Decency African Cuisine

Unfortunately, not much good to say. There was very little from the menu available. Had the goat dish, but very chewy with lots of fat and really couldn’t finish it. Just can’t recommend based on this visit.

Went to Decency today with my girlfriend.
I read about Decency twice and decided we finally have to check it out. It’s in a residential district on Mountjoy street next to a barber shop.
We arrived early at about 7 pm but there were already a few people in there eating or hanging out. This seems to be as much of a restaurant as a hang-​out place for the African/​Nigerian community and I really got more and more curious what’s going on in the backroom which people were entering and leaving (through the blackened windows I could only make out a disco ball, so it might be a kind of club later at night. The restaurant itself is small, has maybe 5 or 6 tables and a bar area.
When we came in we tried to decypher the menus and while I still wondered if we should ask for help because nothing is really explained my gf already got out her phone and was trying to find the dishes explained on the Internet or Wikipedia. Even that proved difficult though, but as I expected when reading about this place all dishes seem to be typical Nigerian rather than Pan-​African. That’s ok, I’ve seen lots of Ethiopian restaurants claiming «African Cuisine» and I guess such a thing really doesn’t exist. Luckily our neighbour next table kindly volunteered to help us out and explained to us what we should look for. He told that the most common real Nigerian dish is pounded yam (similar to sweet potato) with a soup. If we were less adventurous he recommended the fried rice with plaintain or the grilled fish with chips (kind of the African version of Fish&Chips). They have several soups on the menu and we decided on the Egusi soup — the guy mentioned this is a melon soup. We also had Suya, which is some barbecued dish with lamb pieces. The dishes were 10 Euro each, and all dishes are either 10 or 15 Euro. To drink they have several Nigerian beers and we had a Nigerian Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and a Star Lager. These are not cheap at 8 and 6 Euro, but it’s really the only place where you can get that so we wanted to give it a try. They also seem to sell beers wholesale if anyone is interested in getting some variety in.
First the Suya arrived which were basically pieces of barbecued lamb with onions and tomato and some spice on the side. It was very very tasty, they get really good quality meat. Made a really good side to the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, which tasted like a sweet and fruity version of Guinness. Not my favourite, but definitely tasty. The Star also had a sweet taste — but definitely very drinkable beers.
Then we had the Egusi soup with the pounded yam, which arrived in a big round piece. The guy explained to us that the yam is like the bread, the staple, and you eat it with any kind of soup. The soup itself was not really as expected, it wasn’t melons but Egusi seems to be some kind of melon seeds. It came with both fish and some read meat pieces (probably beef) and some green leaves (turned out to be bitter leaves). I thought it was very tasty though and enjoyed it more and more as I went through it, while my girlfriend didn’t really like it because of the unexpected fishy taste. It definitely was an exotic taste, quite spicy but not too spicy and with the yam it was really interesting.
After all we were quite filled and happy after our meals, it wasn’t as meat-​heavy as I expected it but very interesting. As we left, the owner/​waiter recommended that next time we try the fried fish with plaintain, which looks really tasty on the photo on the menu. We decided we definitely have to be back to taste something else — the grilled fish or goat meat soup definitely sound interesting.
We took a take-​away menu home for more research on the different dishes to be more educated next time and also discovered why we were so happy after only a beer each — the Nigerian Guinness seems to have 7.5% alcohol content!
We’ll definitely be back to get more of an opinion about more of the food, but it’s an experience for food lovers who are open to different tastes (not sure if I will try the dried fish though). Oh, and the African music playing is definitely lovely.