Eat.Drink.Lagos Hits "The Streets"
Mama Ebo Pepper Rice & Bar
Block 70, Taiye Olowu Street. Lekki Phase I, Lagos
FOLLY: This was my idea, all my idea. I didn't sense the hesitation in Nosa's reply when I messaged him that we should go here, but when we got there I realized that he was far from interested.
NOSA: Well, I've made no secret about the fact I utterly detest rice & stew. Boiled eggs, rice & stew, and akara. In that order.
FOLLY: Actually, I should have known. He made one excuse about the lighting not being good for pictures. I actually went to search "Mama Ebo" on google images to check if there was light and then I sent it to him.
NOSA: It was doomed from the start.
FOLLY: Anyways, we proper carried last on this one cause this place isn't even new and I only heard about it for the first time last week.
NOSA: Maybe that was a sign from God. He tried his best to keep it from you, but you went out to find it. Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden.
FOLLY: Whatever, I got the Mama Ebo Pepper Rice and my side was goat meat. I was expecting the goat meat to be in stew and stuffs, little pieces too like Asun.
NOSA: You expected wrong. Clearly.
FOLLY: Not fried like Sallah meat. It was very tender though so that was nice as it helped to douse the fire that was ravishing in my mouth because of that pepper sauce.
NOSA: I got mine with fish, which wasn't bad tbh. It reminded me of the Wednesday night fish we had in boarding school. The stew was really peppery. Full sweat-on-nose bants. No lies told there at all.
FOLLY: The whole appeal of a buka is the authentic freshly made food so colour me unimpressed when I was served cold rice & stew that was made hours, or possibly a day or two before.
I don't know if it's because we came in the evening and on a weekend, but our rice was clumpy and looked like "fridge rice". Clumpiness is a characteristic of fridge rice.
NOSA: On a second thought, I think I might hate clumpy rice more than I hate anything in the world and I'm one big ball of hate that goes around hating everything. I'm like this guy...
FOLLY: I really don't like white rice so if I must eat it, I'm going to be that Nigerian man that wants his food freshly made within 30 minutes of him eating it.
Our server also brought our plates out of the kitchen and then warmed it in a microwave before finally serving us. I feel like that's a big no - no for a buka. Can you really call yourself a buka if you have a microwave?
NOSA: Yeah, not interested in doing this again. And it's not a "snob" thing before any idiot jumps on that. I had this same thing from Olaiya last week and it was infinitely better.
POSTSCRIPT
FOLLY: I know many people will be a bit upset that we went to Mama Ebo and had a not so good experience cause many swear by it. Maybe it was the time we went, but really I don't get the hype. I also really hate spicy food, so I did this cause I was curious.
NOSA: There's always rice at home...and it's not rice & stew.
DAMAGE
Pepper Rice - N300
Fish - N500
Goat Meat - N500