SOMAGA AFRICAN
On 9 April 2008, I visited this place with 8 friends for dinner.
I forgot to take a picture of the interior: it is quite large, and there is a (or maybe two - I am bit hazy) pool table, and a large plasma screen on a wall which first showed African music videos, then a football game. The ambience and décor are very casual. The customers were 90% African (I tell say if they are the 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation) male. Personally - I stress this is my personal perception - I, as a woman, will not feel comfortable eating there alone, or in company of a couple of female friends, not because I think the other dinners might bother me, but it felt like being in a male-only club. I saw one African female dinner, but she was accompanied by her man.
As we were in a large group of 9, one of us ordered the dishes beforehand at the request of the owner, Nigerian lady, who was fantastic all through.
These are Chin Chin (£50 per portion, and this tray might contain more than 1 portion). They are slightly sweet deep-fried dough sticks. They were ok, but mostly left un-eaten, not because there was something wrong with them, but they were not a kind of things that we wanted to eat before the dinner.
These are Puff-Puff (£ 0.50 - I suppose this price is for a piece).
The name is puff-puff, but they are actually donuts made with banana and flour. They are lovely with sour banana taste; sweet, but not sugary. I think they can accompany savoury dishes.
This is a piece of smoked goat meat (£5 a portion).
Frankly I did not sense the smokiness, but it was very good nevertheless. The closest thing I can think of is beef jerky, but it is chilly and fluffy, not rubbery as beef jerky.
It must go very well with beer.
Now, main course. The square stuff to the left is moi moi (£2). Garri to the right, and Egwusi soup behind (£ 6.50 for both).
Moi moi is a kind of savoury pudding made of black-eye bean flour, and most of us liked it, whereas garri was more difficult to appreciate. Egwusi 'soup' is more like stew, containing melon seeds, meat and innards of some animal (we asked what sort of meat was it and were told it was 'assorted').
This is ogbono 'soup' (right) and pounded yam (left) (£6.99). Ogbono stew was pretty slimy with, ogbono seeds, okra and a special kind green, slimy vegetable that we guess similar to Egyptian Molokheiya. I did not recognise visually ogbono seeds, but according to Wikipedia, they work as thickening agent. Maybe they are also slimy-agent. The stew was also fishy, containing dried fish. Ogbono stew and pounded yam were the biggest hits of the night for us Japanese, but it might be difficult to accept for the people here who usually dislike slimy food. If you want something really different and particular, Ogbono soup certainly is your dish.
We also had jeroff rice with deep-fried hake (£6.50). Most of us thought this is the most familiar dish of all, but for this reason, I thought it was less attractive.
We had also Ora soup served with rice (£5.99), which is meat and innards stewed in palm oil.
The total bill for this abundance of well cooked food was only £9 a head. Very good value for money.
I enjoyed very much the experience, but I also discovered that I don't like palm oil, which was in every stew dish. It is a real shame, as I really liked the food (well, except for the palm oil part), but telling them to cook without palm oil would be tantamount to tell Japanese people to cook without soy sauce. For this reason, I am not entitled to evaluate this restaurant. If you don't mind the palm oil smell, you will certainly enjoy more than I did.
Somaga African
88-90 Bristol Street, B5 7AH, Birmingham
Tel. 0121-6224579
Open: Mon.-Sat., 11AM-Late
