Smatterings of Africa
Pros Excellent food in a friendly atmosphere at a good price.
Cons First impressions need overcoming. Availability was patchy on our visit.
Pay
€€€
Per Person €30 Shared starter, beer and bottle of Rioja. Main and dessert each. El tenedor discount may be available for food. Gratis: nothing.
Find
Website Here
Access Two flights of steps down from the street.
In Short
Hopes? Authenticity, please.
Reality? Certainly felt like it.
First Impressions? Entrance is a bit...undergound car park, to be honest.
A USP? Food like this, where this is.
The food in three words? Intense, homemade, filling.
Can they get the staff? Chef plus a server.
Service with a smile? Helpful and friendly. Chef came out of kitchen to help out with things when he could.
V-friend friendly? Mostly meat-based, but navigable.
Rating for dating? For food, interesting. For atmosphere, problematic.
Tip? Small one.
Change one thing? More attention to the ambience.
Going back? Potentially.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
Sankara lounge serves authentic-feeling food, right in the centre of town.
Things start disconcertingly. Africa, it's not. Kilimanjaro isn't rising like Olympus above the Serengeti. We're in a cellar opposite a posh hotel. Entering the place feels like navigating the emergency exit from a nuclear bunker. Cracked tiles and steel. Once downstairs, the eating area is small. Ten covers, probably. There's not a vast amount of decoration, but it's not twee, which is a mercy. A flatscreen is showing wildlife videos (yes, wildebeest sweep majestically), but not much shouts Africa!
That said, as I sat down a flock of videoed vultures were picking a carcass clean. The metaphor for centuries of Euro-African history had my European guilt welling up, but I ordered a bottle of Amstel (green peril no thanks) and felt better. Bloody colonials, indeed.
So the portents could, honestly, have been better.
But, food! It's mains and salads on the menu with nothing labelled starters. After flirting with the idea of three mains, we shared a banana empanada, which unquestionanly begs to be ordered in pyjamas, simply for the unique scansion opportunities.
It took longer than I'd have expected to turn up. We soon twigged why. Bookings are not simply at half hour intervals but one table per half hour. The chef was cooking for each booking in turn, so as later couples came in, they were warned they'd not get supper till we'd been served.
So, that banana empanada. There's no mucking about with garnishes, just a spoonful of red chilli paste on the side, as powerful as any I've had in Madrid. A flake or two got the pulse racing. Filling, it the empanada's perhaps better called a plantain pasty. Tasting rather like sweet potato, it was a new one on me. A little starchy, I'd have enjoyed a creamy sauce with it, but we both liked it a lot. A good start.
But before we'd got half way into it, the mains turned up. Mafe is a soup bowl of beef/veal in a thick peanut sauce ,with an equally generous bowl of rice accompanying it.
The beef was easily enough food for two, the sauce was very rich, spicier than a lot of curries you'd find around and evidently very slowly cooked to get that much flavour into it and the large cuts of beef to fall apart at will. Terrific stuff.
The multicoloured attieke aloco was also brilliant. Excellent dorada, with a nice bit of crispy skin (don't discard it whatever you do), moist fresh inside and natural flaking. Dorada's not too boney either, so not too many worries for the piscosceptic. The accompanying cous-cous salad was also wonderful. A mix of freshly chopped vegetables, with a lovely sweet-sour sauce drizzled over and excellently judged non-soggy grains A ring of plantain slices did duty as spud substitutes. It doesn't look a million dollars. It might be fish, but the Pollock that comes to mind is less ocean, more Jackson. The photo can't do its flavours justice, of course, and it's terrific, filling experience.
Desserts were homemade. An orange cake was fudgy and felt like I should have it at Christmas with a bottle of cava. Four chocolate truffles were suitably strongly flavoured. Both felt more like something you'd have with coffee in the afternoon, but perhaps that's what happens when you try to make dishes fit the eating niceties of another country.
Pros Excellent food in a friendly atmosphere at a good price.
Cons First impressions need overcoming. Availability was patchy on our visit.
Pay
€€€
Per Person €30 Shared starter, beer and bottle of Rioja. Main and dessert each. El tenedor discount may be available for food. Gratis: nothing.
Find
Website Here
Access Two flights of steps down from the street.
In Short
Hopes? Authenticity, please.
Reality? Certainly felt like it.
First Impressions? Entrance is a bit...undergound car park, to be honest.
A USP? Food like this, where this is.
The food in three words? Intense, homemade, filling.
