"Ooo I'd love a Chinese!" or "I am craving an Indian tonight" is something you are likely to hear at least once a week from your friends, co-workers and family. One Grangetown restaurant is making people crave African food just as much. Its mission is to show how good 'overlooked' African food can be.
Found on Penarth Road in Grangetown Le Mandela has been serving amazing and authentic African cuisine for five years. Le Mandela is a family-run restaurant which began when parents Marie Djitche and Antoine Keuni set up the business.
Now their three sons, Ulrich, Benoit and Steve Keuni have taken over the business, with their mum still helping out. Speaking about how the business started, Ulrich said: “My mum was naturally good at cooking…people in Cardiff knew her. Whenever there was an African party or wedding people always asked my mum to do the cooking.”
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“The community knew my mum could cook so when my parents had the opportunity to get this place they just jumped at it.” When Ullrich was three years the family moved to Grangetown from their home in Cameroon and ever since then he has called Cardiff home.
After taking over the business three years ago Ullrich asked his brother Benoit, who is a professionally trained chef and has worked under star Welsh chef James Sommerin, if he would join the business. Ulrich spoke about what it was like to be a family business, he said: “It is easy and difficult at the same time…it helps keep that togetherness as well even through tough times…as a family, it helps as we try and keep each other motivated, when we are doing things for ourselves it helps us push and push and push.”
Speaking about recent years, facing the coronavirus pandemic and the current cost of living crisis, Ulrich described it as "obstacles after obstacles". He said: “It is obstacles after obstacles, you think you’ve gone past one and another one comes up and then you think you’ve passed this obstacle and another one comes up…we are just hoping when things get a bit better, things might change a bit.”
Ulrich and his brothers have big plans for Le Mandela as they want everyone in Wales to experience the joy of African food. He said: “When we first started it was heavily a core African community that would dine with us but we want to expand that, we don’t just want to keep it within ourselves or just cater for ourselves.”
"On Wednesday people will be like ‘I want an Indian or I want a Chinsese’ where no-one ever thinks I want African cuisine so that is the type of mentality we want to try to bring in Wales...We want African cuisine to be known and people to crave it.”
They have used Benoit's impressive skills as a chef to design dishes that will appeal to everyone. Ulrich said: “Our menu was a lot of traditional dishes where I don’t think the Western world would have really been eager to try it but with Ben being a chef he has ideas so he managed to create some dishes that are unique and our culture and give it a twist to make it more appealing.”
Diversity has never been more important and as Cardiff continues to diversify as a city, Ulrich believes it is vital for people to continue learning about different cultures. He said: “In such a diverse world, country, including Cardiff…it just keeps growing and growing the diversity in Wales, so that is why we think it is important for people to try different cuisine, different cultures…because Cardiff is such a diverse city.”
Some of Le Mandela's best customers are students from Africa who are studying in Wales. They come into the restaurant craving authentic African food and a taste of home and they never leave disappointed.
Ulrich said: “It is seeing how happy people are when they have the food, especially students from Africa. African cuisine is quite complex. They won’t be able to cook certain dishes so when they come here and they have their authentic and traditional cuisine and see how happy they are, that makes me happy.”
Included in their future plans Le Mandela is hoping to tap into the street food scene. Ulrich explained: “I’ve never been to a street food festival and seen African cuisine and we have a lot of street food that I know people would love, so that is really a market we want to tap into.”
During my visit to Le Mandela, I couldn't resist trying the food, with the delicious smells coming from the kitchen being far too tempting, and I can't wait to return. All the dishes had immense flavour and came out piping hot.
My favourite dish was the L'haricat frit, which was vegetarian - not my normal choice. The dish was made up of plantain on a bed of beans in a rich, deep sauce.
The texture of the plantain reminded me of roast potatoes and the flavours went so well together, I could not get enough of the beans. Having tried a variety of food I returned to the office with goods to offer with the Jollof rice quickly snapped up and devoured, a firm favourite.
The Jollof rice had a spicy flavour which hit slowly at first and then grew, however, the rice still remained light and airy. The perfect accompaniment for any dish. You can keep up to date with the latest What's On news by signing up to the newsletter here.
I also tried the Egusi and Semolina, which is a beef dish. The beef was also flavoured perfectly, tangy, flavoursome and moreish, another dish that was hard to put down and the Semolina was perfect to dip into the sauce.
So the next time you are thinking of having a takeaway or dining out, why not try Le Mandela, broaden your horizons and experience a different culture from a friendly, family business.
