Zigni House

330 Essex Road, London.

This was the first time I had eaten this style of food and it was definitely different and a pleasant experience.

I had read reviews from Time Out and so on where people said that the service wasn't great. True it wasn't great but worth one try if anything.

It was one of the hottest weeks of the year and swelletering inside. It took a while to even order our drinks and I was parched!

We went for the mixed platter, which came on a large round dish. The food was placed in small groups on top of a large pancake, which I now know is called injera. It had a stange and uniform feel and what I thought was lemon juice through it but actually it is the way the mix has fermented correctly. You eat with your hand and use the pancake to pick the food up although they did come out with cutlery, which I did rely on towards the end.

They brought out a side dish stacked with more rolls on the injera. Unfortunately me and Lucy, sitting opposite, thought they were initially the hot hand towels probably as a result off the wine and that they were down at the other end of the table. When they came up to our end, we then mistook them for spring roll type things. I picked one up and took a big bite out of the end. Angela then told me that they were for tearing and using to pick the food up. Lesson learnt.

Later on the dancers came out for about 4 or 5 times. I don't know how they kept going, we just picked up anything lying around the tables to fan ourselves.

What did tear down the illusion of being in North Africa was that coming out of the toilets one of the dancers said "Awight, a bit hot innit." For a large part of the evening it felt like we were on holiday, but that was probably because of the heat (which we don't get much off in the UK) and people on the table opposite us had their suitcases with them.

We were there for a friend's 40th birthday and here are some of the photos from the night.