I finally made it to Africola! I was super excited to try South African food for the first time! We booked on a Friday night and were allocated outdoor seating, but we certainly weren’t neglected despite seating in front of Botanic Bar. I started with the Bluna cocktail – gin, orange wine, gooseberry and Rooibos cola combined into a light and lolly-sweet mix (yum!). Meals come with a complimentary serve of house-made flatbread and smoky goat’s curd – a perfect way to whet the appetite. Dish one was the charcoal marron served with a seaweed dressing. The marron was tender and soft and I mopped up all of the seaweed dressing – it was like the best nori in oil with a great salty hit. This dish was a real winner for flavour, but when they say entree size, they mean it. Entree two was the raw kingfish with mandarin segments, mandarin gel and goat’s curd. For me, the kingfish was the only thing that didn’t work – when I order fish I want to taste it, instead all I got was mandarin with the texture of fish, which was a bit odd. Overall I felt like the entrees were trying a bit too hard to be ‘chefy’. Part two to follow.
Africola, 4 East Terrace, Adelaide, SA http://africola.com.au/
