Restaurant Eating in Bamenda

Restaurant Eating in Bamenda:

First Impressions are not always the right assessment. 

We were introduced to three restaurants initially.  We won’t count the Ayaba Hotel although we did eat there once.  The second time we went there, they hand wrote a menu of what they could serve that night.  Our apartment was very close to the hotel so we did venture about three times to view the big screen TV and have a beer but beyond that, we choose to eat at home, usually barbequed fish picked up on our way home plus great new potatoes freshly dug, carrots, cabbage, okra and fruit (papaya, avocado, mandarin, and the dependable, delicious bananas).

The Alizan, right across  commercial street from IDF. You take your own life in your own hands to cross the street.  There are NO rules for traffic except everything but people have the right of way.  You have to look both ways on both sides of the two lane streets.  You are watching not only for cars and multi scooters but hand carts, people running, people moving their portable stores (this may be a sales person with their store on their head, examples being dried beef slices, cassava, yam, eggs, big deep fried balls, bananas, sliced papaya, coconut wedges, often children selling or carrying smaller children, sometimes begging, the brush man, the towel man, the cell phone salesman, the toilet paper man, the women sell the fruit and vegetables, the men the dry goods.  Sometimes a person is carrying an umbrella and base that is actually their store.  Anyhow, to cross the street, one has to be really alert to all possible moving object as well as the stationary stores spread out beyond the side walk.  This crossing is just as confusion as the list of possible obstructions you may encounter, moving or otherwise.

So, once you have crossed the street and found the little opening that is the top of the stairs for the Alizan Restaurant, you part the blowing curtain and enter the restaurant.  The atmosphere is friendly.  Waitresses compete to serve us.  They knew we tipped well.  The buffet was the same each day.  Salad.  A platter with shredded carrot, cabbage, onion garnished with sliced tomato, onion, green pepper.  Accompanying dressing was a typical to the Cameroon, liquid mayonnaise like olive oil based very appealing dressing.  Next, fried fish in sections, chicken roasted, fried plaintain, cassava,  huckleberry leaves with salt fish, fresh watermelon for dessert.  We enjoyed the place daily for the first two weeks with one exception.

The New Century Restaurant:  Oussematou highly recommended a restaurant on the very rough street behind IDF, no name.  The first time we went we ordered omelette.  Allan ordered cheese omelette.  The said if he would give them the money, they would go buy the cheese for the omelette.  I ordered sardine omelette (for the lactose intolerant).  Again, they offered to go buy the sardine for the omelette.  We enjoyed vegetarian omelettes!  We didn’t venture back to this restaurant until the staff decided to go one day.  That day was really fun.  Jean Baptist acted as our waiter to order.  He did a great job.  I ordered chicken with salad, Allan a vegetarian omelette.    I loved the chicken, just like the old fowl my mother used to cook in the the oven in the wood stove!  What  great flavour.  Hence the comment, first impressions are not always the right ones.  We later returned for a repeat meal.  Again excellent food.  Spaghetti omelets are the rage but we never succumbed to them. 
We returned to the New Century Restaurant with the staff of IDF and had a great meal, lots of good laughs, excellent food. 

The PresCraft Cafe:  This is an upper class cafe as confirmed by the number of white people that frequent this cafe.  They have a daily soup special (often tomato, sometimes pumpkin) with the best bread in Bamenda, homemade.  (Bread has been a problem here.  The whole wheat diabetic bread gave up the ghost.  For a couple of weeks, we noticed moulded bread set aside in the one of two stores that sold it when it was available.  Then it disappeared from radar.  The French bread sold in street carts was suspect by Allan and I will admit that the sweet coconut bread is advertized as sanitarily prepared!  Even crackers gave us grief.  We tired quickly of the rusks, dried bisques, too sweet  bisquits and settled for soda crackers often due to lack of alternatives.  Once I got on to making Swedish pancakes using 3 egg whites, one egg, that became our standard Breakfast.    Back to the PresCafe.  Very good food but very slow.  Great coffee.  Good food.  Lovely atmosphere.  Run by the Presbyterian Church and operated by two women.  Oussematou was not happy when it took us almost two hours one day to have lunch but we did enjoy the couple of lunches we had there.

Sister Rose`s, the prize winner.  .  We went as the IDF staff the last night of our stay in Bamenda.  The best fish, excellent plantain and huckleberry.  We had most of the meal in the dark due to a usual power outage but still, the best food of any restaurant.