You really do not want to go here with a hangover. The assault on the eyes would drive you hurtling down the narrow, barely lit, health and safety defying, spiral staircase to the loos. Only for the senses once again to be overwhelmed by weaver birds’ nests, frogs and wooden statues of naked pygmies surrounding the porcelain.
Yes, the place is decorated in what might be termed an idiosyncratic manner. Very idiosyncratic. If the Indonesian masks next to the fairy lights posing as flowers don’t get you, the Korean Karaoke-like renditions of Beetles hits will.
The food too could be described as challenging. Think crickets and love bugs, crunchy in a green salad. Think kangaroo spiced with “21 spices from Yemen”, that well known home of Skippy and his fellow marsupials. Think a gnu stroganoff. Think zebra.
It isn’t all odd for oddness sake: the wine list (housed in what might have been a canopic jar) has a 1961 Petrus (at nearly eight grand) sitting next nothing else that gets past a ton. OK, that is odd. But there is a main course of spiced Mexican belly pork. It comes in a Tom Yum broth. OK, that is odd too.
In fact, what am I talking about; it is all odd.
Many years ago I went to a restaurant in Nairobi that served barbecue skewers, churrasco like, of antelope, zebra, giraffe etc. Alongside this, it had similar skewers of lamb and beef. Having tried them all, it is easy to see why we eat far more lamb and beef in this country than zebra.
So go and try kangaroo and crocodile, they will no doubt be the best of their kind that you will try in this country. Thereafter, stick to lamb and beef, which just taste better.