RESTAURANT REVIEW || NOK by ALARA

Hello lovelies,

How was your week? Lagos has been wet all week and it seems like everything just slowed down because of the traffic everywhere.

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If you follow me on instagram, you’ll know I love to give myself a little treat after a hard week (something to take the stress off.) So last Wednesday, my friends and I had a midweek lunch date at a contemporary African restaurant that serves African dishes with a twist.

Nok by Alara! This foodie paradise is located at No 12, Akin Olugbade street Victoria Island, Lagos. We actually made a reservation for lunch but the mainland to island traffic was hell!!! We ended up getting there during lunch rush hour and we had to wait until six pm for dinner.

The Nok by Alara building is a gigantic orange structure, that’s sits in the middle of lush garden with scrap metal and bamboo chairs. While the interior is very intimate and full of contemporary art pieces. The surroundings is very astonishing. Some of the chairs are even carved out of wood. It was just like being in a fancy museum. 

As we were waiting for dinner, I took a stroll around, to window shop at the luxury goods store beside the restaurant. Mehn! The prices of stuffs there is actually story for another day, (by the way, Nok by Alara is owned by the Folawiyo’s, so you can imagine…)

After my waka-waka, it was finally dinner time, the dining hall was furnished with bamboo chairs and the walls had a lot of art pieces to give the place a totally luxurious African fine dining feel. You can’t help but say wow!

When dinner started, a waiter was assigned to our table, a very friendly and polite young man, his name is Emmanuel, he gave us the menu and we had to pick from a really wide variety. There was practically every sort of African food you know, although the usual name had been changed.

The Food

 

It was almost confusing deciding what to eat, but we finally picked Sautéed snails & Jerk chicken wings for starters.

Then for the main course we had Ghana rice(waakye) with Chicken piri piri, Jollof rice with Tamarind glazed chicken wings and Jasmine rice with Chicken piri piri,

and to round it up we had water!!!

My Opinion

The portions were a little too small, however I guess that’s what you get with fine dining. Being a Fitfam, i normally would eat small portions so I didnt bother much about the size of the food. The rest of my crew did not “belle full”. So if you’re used to eating large portions, you may like to grab a coke and gala to fill belle before coming.

The waakye was a bit too dry, not like the ones those food vendors hawk, but generally I think the chef did a good job with twisting the regular African dish.

The interior has a very cosy feel and looks like a perfect place to host a birthday dinner or even pop the question.

The bill was a whooping 27,000 naira for 4 people. which I think it covers the food and ‘ARTmosphere’. It’s not quite expensive since it was a fine dining experience. Although, I had a problem with the price of the water. 1500 naira for that pitcher of water there. (The thing pain me sha o, but as i don chop i had to drink water.)

However in general, I had a swell time and suggest you should give it a try. I definitely would be going back.

So lovelies, if  you’re reading my blog for the first time. I’m Toyosi Gregory Jonah and thanks for stopping by. Please don’t forget to subscribe and share this post. You can also send me an email on toyosigregoryjonah@gmail.com if you have a restaurant or a product that you would love me to review.