Food Cravings and Woes

Of all the cuisines I have tasted around the world, traditional African cuisine will easily earn the last spot in my book. It is definitely unrefined, mostly heavy, and just about boring altogether, with a few dishes repeated to nausea: brochettes (meat skewers, which when are good are excellent, but one can only have so many brochettes…); samosas (a sort of fried dumplings, filled mostly with minced meat, which, again, are incredibly heavy and tend to get boring after a while); fried fish (a great addition when you live next to the lake); boiled potatoes; fufu (a sort of tasteless porridge, that they make either out of manioc or maize flour); hard boiled corn; creamy soups (which are to be found on all hotel buffets); some undefined veggie-grassy mixes; and other occasional foods that mostly float in reddish palm oil. If and when you want diversity, the few popular places would offer pizzas and pasta, croques monsieur and madame (this last recipe changes all the time, so the element of surprise is always there), and delicious fruits and veggies (which are in abundance, of course, but which for some reason are not at all popular with the locals – one explanation for this that I heard in East Congo goes back to colonial times, when the whites apparently indulged in these things while the blacks developed a strong cultural resistance.)

Overall, though, I should not complain, as both last year in Rwanda and this year in Congo we have had AMAZING house cooks, who have tried to appease the tastes of us difficult mzungus with ‘weird’ things, such as tender meats, clear soups, plenty of fruits and veggies, and delightful quiches and pies and cakes and soufflés, all nicely garnished and incredibly tasty. I have also been quite lucky to live with and around Italians, so high quality pasta, cappuccinos, and the best risottos of my life have been regulars on my diet.

That said, when you end up in a big city such as Kigali or Kinshasa, diverse cuisines are huge draws. Last year, on such occasions, I would splurge on FANTASTIC Chinese and Moroccan, while this summer I discovered the stunning cossa-cossa - the gigantic Congo River prawns that just about feel like heaven (I keep wondering, however, how come Kinshasa has not given in to a sort of African paella, I bet it would be a huge hit over there…)

In any event, this time around, doomed to spend two weeks in that fascinating but ultimately terrible big city, I thought I would at least indulge in whatever crazy food experiences I could get. Forewarned they would cost an arm and a leg, I was happy I would at least get per-diems to offset some of these costs (and started dreaming even more avidly of New York, and its amazing food scene at a fraction of the prices here…)

The first try was a Chinese restaurant, in the company of a Romanian SECU guy. He thought he knew its location by heart (somewhere behind the Greek orthodox church (?!)), but there we could only find a Greek restaurant, where life was in full swing. When we inquired about the Chinese brothers, they pointed to an obscure building, and said “Ils n’ont pas d’electricite!” We were not quite sure whether this was sabotage a la grec, or whether the poor Chinese really didn’t have money to pay for their power bill, but we did get out of there and drove to another Chinese restaurant on the main boulevard.Unfortunately, by the time we got there the cool things on the buffet were mostly gone, and while waiting for the second round of cossa-cossa to come up I stuffed myself with some rather bland sweet-and-sour pork and rice. Luckily, delicious steamed dumplings arrived in the meantime, and I pretty much claimed the whole pot to myself (in repeated trips to the buffet table, under the rather disapproving looks of the unfriendly Chinese serving staff).

The second culinary extravagance started one late weekend evening, by an amazing pool, where I ordered croquettes. I am never quite sure what they are made of (in Romania they would be mashed potato-based, while in Spain I had them ham-based). Of course the Congolese staff had no clue, so I was served these three mysterious little balls for 10 euros (bizarre even that the menu was priced in euros, not dollars, like everything else is in Africa.) From inside the deep-fried coat, some delicious saucy contents reversed onto my plate, and with the obligatory pilly-pilly (chilli) sauce a cote the croquettes were actually very tasty.

We then moved for the main meal, in a posh restaurant, where I just took some over-fried spring rolls and beer, while my friend tasted the Antelope a la Portuguese (?!) -- which resembled veal in some undefined Asian cuisine, apart from the fact that it was drowning in cheap red wine. The African counterpart -- Antelope a la Congolaise -- would have been served, instead, with sauce béarnaise (again, we had to pause and wonder what the connection was?!) In the end it didn’t matter so much, as I was more interested in the Real-Barca game we were there to see, and which, for the …th time, was going to make me supremely happy.

