World Food Thursdays

Country No. 2: Cote D’Ivoire

 

Date: 14/01/2014

 

Venue: Club 56, Peckham High Street

 

Attendees: Lee, Kimberley, Ben, Ellen, Poppy, Maor, David, Becky

 

Cost: £22 a head

 

I think it’s safe to say that every member of the International Dining Club, with the possible exceptions of Maor and Lee, approached this evening with trepidation. Finding an Ivorian restaurant in London was no mean feat with Ellen having to switch to French for her Googling, and then track down the proprietors of Club 56 over Facebook.

 

Pictures/ menus/ reassurance of any type was difficult to come by, Google Maps suggested that Club 56 was inside/ above/ behind a small corner shop on a shady patch along Peckham High Street. Nevertheless the intrepid members of the World Food Thursdays found themselves at Peckham Rye at 7.30 on Tuesday 14th January staring into the abyss and confronting the fear.

 

Entering through a dark door adjacent to the corner shop we entered a long, narrow, red room decorated with a heady combination of Christmas and birthday banners – perhaps leftovers from December and a double celebration of the birth of Jesus, perhaps simply a coincidence. Either way the room was empty, but the atmosphere, thanks to an overbearing sound system, was crack-a-lacking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The friendly waiter/ barman/ head chef brought us our menus, a two sided affair, one side entirely composed of overpriced drinks (£25 for a bottle of house wine) and the other offering us all the delicacies we could expect from an Ivorian feast. Once again options for Poppy (the sole vegetarian) were limited but you have to take your own responsibility for some dreadful life choices.

 

After a short wait while we exchanged facts about the Cote D’Ivoire the platters of food started to arrive. We ordered two large fried fish, two grilled fish, one plate of meat, two plates of chicken, two bowls of fried plantain, two bowls of roasted cassava root and some rice and attieke (grated cassava, similar in consistency to cous cous).

 

All the meat/ fish dishes were served with a fiery chilli sauce, and a sweeter tomato based sauce, as well as sliced tomatoes and white onion.

 

From an omnivore’s perspective the stand out dishes  were the fish, enormous portions of perfectly cooked whole white fish, personally I found the meat (we never found out it’s bovine origins) a bit tough, but Ellen, our non-fish eater was more than satisfied.

 

The fried plantain was deliciously sweet and went down a treat.

 

Ivorian Facts:

 

• The name for the capital, Adbijan, originates from a mis-translation by an early European explorer and is one of the country’s two capitals

• Cote D’Ivoire is the world’s biggest producer of cocoa

• There are 61 different languages spoken in the Cote D’Ivoire