Sajus Home Restaurant

The vicinity of this restaurant, colloquially known as “Sajus” next to the famous nightclub “Twisters” makes the place a common venue for casual Friday-night diners. On a warm September evening we went to judge if the place is really worthy of praise.

We arrived at this old, colonial-style building around seven o’clock, and were sincerely impressed by the building per se. The 6-meter high ceiling, wooden roof, grandiose entrance, and the lovebirds’ balcony upstairs would offer a great setting for the restaurant if the rest of the décor followed suit. However, the stained walls with colors ranging from gray at the top, to white, beige, and finally to pink bathroom tiles at the bottom reveal a lack of constant care of the place. The restaurant attempts to stand out by having real tablecloths, yet those too were stained beyond bleach.

The motley décor was spiced up with voluptuous velvet and lace curtains probably originating from a Russian brothel, with Christmas paper-wrapped flowerpots, with a presidential calendar from 2006, with poster promoting the 2000 Cotonou Agreement between EU and APC, and with a general feeling of disorder and randomness. Hence the name “home restaurant”, we concluded.

The many sinks of the dining hall were apparently not working, as there was a bucket of water and a scoop for washing. The furniture constituted mostly of the ubiquitous plastic garden chairs, though there were some wooden chairs and padded benches. The restaurant is evidently aimed at political crème de la crème, as a TV, which occupies a central place in the restaurant, is permanently switched on and is set to a channel dedicated to politics and parliament meetings. The TV is usually very loud, to a point where the sound is distorted to mere noise.

So, overall, in Iringan standards of interior decoration, we are talking about a nice and decent place.

As we arrived, a waitress wearing a standard whitish waiters’ shirt and a blue ill-fitting apron arrived directly at our table and brought us the menu. The menu that was in English was a once laminated green A4, now colored by food stains and affected by inc-floatings. The menu however offered a good, mouth-watering overview of Indian cuisine, consisting of around 30 starters, 15 main dishes, 7 vegetarian dishes; in addition, there were about 20 foods labeled “Chinese”, such as a variety of pizzas.

Although the waiter’s English was slightly off, she was ready to recommend us the house specialties. My friend was recommended chicken curry (3.800/=), which she gladly accepted. On the menu’s more adventurous “Chinese” side I chose Hong Kong chicken (3.500/=), which was, however, unavailable at the moment. My second attempt went right: chicken tikka (4.000/=) was indeed available for orders. We ordered our food with naan bread (they insisted on calling it chapatti) and rice. As a proper choice for Indian cuisine, our choice of beverage was Ndovu beer (1.300/= per bottle).

Our beers arrived right away, slightly chilled but not quite cold. The barista’s choice of glassware was interesting as always: whereas they could have chosen to serve our beer in a stein or a pint glass, they served it in a short Grant’s tumbler glass meant for serving whisky.

While downing our rapidly warming beers from the whisky glasses, we took another look at the clientèle of the restaurant. We were the only people dining this fine evening, though we were accompanied by two town drunks, chattering at the “bar counter”. The lack of other diners may have positively affected the speed of service and the ease of getting the waiter’s attention. Not once did we find any difficulty getting service, and our orders arrived in 50 minutes, which we consider to be somewhat fast.

My friend’s chicken curry came with thick, flavorsome gravy, with just the right amount of spiciness. She claimed that she was able to easily discern the zing of ginger, the zest of garlic, and the overarching mild warmth of curry. As an interesting detail, chicken bones were apparently crushed into shards and mixed in. My friend noted that without the alarmingly growing pile of bone shards on her napkin, this food would have made it to her top five culinary experiences in Iringa.

Chicken tikka was more or less the same as the chicken curry, yet without the bones. No qualitative or quantitative difference was to be found between the two dishes.
Chicken tikka was not served on skewers as usual, but it came with a gravy that very much resembled the chicken curry gravy.

The naan bread that was delivered with our portions was partly dryish, and some of the pieces were exactly of the right texture and had the authentic stone or tandoori oven-obtained taste. However, some pieces of the bread were too thick to pass as naan bread, and resembled naan dough rather than naan bread.

The final cost of the meals, 13.000/= including four beers, makes a really good deal for the money. Indeed, unlike most other fine restaurants in Iringa, all the dishes on Sajus’ menu are reasonably priced. If it were for the food only, we could warmly recommend the place as offering good value for one’s money. (The chicken bone shards in the gravy inevitably subtract one star off the food score.)

Atmosphere: ***
Service: ****
Food: ****