Africana Restaurant & Lounge
For a west-sider, going to the east side of town can seem like going to another part of the world. In this case that part of the world was Africa. We have been meaning to pay a visit to this Atwood Avenue restaurant for a while. On a recent Friday, we had our opportunity.
The Africana is located right across the street from St. Bernard’s Church on Atwood. If you are approaching from the Monona side of town you can’t miss the colorful mural painted on the side of the building. We arrived early this evening and found we would have no trouble getting a table. As we ate, the place began to fill up. The service was a bit slow this particular night because the waitress who was scheduled that evening was sent home because of the Swine Flu, something tells us that we will see a lot of businesses challenged this winter with this same problem.
The interior is painted a deep burnt orange with dark brown accents and colorful drapes on the windows. The tables and chairs have more of a diner feel to them but the seating was ample and we were not expecting “up-scale” décor. In reviewing the menu we found the entrées broken into three “build-your-own” combinations of Sauce, Grilled and Fried dishes. The Sauce dishes included a choice of sauce, side dish and type of meat. Choices of six different sauces are available with recommended side dish accompaniments. The sauces included Peanut, Okra, Egusi (Pumpkin Seed), Yassa (Onions, mustard and lemon), Kedjenou (tomato, garlic) and Vegetable. Paired with these sauces are side dishes of Rice, Couscous, Fufu (yam) and Attieke (Couscous of Cassava). The meat included chicken, beef, lamb, fish and goat.
The Grilled and Fried entrées comes with a choice of fish or chicken with an onion and pepper and a carrot salad. You also have a choice of side dish which included 3 styles of rice, fries, Alloco (fried plantains) and Couscous.
One of us selected the grilled dark meat chicken and fried rice the other was more adventuresome and elected the goat with white rice and vegetable sauce. The meal comes with a bowel of vegetable soup whose main ingredient was cabbage with carrots, zucchini and potato. It had a flavorful broth that was milder on the spices than we had expected. Unfortunately the soup was also cold when we got it, which we attributed to the wait staff challenge.
The goat in vegetable sauce was a hearty stew with chunks of carrot, tomato and tender goat meat (and bones). The flavor was quite mild; again without the spiciness we had anticipated. The second entrée seemed to be the better of the two. The dark meat chicken included two legs, two backs and a thigh that were grilled to perfection. You don’t see many restaurants serving the back of the chicken very often. This was always my grandmother’s favorite part (I don’t know why). The skin was crispy with a great grilled flavor and the meat was moist and flavorful. Topping the chicken was a salad of red onion and green peppers with a light dressing that complemented the veggies and the chicken. Alongside were a carrot salad and fried rice with a strong spice profile of cumin and pepper that was what we had expected to be more prevalent in the other dishes. We were quite full from the meals we ordered and did not opt to try any of the desserts (Crepes, Flan, Mango Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake).
Both of us enjoyed our meals and noted that we would definitely come back and try some of the other combinations Africana offers.
Africana, 2701 Atwood Avenue, is open for lunch buffet daily from 11am till 2:30pm and dinner from 5 pm till 9:30pm. At 10 pm Wednesday through Sunday the bar is open until 2 am, with a DJ and dancing on Friday and Saturday. Africana offers nightly specials and catering services as well.
