Africa Cafe & Cookbook

So a while back I mentioned that we had gone to a restaurant called the Africa Cafe.

It was one of the loveliest lunches I've ever had!  BEAUTIFUL decor and food that made us wish we could just sit around and wait for dinner!

We decided to have their "Communal Feast" where you can pick a selection of small plates.

We had the Congo Salad:

A selection of organic veggies, homemade dressing, hummus, sprouts, etc ...

Zambian Bean Pies:

 

A tiny, savory-bean-filled empanada kind of thing ...

Africa Cafe Spicy Chicken Drumsticks:

This is the recipe that made me start experimenting with my own Sticky-Spicy Chicken (I never wrote that recipe up, did I?  Next week I swear!)

Xhosa Imifino Patties:

 

Corn and Spinach fried patties

And some lovely smoothies:

And as amazing as the food-feast was, so was the feast on the eyes ... these photos don't do the bright, fun, cozy rooms any justice...

There is also a small store attached to the Cafe, filled with all manner of handmade goods, crafts, art, food:

I wanted to bring the whole store home with me!

About the only thing that I didn't find in the store was a cookbook of their food -- I just figured they didn't have one.

So imagine my surprise when, during our road trip to Knysna, I found this:

Hurray!  Just like the restaurant itself, the cookbook is really beautiful:

 

There are some typos here and there (the editor in me can't let it go!) and some of the instructions are a bit vague (i.e., "cook till tender," is that 10 minutes or 2 hours?) but I have about 30 recipes tagged that I want to make from it ... and the first I chose was Mwana Wa Nkhosa, the Lamb Stew I made for Aaron's birthday -- which was ammaaaazing!

All in all, this is what I think about the African Cafe!