – is good, me like.);
• Cheung Fun (chinese canneloni, which I remember first having as chopstick-test by Chinese friends in London.);
• duck pancakes (of course. Hat tip JT. Good, but not amazing);
• Beef katsu (breadcrumbed, seared, cow.);
• Thai salad (the weakest dish of the lot. A bit too fusion, so it lost it Thai character);
• Sizzling ostrich (juicy and tasty, but not mind-blowing).

Phew! And I’m sure I missed some. We definitely over-ordered. But then, it was Salty Cracker. :)

Service was good, but very slightly patchy. Our waiter was friendly and attentive, except for a short period near the end-game when I was wanting water and to ask for the bill.

Ratings? Ratings.

Atmosphere: 7 / 10 (Very trendy, but still nice for “normal” folk. Ahem.)
Staff: 9 / 10 (Friendly, chatty, excellent knowledge of the menu, very good with recommendations.)
Service: 7 / 10 (No real complaints, but wouldn’t mention it as special.)
Food: 8 / 10 (A wide spread of countries and styles without feeling stretched or that there are any “filler” items (iyswim), and very, very, tasty.)
Value for money: 6 / 10 (Pricey for what is, especially the Dim Sum.)

Addis is in Long Street, on the corner of Church, and is a cheery red-painted building on three floors, with a very lovely feel in terms of décor. Sod’s Law, however, naturally dictated that the one time we have to climb two flights of stairs to eat, has to be the month in which Jo has put her knee out and is hobbling around with a crutch. There is, alas, no lift, and I have to say it would probably wreck the vibe if there were. The staff were very concerned and sweet about her slow and epic ascent. It’s a typical old Long Street building, wooden floors and old plaster, and they’ve incorporated the feel into the decoration – bits of the walls have artfully-left patches of bare brick, which goes very nicely with the wooden chairs and basketwork, and the slightly run-down feel gives a very strong sense of African street-market. The colours are all orange and red, warm and slightly smoky with candles, and the restaurant’s habit of burning incense as part of the coffee ceremony means that the whole thing smells slightly exotic, a sensual vibe intensified by the Ethiopian music. I loved the medieval-style artwork on the walls, and the lampshades made from giant, colourful, inverted cloth umbrellas, as well as the curly Ethiopian writing everywhere (there’s a basic phrasebook painted on the bar).

The restaurant doesn’t have tables, it has baskets. Giant, conical baskets with a wide, flat top attached, just the right size for the huge plate which feeds all four of the diners at once, and which you huddle around on the low, cushioned, carved, wooden chairs. The giant plate is simply the base for the giant sourdough pancake which covers it, and onto which the different dishes are tipped in little piles from the small pottery bowls in which they are served. You are given another basket filled with what we inevitably christened “bandages” – strips of pancake rolled neatly into a roll. You tear off a piece about 5-6cm square, and you use it to swoop down on bits of the stew-styled dishes and pop them into your mouth without actually getting any on your fingers. It’s surprisingly intuitive; there’s something hard-wired about eating like this, I found I was doing it automatically without even thinking about it. It’s also very liberating to feel that the eating-with-your-hands thing is not only permitted, it’s the only way = they don’t bring utensils. And they wash your hands for you before and after eating. It makes you realise what an enormously wide range of behaviour is actually covered by the concept of “civilised”.

The food itself is lovely – spicy, occasionally with a bite to it, but with a wonderful and distinctive balance of spices and flavours, heavy on the garlic, ginger, turmeric and cardamom. A lot of the dishes rely on berbere, or on a spicy clarified butter thing called kibe. We went for the set menu, which gives you starter, mains with 8 dishes and dessert with coffee or tea. The format is stew rather than large chunks of meat, and I am very happy to report that the Ethiopian word for stew appears to be wot (a stirfy is tibs). It made a welcome distraction from the inevitable and ongoing attempt not to make lame and offensive jokes about starving Ethiopians.

The starter came on a pancake which seemed to have been spiced and oiled and baked in the oven, so it was crispy – a bit like a cross between a pancake and a pappadom. No bandages with this – you break off chunks of the crispy pancake and dip them in the spicy lentil dip, or the spinach/cheese one. The lentils were the winner here – smooth and bitey and piquant. But I could cheerfully have eaten the pancake without any accompaniment at all. We flattened it, and wiped out the dip bowls with our fingers. (“We” here is Jo and me, who seem to be particularly uninhibited with this sort of thing).

The main course gave us a very spicy beef stew, a very good lamb one, something flavourful with slightly chewy prawns, and an absolute winner of a slow-cooked chicken thing, rich and dark and flavoured with, I think, lime juice as well as the spices. There was another spicy lentil sauce thing, a sort of tomato/onion salady side dish, and a wonderful spinach conglomeration, not to mention the sweetcorn mix and some random carrot/pumpkin bits around the side. Possibly a garnish. We ate it anyway. We also ordered an extra to the set meal, a helping of something called kitfo, which is the Ethiopian equivalent of steak tartare – very finely ground beef with spices and chilli, almost a paste, and incredibly good. I found it easier to eat large quantities of this than I usually do with tartare, which I enjoy but can’t take beyond about three mouthfuls. While we all had favourites here (mine were the chicken and the spinach), they were all good – similar stews in style, but with enough variation of flavour and spicing that they weren’t in any way monotonous. The little bits of pancake with every mouthful also mean that you’re getting a fair whack of carbohydrate, and you end up feeling very full.

Dessert was a bit arbitrary, slightly leathery baklava or berries with ice-cream, and a bit of a let-down in that it didn’t continue the authentic Ethiopian theme (the nice waiter did apologise for this, and inform us that Ethiopian meals don’t really do dessert). But the coffee was presented in a beautiful silver pot with little china handle-less cups, accompanied by the aforementioned incense, and the tea I ordered (I’ve given up on coffee, the heartburn isn’t worth it) was flavoured with cloves and honey and was absolutely wonderful.

The overall vibe and feel here really are great. The staff are also lovely – cheerful and attentive and with a slightly amateur touch which really fits with the ambience. (I think a lot of them are also Ethiopian, which means it’s sometimes a little difficult to understand them through the unfamiliar accent). We brought a bottle of wine (Australian cabernet courtesy of Eckie, perfect for the meat-heavy meal), but the second bottle off the wine list was inexpensive, and there’s a fair choice. It was a lovely evening all round, comfortable and flavourful and a bit different.

On the Famous Jo scale:
Atmosphere: 9 / 10 (even with the stair problem, the vibe is lovely)
Staff: 8 / 10 (very sweet, beaming, warm)
Service:7 / 10 (can be a little slow at times)
Food: 8.5/ 10 (lovely flavours within its slightly limited range)
Value for money: 8.5 / 10 (really not expensive given the experience and the size of the meal)