Restaurant: Connie's Authentic Ghanian Restaurant
Address: 85-87 Woodgrange Rd, London E7 0EP
Date of visit: 8 August 2021
Time of visit: 8pm
The previous restaurant visit on this project was made on February 2020. One month later, like the rest of the world, the World of London Restaurants project stopped.
I made a determination that we weren't going to resume it until life was as back to normal as possible. I needed the restaurant experience to be exactly the same as it was pre-Covid. In August 2021, we were finally there.
Next up we headed to East London to a Ghanian restaurant sandwiched between and behind two shops on Woodgrange Road. As such we were greeted by a long passage, marked by a big "Connies" sign above, and walked into a fairly sparse cafe/restaurant space. As we fully expected this definitely appeared to be a community eating spot and not somewhere that often received first time vistors who have travelled across London to be there!
Nonetheless, the waitress was quite attentive to our arrival, inviting us to sit at a table, to which she very promptly brought menus. Already we felt welcome and could tell the service was friendly.
The menu looks pretty decent, but it was clearly not aimed at the uninitiated due to the lack of descriptions of the dishes. Nothing a crafty Google search can't help with. There was no table service at this restaurant, adding to the "cafe" vibe, but it was made clear in a friendly way that we had to order at the till. Elle paid the full amount when she ordered, reinforcing a cafe versus restaurant vibe. As such, there was no service charge added to the full total.
Elle opted for the kebab to start (it was simply listed as such on the menu). For me, it had to be the deep-fried turkey tail. Definitely not being stereotypically Scottish. More intrigued by the revelation that turkeys had tails, which I don't think had ever dawned on me!
For the main meal we both went for the chicken jollof, which definitely seemed to be the signature dish. A popular West African dish of baked chicken with rice cooked with tomatoes, garlic, ginger and spices.
And to drink, we each had a 625ml bottle of Star beer, from Ghana.
The service at the till was very friendly, with the waitress trying to upsell and offer us some palm juice for the table.
I love the waiting. This is when we simply take in the sights, sounds, smells, conversation and everything else that hits our senses. There was a mix of local Ghanian music playing in the restaurant, and the sound Sky Sports Cricket being shown on a TV at one end of the restaurant. A few families were dining during our stay, which meant some kids running around, but it wasn't really an issue. And one point the kids waved at me emphatically, ensuring that they were seen! The slight blip of annoyance was when one of the boys cranked the tunes up on the massive boom box in the corner to the max!
The starters arrived, with the turkey tail arriving with a bowl for the discarded bones, and no cutlery. So this was clearly one to eat with the fingers! The chopped tail pieces were topped with raw onion, with an incredible hot salsa to the side. The turkey was fatty, but there was a surprisingly good amount of turkey meat to find. The meat was very dry but very tasty, going perfectly with the hot sauce.
Elle's kebab probably wasn't quite as interesting to look at. A single skewer which wasn't particularly large. But it wasn't particularly expensive. It was served with some kind of ground spice on the side. It wasn't particularly clear what the spice was. Perhaps just chilli powder. But the real mystery was trying to guess what meat was on the skewer. We never did reach a conensus on that.
As for the main course. RICE. So so much rice. I hope the photo above does it justice. That was one extremely generous, densely packed, ball of rice. It was very clear that this meal was probably more about the rice than the chicken. The chicken was chopped and on the bone, which made it a little cumbersome to eat. Still very tasty and in a rich spicy tomato sauce.
That rice though. It was dense and had a chewy consistency to it. Purposefully. It was cooked to perfection and had an amazing real deep spice which added so much to the flavour and the experience. It was incredibly moreish and a real pleasure to eat. The chicken felt like a side show.
We were only a few minutes into eating the main before we realised that we really shouldn't have ordered starters! But the main was so enjoyable that we pushed ourselves to finish it.
Getting up out of the chair was going to be problematic. Thankfully, the chilled vibe in the place ensured that we knew there was no rush to free up our table. Somehow we did eventually manage to get up, and get out. Very full and very satisfied.
Sadly, it's taken me so long to write this review (absolutely no excuses for a nearly two year delay...!) that Connie's is no longer trading, and in its place a "new ladies saloon" called Club Diamondz. A sad loss.
