• 1
• Disappointing

The menu looks great. I got the black-eyed pea fritters to start and a broccoli, cauliflower, and carrot in light ginger sauce, over couscous, as my main. Mild, medium, or spicy, she asked, and I told her to go with spicy. The fritters were fresh, hot, fluffy, and fried. And that's about it. If you like that kind of deep-fried goodness, they were great. But about two fritters in (six a plate -- definitely not designed for singles) I was ready to move on. Props, though, to the marinara sauce that accompanies them, which was excellent. That marinara prepared me poorly for the disappointment that followed. I got a plate of watery couscous over which were heaped a few chunks of boiled vegetables. (To their credit, they weren't boiled too much -- the broccoli still held their color and texture.) As for the spice, they'd sprinkled a chili power over the vegetables. And that was that. No flavor cooked in, no blending, nothing. Oh, and there was a sweet bread roll on the side. Sadly, that had more flavor than everything else I'd eaten. It's also not cheap, but I'd gladly pay these prices, or even twice as much, if the food were any good at all. One of the joys of eating out is getting a whiff of flavor and trying to guess what it was. Here, even though I knew what flavors to expect (black-eyed pea, ginger) I never found them. Everything was bland, bland, bland. (I could complain that the chili power wasn't particularly hot, but that doesn't bother me much, and anyway, that was way down on my list.) I went early, so didn't experience the service problems others report. As I was leaving, I saw another person had ordered a dish that looked like a spinach sauce over rice. I sure wish I'd ordered that. Or anything else.