Palace Gate, New Ghanaian place--Anyone been?

Passed a new (to me, anyway) restaurant at Wilson and Magnolia today. Palace Gate, I believe it is called. They serve Ghanaian cuisine. Anyone know about it or about the cuisine of Ghana? I'll check it out soon and post, but I was just wondering...

Edited to reflect proper spelling of the restaurant

You know, African is one of the things that almost never seems to get covered here (or on that other board-- I remember one guy was fairly serious about it but few others), so if you're game to check it out, that would be great.

I look forward to reading a report on this place. I've eaten a lot of Ethiopian food, and love it. I tried a Nigerian restaurant on Clark St., and that was a bit of a stretch -- so many startling tastes and textures. But I haven't had Ghanian food before.

I just grabbed one of my African cookbooks, and that seems to put Nigeria and Ghana into the same category of cuisine, which is probably not surprising, given their proximity. But my experience of Nigerian food, outside of the restaurant, has shown me that, as with any country's cuisine, there is a lot of range as to flavors and food choices. So I'm eager to hear what you discover.

Is it BYOB?

I've only had Ghanaian food once a few years back. From what I remember it consisted mostly of stews paired with Fufu. Fufu can be made with a variety of different starches, the type I had was made from plantains which gave it a slightly sweet flavor. The starch used is boiled, mashed, formed into a ball, and served with stew. I found it to have somewhat of a chewy consistency and is eaten by pinching a piece off with your fingers then also picking up a bit of meat or vegetables from whatever stew it is served with. I'm always intrigued with these starchy sides found in Africa. They come closest to Mashed Potatoes in the US, but are generally found at almost every meal. I spent four months living in Zimbabwe and their staple was Sadza, which is made from meale meal, a ground corn product that is boiled and must be constantly stirred until it becomes the consistency of thick mashed potatoes. Tastes a little like grits.

I've only had Ghanaian food once a few years back. From what I remember it consisted mostly of stews paired with Fufu.

Having spent a year unlike any other with a Nigerian roommate in grad school, I can attest that fufu is a staple of Nigerian food as well. What I remember most about Christopher's cooking that year was the astonishing, extraordinary levels of heat in almost everything he made(mostly from red peppers no longer specifically identifiable due to an aging memory).

I tried a Nigerian restaurant on Clark St., and that was a bit of a stretch -- so many startling tastes and textures.

I'm intrigued to hear about this place and wonder if you would share (a) the name of the place and (b) a comment or two about the food. It's not usually at the top of my list when seeking new places (for no clear good reason except, I imagine, because there are simply so many other contenders) but I'm definitely be interested to hear about it, with a view to trying it.

Thanks!

Cynthia said:

Quote:
I tried a Nigerian restaurant on Clark St., and that was a bit of a stretch -- so many startling tastes and textures.

Gypsy Boy said:

I'm intrigued to hear about this place and wonder if you would share (a) the name of the place and (b) a comment or two about the food.

I think possibly Cynthia was referring to Bolat, at 3346 N. Clark. Victor and I tried this place last March or so and haven't returned. There was nothing so bad about it, but nothing that great, either. You have to develop a taste for fufu, I guess (kind of tough, when it doesn't taste like anything). Also, there are so many other options.

Our favorite dish was a spicy bean and corn mixture called adalu. I seem to recall we also got the egusi & efo (watermelon seed cooked with spinach and spices), the goat with jollof rice, and a piece of steamed fish as an extra. The fish was OK, I learned I didn't like goat, and neither of us cared for the egusi & efo.

And in case you're marveling at my comprehensive recall of a mediocre meal in March, I had some help.

http://bolatafricancuisine.com/

Their menu is online.

Cheers,
Deb


Bolat
3346 N. Clark, Chicago
Tel: (773) 665-1100

Yep -- it was Bolat. Fufu was a bit like playdo, but without the flavor. The stews were good and spicy, but some of the odd ingredients, such as roasted, pounded watermelon seeds, were not so pleasant. I found that everything was pretty interesting for the first few bites, but then started to wear thin. I'd suggest going with a group (but not too big a group, as it's a small place), ordering a sampling, and just having a few bites of each thing.

It is amusing in retrospect to remember that the all but tried to talk us out of eating there.

When I visited Nigeria a couple of years ago it was explained to me that you don't "chew" Fufu, just use it as a scoop for the stew and then swallow it whole.

Finally tried Palace Gate (that's the correct name; I incorrectly added an 's' when I first posted) for lunch today. I'd say the results were mixed. My knowledge of African food is pretty limited. I have a Cameroonian friend who's provided me with some wonderful home-cooked meals, but beyond that I'd say I eat out at West African eateries less than once a year. So I am definitely not an expert here.

