Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Discovery XXXII

Little Africa was chosen as the venue for Discovery XXXII, mostly because of a mixup of dates and commitments. Only three discoverers were able to make the not-so-long journey to North Melbourne, arriving by bicycle from Docklands and trams from Flinders Street and South Yarra.

I arrived early and settled down happily with a nice St George beer in the late evening light filtering through the shopfront window on Victoria Street. Little Africa is quite a small space but very welcoming and comfortable. I learned from Urbanspoon that you can choose to settle into nearby Prudence bar instead, and have food from Little Africa delivered to your table. Sounds like the best of both worlds.

St George
St George

Once the usual suspects (minus one) were assembled at Boris's table, we ordered the vegetarian combo plate for two and the derek tibs, a pan fried lamb dish as compensation for our unreconstructed carnivore.

Vegetarian combo
Vegetarian combo

The vegetarian combo arrived on an enormous pink rimmed plate, wearing a fetching straw hat. As you can see, a chunk was already torn off the delicious injera bread before I had a chance to take a photo. It seemed like far too much for two, but the combination of lentils, cabbage, carrots, pumpkin and spicy, salty, lemony flavours, with a little refreshing greenery, was so delicious that we managed to get through nearly all of it.

Ths is the derek tibs: less spectacular, but equally well appreciated.

Derek tibs
Derek tibs

When we could eat and drink no more, we saw Mr 30 off on his bike, and then walked through the Victoria Market on our way back to Melbourne Central. The market was buzzing with its regular Wednesday night hawkers market and we made a note to go back some time when we weren't already utterly sated and longing to get home to the peaceful city of Boroondara, way out east, to collapse on the couch.

 

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