That African Feeling

Have you ever had one of those nights that is so surreal you feel as though you are tourists in your own city? I went out the other night with Saya to Newtown eyes wide open and stomach grumbling. In an attempt to have something other then thai satay stirfry and tuna and avocado sushi we stumbled across a place called African Feeling, which served a wide array of food that I had never heard of before in my life.

We could have been waiting for our food for hours considering the prime amount of people watching to be done in Newtown, but the service here was great and we weren't waiting long at all.

Mixed entree for starters. The triangles had meat and spinach in them but also this flavour that you couldn't quite put your finger on. They tasted great as did the "African Cigars" if I remember their names correctly. The little golden circles are actually spiced banana, they tasted really good but they didn't taste like banana. They tasted like potato wedges with different spices on top. 

The entrees we quite filling. Our mains came out, the red one is Traditional African Stew with beef and the other one is a coconut chicken curry. The servings were perfect, at first we though they were small, but by the end we couldn't even finish them if we tried. The stew had such a unique flavour, one that Saya and I had never had anything close to in our whole lives and she is half Japanese and I am half Polish, we have eaten some interesting meals in our time. The chicken dish was a mild, sweet, coconut curry. Both dishes were quite different from eachother but they both worked so well together. 

I would highly recommend anyone who wants to try something different to check out this place, "African Feeling" in Newtown.

When trying to decide on dinner we thought it would be fun to have shisha after (not sure if that was the correct way to use that in a sentence). Funnily enough the African place was right next to a Lebanese Restaurant called Arabella. After we finished eating we moved a few table down and bought a grape flavoured shisha/ agile/ hubbly bubbly for the night. 

We spent the rest of our night having a great time pretending to be dragons and the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. 

Both of our phones actually died at this point. There was a birthday going on inside and we sat outside giggling as we watched the 20 something year old guys geting up and trying to bellydance. We met a few of these boys when they came outside and sat at our table. The night turned into a ridiculously funny series of events that involved the boys bothering us but not really and the manager and his friends coming over and pretending we were their wives so the boys would leave us alone. Nothing serious and all in good fun, and have I mentioned how much I love Newtown? The staff at Arabella looked after us so well and one of the managers friends who didn't even work there checked up on us regularly to make sure our shisha was all right. I think they could tell we were rookies. I can't comment on the food but Arabella definetly has a genuinely kind group of staff that will look after you.

It's so great to know that I don't have to be travelling on the other side of the world to have crazy happy-go-lucky adventures with my friends. It's waiting just outside your door. You got to try something new once in a while. Maybe not having our phones on us made our night better?

erica