The first unusual thing I noticed was the bottle of liquid soap on every table. A peculiar condiment indeed! I know it's there for the post-fufuo hand washing, but it looked funny next to the salt and pepper.

The server was a teenage girl, and I think that any deficiencies in the service were a result of her youth and the fact that she wasn't happy to be working on the last day of summer vacation. We asked her what she'd recommend for lunch and she responded with just one word, "jollof."

Jollof rice is described on the menu as "Ghanaian fried rice with tomatoes, onions and spices." And the rice was delicious. It was an orangish red color and had a really understated and very pleasant spiciness. By the end of the enormous bowl, I could feel a pleasant tingle of heat. The rice was topped with some chunks of beef which were kind of overcooked and dry. It didn't bother me because the rice itself was plentiful. On the side of the dish was a basic lettuce and tomato salad topped with a non-descript white dressing.

Nothing on the menu had a price listed and we were not offered a check. We just kind of caught her eye and handed her twenty dollars. She retreated to the kitchen, we could hear a little fuss and she came back out and handed us two dollars back. I'm a laid back kinda guy, and I wasn't really bothered by it, but it only seems fair to tell patrons how much the bill is before they pay.

We asked for a takeout menu but she said they were all out. The in-house menus had a special box advertising their Sunday specials which include omo tuo served with palmnut soup or peanut butter soup, die huo, and konkonte. I don't know what any of these things are, but the jollof was tasty enough that I'd go back and try to find out. Though next time I may be better off accompanied by a more outgoing type of person (like so many of you LTH'ers) who can really find out what's what.



Palace Gate
4548 N Magnolia
773-769-1793

The first unusual thing I noticed was the bottle of liquid soap on every table. A peculiar condiment indeed! I know it's there for the post-fufuo hand washing, but it looked funny next to the salt and pepper.

Not to sound like a know-it-all, just trying to be helpful, but that soap is probably for pre-fufuo, not post, hand washing from what I've seen.

tapler wrote:The in-house menus had a special box advertising their Sunday specials which include omo tuo served with palmnut soup or peanut butter soup, die huo, and konkonte.

I have relatives who were in the Peace Corps in Africa. Some years ago they provided a recipe where I could use either peanut butter or palmnut. I went full fledged authentic buying palmnut at the African store on Broadway near Foster.

Palmnut paste is ok, though the palm oil is very strong tasting. Definitely in the acquired taste column of foods and one I wasn't eager to acquire. In my capacity to eat food I don't particularly like, I finished the recipe I made. The next time I made the recipe with peanut butter, which I found much more palatable.

It's great this restaurant offers either peanut butter or palmnut soup, because I would certainly take half portions of both just to see how I feel about this palmnut preparation. If you do try the palmnut, I will be interested in your opinion.

Regards,

I tried Palace Gate last night, and had a positive experience. "Positive experience" = circumlocutory way of praising the place without praising the food, yes, okay, but that is because: this was my first time with Ghanian food, I had no benchmark for comparison, the food seemed good to me, or at least interesting, and the people were friendly.

The place is small, overlit with fluorescent lights, and the chairs are all of the folding variety. There were two TVs, on opposite walls, and they were playing different things (one of them was muted, thankfully). We got there past closing time, I think, but they seemed happy to seat us, and I got the sense that "closing time" was pretty fluid & symbolic. We were the only diners in the place. (There was, though, a steady stream of presumably Ghanian people who came and went, chatting and watching television, until actual closing time. Then, we all left the place together, shutting the lights and locking the door.)

Ordering your dinner is like explaining to a tattoo artist the kind of design you'd like... there's a few basic templates, it's a collaborative process, and ultimately, you have to trust the guy. In our case, the tattoo artist had a very limited command of English, which may have been frightening if we'd been getting an actual tattoo, but this was just dinner, and we had few expectations or prejudices about it-- we were expecting to be surprised, anyway.

They were out of palmnut soup, so we had peanut soup. There was a good deal of oil in the soup, which tended to separate & rise above the chalky-peanut-slurry base, but was easily re-mixed with a little agitation. I was pretty sure the soup's meat was goat, and I think there was some tripey pieces... definitely some bone... but I can't speak with authority on the animal of origin. The soup had a nutty, light-peanut taste and a good deal of spice; I think we were warned about this before ordering.

For starches, we picked plantains and yam; both seemed to have had the flavor boiled out of them, and seemed there primarily to substantiate the soup. I treated them as Things That Get Dipped. The yam-- the enormous African kind-- tasted kind of like boiled yucca, and the plantains tasted like plantains minus the plantain taste.

