Eat.Drink.Travel: Urban Grill (Accra)
NOSA: If there’s one thing Accra beats Lagos in, it’s the restaurants. Oh, and their power situation is much better than ours. There might more restaurants in Lagos (larger population, duh) but they have us beat on the quality.
FOLLY: And value for money.
NOSA: Urban Grill is run by the same guys that own Santoku and Coco Lounge. If you’ve been to either, you should know what to expect for the most part.
FOLLY: The space at Urban Grill is just too beautiful. It’s very chic and slightly upscale but you won’t feel out of place if you were dressed down.
NOSA: We had lunch at Urban Grill so just imagine how great it looked with large windows and all the natural light coming in.
FOLLY: The restaurant space feels very open due to the glass windows and a mirrored wall. Greenery isn’t absent in the space completely so much that it feels too “modern”. The green wall in the outdoor bar and the upside down plants help strike a natural balance.
FOLLY: Urban Grill’s strongest points are its bartenders.
NOSA: The drinks are very pretty to look at. Like, every single one we ordered was an instagram-ready picture.
FOLLY: The food is great too but, honestly, there’s better in Accra. The drinks, on the other hand, were fantastic - each one except the pink one that was a tad bit concentrated.
NOSA: To start, I got the Urban Tacos. It read better on the menu than it actually looked. Josper grilled beef, tomato salsa and guacamole. Sounds great, right? Well, it was basically beef stew and an avocado on the side. The worst part of it was how logistically challenging it was to eat. I absolutely wasn’t a fan of it at all. Urban Grill let me down big time. All the highs from the cocktails came crashing down when my plate came.
FOLLY: My starter was obviously much better than Nosa’s. That yellow thing you’re seeing right there is Gari. The gari was seasoned but because gari is so dry to start with - I don’t believe it can take on any flavour at all in its dry state. It tasted like it was fried with some nondescript spice though. It would have been more impressive if the gari was cooked with highly fragrant spice would have added some oomph to the dish. I think scallops are best cooked simply and not for too long; and these were good. I’d never order scallops in Lagos because I wouldn’t know what to expect so rather safe that sorry.
NOSA: My main was the Linguini Carbonara.
FOLLY: I wish they’d paid more attention to the plating of their pasta because while it tasted good enough. I couldn’t help the sigh of disappointment when I got my plate and thought to myself “this is it ??”
NOSA: It definitely wasn’t nice to look at.
Linguini a la Carbonara
NOSA: Also on the bright side, it tasted much better than it looked. A little bit on the salty side, but definitely delicious. A lot of places don’t get carbonara right in Lagos so I was super enthused that such bad behaviour didn’t follow me across the border.
FOLLY: My main was the Lobster Spaghetti so they could definitely have incorporate the shell in the plating - you know. In the same breath, I must say I really do appreciate that the lobster meat was removed from the shell - this way I probably got more and didn’t have to fight with my food to eat it.
FOLLY: The pasta looks spicy but it really wasn’t (thankfully) it’s really just tomato with some red chillis which I navigated around. The flavour of the dish rested mainly in the chive flavoured butter that collected at the bottom of the plate - delicious.