Can they get the staff? Chef plus a server.
Service with a smile? Helpful and friendly. Chef came out of kitchen to help out with things when he could.
V-friend friendly? Mostly meat-based, but navigable.
Rating for dating? For food, interesting. For atmosphere, problematic.
Tip? Small one.
Change one thing? More attention to the ambience.
Going back? Potentially.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
Sankara lounge serves authentic-feeling food, right in the centre of town.
Things start disconcertingly. Africa, it's not. Kilimanjaro isn't rising like Olympus above the Serengeti. We're in a cellar opposite a posh hotel. Entering the place feels like navigating the emergency exit from a nuclear bunker. Cracked tiles and steel. Once downstairs, the eating area is small. Ten covers, probably. There's not a vast amount of decoration, but it's not twee, which is a mercy. A flatscreen is showing wildlife videos (yes, wildebeest sweep majestically), but not much shouts Africa!
That said, as I sat down a flock of videoed vultures were picking a carcass clean. The metaphor for centuries of Euro-African history had my European guilt welling up, but I ordered a bottle of Amstel (green peril no thanks) and felt better. Bloody colonials, indeed.
So the portents could, honestly, have been better.
But, food! It's mains and salads on the menu with nothing labelled starters. After flirting with the idea of three mains, we shared a banana empanada, which unquestionanly begs to be ordered in pyjamas, simply for the unique scansion opportunities.
It took longer than I'd have expected to turn up. We soon twigged why. Bookings are not simply at half hour intervals but one table per half hour. The chef was cooking for each booking in turn, so as later couples came in, they were warned they'd not get supper till we'd been served.
So, that banana empanada. There's no mucking about with garnishes, just a spoonful of red chilli paste on the side, as powerful as any I've had in Madrid. A flake or two got the pulse racing. Filling, it the empanada's perhaps better called a plantain pasty. Tasting rather like sweet potato, it was a new one on me. A little starchy, I'd have enjoyed a creamy sauce with it, but we both liked it a lot. A good start.
But before we'd got half way into it, the mains turned up. Mafe is a soup bowl of beef/veal in a thick peanut sauce ,with an equally generous bowl of rice accompanying it.
The beef was easily enough food for two, the sauce was very rich, spicier than a lot of curries you'd find around and evidently very slowly cooked to get that much flavour into it and the large cuts of beef to fall apart at will. Terrific stuff.
The multicoloured attieke aloco was also brilliant. Excellent dorada, with a nice bit of crispy skin (don't discard it whatever you do), moist fresh inside and natural flaking. Dorada's not too boney either, so not too many worries for the piscosceptic. The accompanying cous-cous salad was also wonderful. A mix of freshly chopped vegetables, with a lovely sweet-sour sauce drizzled over and excellently judged non-soggy grains A ring of plantain slices did duty as spud substitutes. It doesn't look a million dollars. It might be fish, but the Pollock that comes to mind is less ocean, more Jackson. The photo can't do its flavours justice, of course, and it's terrific, filling experience.
Desserts were homemade. An orange cake was fudgy and felt like I should have it at Christmas with a bottle of cava. Four chocolate truffles were suitably strongly flavoured. Both felt more like something you'd have with coffee in the afternoon, but perhaps that's what happens when you try to make dishes fit the eating niceties of another country.
African drinks-alcoholic ones at least - weren't on the agenda - the one SA wine we asked after wasn't in stock and all the beer is European.
Service is friendly and welcoming, but needs polish. Tabletops could do with more care; glasses need to be placed by the stem and we'd have liked to know what was off the menu from the off. As it was, three of our choices weren't on the cards - even though they were on la carte.
A few extra details would be nice - some flat bread, perhaps. Some nuts with the drinks at kick-off. But we liked the food a lot, but a bit more love is deserved by the experience as a whole. It'd sell the quality to its best advantage.
The thing is, those mains were excellent and deserve your custom. So brave the initial bunker experience. Go try them.
Service is friendly and welcoming, but needs polish. Tabletops could do with more care; glasses need to be placed by the stem and we'd have liked to know what was off the menu from the off. As it was, three of our choices weren't on the cards - even though they were on la carte.
A few extra details would be nice - some flat bread, perhaps. Some nuts with the drinks at kick-off. But we liked the food a lot, but a bit more love is deserved by the experience as a whole. It'd sell the quality to its best advantage.
The thing is, those mains were excellent and deserve your custom. So brave the initial bunker experience. Go try them.