Here's what it looked like:



As noted before, the menu has no prices, but our dinners worked out to $8 each (plus $1 extra for a doggy bag). I don't know if that included the bottle of water which we'd been given, unsolicited. One of the ladies who had been mingling with everyone, and whom I had no inkling was involved in the running of the restaurant, stepped forward to announce the total and collect our bill.

I have no idea how typical this meal was, or how it might compare to exemplars of the genre. I'd been once before to B&Q Afro Root Cuisine, which is Nigerian, and cuisinally similar (and which is apparently moving shortly): I liked that too, and remember being just as pleasantly flummoxed about the mechanics of everything.

I'm very curious about this place. I was in Ghana for a few weeks a year ago and the stories in this thread of the lack of prices and single-word lunch recommendations sound authentic to me!

Many restaurants were reluctant to serve white peole fufu for fear that they would not like it, and thus would usually recommend fried rice as the only option. But with a little prodding you could usually convince them to serve you something else. My favorite dish in Ghana was red-red--does anyone know if Palace Gate has this? It's sort of an African-style baked beans with great spice and some couscous-like starch mixed in, often with a side of fried plantains and a nice piece of fish. I also liked the Jollof rice and a greens-and-fish dish that I can't remember the name of. Overall, the food is very starch-centric, as it is cheap, and fish-centric, as it is on the ocean.

Daveco_hen: Were the plantains you were served boiled? When I was in Ghana you often had the option of boiled or friend plantains. The fried plantains were ripe and caramelized, thus were sweeter and more what we are used to, while the boiled plantains were less mature and tasted more like potato or yucca.

Love,
John

i heard it was now $10 for anything and everything
> a friend sent me this last year. i have not made it there yet tho:
>
> For an experience like that you could find on the streets of Ghana,
> head to Chicago's northside Wilson Street neighborhood to the Palace
> Gate Restaurant. The kitchen is teeming with women chatting away in
> Twi. Ghanaian men flock in around lunchtime during the workweek, young
> folks fill the restaurant on friday and saturday nights, and sunday
> afternoon is the best time to catch the family crowd as families stop
> by for lunch after church. The atmosphere and preparation of the
> dishes here is precisely what you would find on the streets of Ghana.
> While many of the dishes are quite good, they would not necessarily be
> the best I have ever had. The best nkatsikwan in the world belongs to
> a woman with a roadside stand on Cantoments road in Accra. For twenty US cents you can get the best lunch of your life.
>
> The menu at Palace Gate has no prices, which is a typically Ghana
> thing to do. If you were on the streets in Ghana, you would order the
> volume of your lunch in terms of the price. Instead of a small medium
> or large bowl of soup for a set price, you would tell the woman you'd
> like "2000 cedis (ghanaian currency) of nkatiekwan" and she would fill
> your bowl accordingly. At palace gate everything costs $8 as far as I
> can tell.
>

Ideal Machine wrote: Daveco_hen: Were the plantains you were served boiled? When I was in Ghana you often had the option of boiled or friend plantains. The fried plantains were ripe and caramelized, thus were sweeter and more what we are used to, while the boiled plantains were less mature and tasted more like potato or yucca.

We were indeed given the choice between fried and boiled, and I figured that since I'd had fried plantains loads of times in the context of other cuisines, I'd try it boiled. And also I figured (perhaps fallaciously), a strong-flavored soup didn't need a strong-flavored side-dish competitor.... True, fried mature plantains are way deliciouser on their own, no question, and maybe they'd have complimented the spicy-peanutty soup quite nicely... maybe next time. (Though probably next time I'll try to aim for that "red-red.")

El Panzone wrote:i heard it was now $10 for anything and everything.

Our meal (bottled water included!) was definitely $8... maybe we got the Clueless Whitepeople Discount... (though, I can't imagine how they'd have known to give it to us).

Today, at lunchtime I was told the prices were $10 for soup, $11 for fufu and $12 for rice dishes. No table service, so I went to the counter and talked to the unfriendly lady. Perhaps I would have better luck in a group?

lemoneater wrote:Today, at lunchtime I was told the prices were $10 for soup, $11 for fufu and $12 for rice dishes. No table service, so I went to the counter and talked to the unfriendly lady. Perhaps I would have better luck in a group?

maybe, though I'm not sure what the bad luck was. Did you eat?

lemoneater wrote:Today, at lunchtime I was told the prices were $10 for soup, $11 for fufu and $12 for rice dishes. No table service, so I went to the counter and talked to the unfriendly lady. Perhaps I would have better luck in a group?

Maybe they had the B team in there? I've always had friendly table service there, albeit with an occasional language gap. And I've never been charged for anything over $6, although there are no prices on the menu. So maybe you did have bad luck.

Should we set up an LTH meal at Palae Gate?

I'd be up for giving it a second try with some regulars.

Perfect timing for the World Cup.