Sadly, this restaurant turned out to be more hype than anything else. They had Cape Malay food and some interesting dishes on their menu, so we decided to give it a chance.
Our drinks weren’t bad. My non alcoholic mojito was good, the Karina kiss came with a chocolate elephant that was appreciated and the peach Bellini tasted fine (even if it came without a stirrer and needed to be stirred with a knife)
For starters we ordered grilled calamari which was salty, the prawn cocktail - the prawns weren’t fresh, the crayfish - wasn’t bad.
I ordered a Cape Malay chicken curry as we have loved the cape Malay curries we have had over the last few days and a putu & chakalaka as a side.
My dining companions opted to wait for the starters before deciding their mains, as portion sizes in this part of the country have been much larger than Joburg.
The portion sizes were tiny, but given our disappointment with the starters, they opted not to order anything else. I requested our server to just bring my main course as the others wouldn’t be ordering. It took 45 minutes for my mains to arrive.
The curry was stodgy, the quality/taste of chicken wasn’t good and it didn’t taste fresh.
The putu tasted like it had been sitting uncovered and drying out for awhile before it was served under the chakalaka (which wasn’t bad), but we just couldn’t eat it. And after tasting everything, we just decided to pay the bill and leave.
When the manager approached us, we explained what l problems we had with the food, she offered a 10% discount for us to be used at another occasion, but after an experience like this, we wouldn’t go back even for free.
Karibu is a tourist trap. Avoid as far as possible.