The next interesting food experience was over a business lunch at this Lebanese place called Belle Vue. I assumed it would be ‘just’ a restaurant, but I discovered that in fact it was a whole upscale compound, clearly belonging to some VERY rich people. Apart from several tennis courts, a grand swimming pool, residences and beautiful gardens, the restaurant itself seemed like a castle out of some Middle-East fairytale: a huge banquet hall, with velvet-clad chairs and heavy drapes, where the AC was obviously blasting; some extravagant chandeliers, dropping almost to the marble floors; ceiling-high paintings and carpets, all telling of some heroic tales hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away; and an out-of-this-world staircase, rolling up to the first floor, where huge mirrors dwarfed me … All quite surreal, of course, in the middle of a hot, dusty, traffic-alienating Kinshasa day… The even more surprising thing was the menu: in fact, a fast-food menu dressed up nicely, where some very regular falafel, tabuleh and mint tea were quite cruelly priced, of course…

After all these random meals I was still yearning, though, for THE food: Japanese. Encouraged after an excellent sushi experience in Nairobi, I started scouting for ‘the best Japanese restaurant’ in Kinshasa, and when several people recommended Acachia I knew I had to try it. I sort of overlooked the second part of the recommendation, though – that this fusion place offered much better Korean than Japanese dishes, since, well, the owner was Korean. I also preferred to forget that Korean food was never really my favorite (I only once LOOOOVED it, in NYC of course, when spicy calamari just made it into my heart FOREVER).

In my craving I was quickly joined by another mzungu sort-of-new-in-town, so we decided we would have a wonderful sushi evening ahead of the return Barca-Real game, a mere couple of days after the previous one. As I was the first to arrive, I was received with numerous awkward bows by the entire African staff, yielding to some approximate Asian polite coutumes, and I was taken into the big dining room, where I discovered I was really the first one. The room was decorated with some giant wooden violin-shaped liquor cabinets (reminding me of Mozart kugelns), a large green painting with some unidentifiable exotic birds, and a big plasma TV showing some English Premier League game, all to the tunes of disco music from the 80s. As I was trying to find the perfect table (i.e. away from the AC), I noticed that the entire polite staff had retreated without a trace. I then remembered that the cool thing everyone professed about this place was the table bell – a button which you would press every time you’d like to be served. And which, by God, was the one thing keeping me in the good mood that night.

I pressed that bell many times, for good or just silly reasons, and I loved every single ring. As for the sushi – well, here’s what I actually got: a rainbow roll for $21 (!), which deserved its name to the fullest, as I believe they rolled in it whatever they found in the kitchen. Among them-not-so-sushi-items: kimchi (the fermented Korean veggies); mayo; coconut flakes (which at the beginning I mistook for Parmesan); and another unidentified sweetish brown sauce. The things that DIDN’T come with it: wasabi and ginger... Following the same model, the sweet potato tempura came without any special tempura sauce (whose missing earned another bell ring, and another ‘Il n’y en a pas’ answer). My friend, instead, went for the tiniest maki roll in the world (the pieces were literally as slim as my pinkie finger) and for some Korean dish, which, he vowed, tasted like the most sordid Chinese food he ever had in NYC (and NOT in Chinatown)… Luckily they had LARGE Skol beers (again, very different from the Romanian Skol, but not bad), so it was not a total $60 fiasco… At the end, I felt the urge to ring the bell one last time, and I gave my friend the occasion to address the waitress who showed up quite bewildered by these very demanding customers (we continued being the only ones throughout the evening). “Could you please give the chef our utmost gratitude for this delicious meal,” my friend said, while I was hardly containing my nervous-liberating laugh attack.

It was definitely time to get out of there and change venues for the game. A new Congolese friend suggested we meet at Bingo, this massive fast-food/shisha-smoke-filled betting alley, where they had Coronas and ice cream! Wow, two other treats that I had missed dearly! Not sure, though, what process these had also gone through, as the Corona tasted NOTHING like THE Corona, and the ice-cream was just frozen colorful icicles… Luckily Messi saved the night again – how else? – and all food woes were immediately put behind us.

The very last night in Kinshasa I gave croquettes another try, at Opoeta, and they were again delicious, although very different from the previous ones (but of course!). Also, as my Romanian friend was indulging in little frog legs, I decided it was finally time to break that last food taboo – and I absolutely LOVED them!!! Together with the surprisingly good moelleux that my hotel Sultani serves, and which I ordered pretty much every night, these were definitely the highlight of the Kinshasa food spree I had - only relatively successfully - embarked on.