Read these first:-
- Delicious Food in Cape Verde – Part 1 (Breakfast)
- Delicious Food in Cape Verde – Part 2 (Lunch)
- Delicious Food in Cape Verde – Part 3 (Gravy)
- Delicious Food in Cape Verde – Part 4 (Dinner)
This will be the last in the Cape Verde food series (next Cape Verde post will be on return to KL which was also eventful and first time held by Immigration – stay tuned)
When we are in Malaysia, we eat rice most of the time for lunch and dinner. Noodles are usually reserved for breakfast – from fried noodles, wanton noodles, curry noodles and fish ball noodles.
In Cape Verde, there was no noodles in the food menu but they had the closest thing to noodles which was spaghetti.
The standard menu when it comes to spaghetti is the one with the tomato sauce served hot and of course, with huge chunks of tuna. The portion is reasonably sufficient for the price paid. We found that the manner of cooking this dish at the hotel and fast food restaurant is almost the same.
This “wet orange looking” spaghetti is another version of spaghetti meal from another restaurant near to the President’s palace (it is called Restaurante Emigrante which is run by an expatriate – I think he is a Russian). My guys had visited this place several times over the weekends and informed me that the restaurant spaghetti dish was very good and the portion was huge. Normally I opt to wake up late and have my meals at the hotel on the weekends. I am kind of lazy whenever it is not a working day.
But since a large tasty spaghetti sounded very tempting and it is a weekend and I started to get bored with the hotel food, I decided to join the guys for spaghetti meal at Restaurante Emigrante on particular weekend. Unfortunately when the spaghetti was finally served, it was clear that this was not the spaghetti that the guys used to have. They looked around in confusion.
The owner noticed the team’s confusion and came over to our table – apparently his chef resigned abruptly in the morning and he got his guy who normally cook pizzas to cook the spaghetti for us (they declined to take orders for spaghetti for customers after us as the spaghetti did not turn out well). Wrong chef for the job but nonetheless personally I felt that the spaghetti was good (even though the cooking was screwed up).
This greenish looking pasta (fettuccine) was from the Italian restaurant near to the workplace – they grated some ricotta cheese at the top with some spinach. This was one of our least liked spaghetti dish although it is one of the more cheaper dish on menu (CVE900 / EURO9).
The fast food place on the other hand had a good selection of buns and pastries. I ate one of the best muffins here with almonds on the top. The other muffin that I loved was orange one with actual orange skins (another muffin they had was a chocolate muffin).
The other pastry that one must have – both here in Cape Verde and in Lisbon is the Portugal national pastry – the iconic egg tarts. Compared to one in Malaysia, I noticed egg tarts in Cape Verde and also Lisbon are slightly burned on the top (I later found out that it is not due to over burn of the tarts but rather it is a Portuguese version known as pastel de nata adds cinnamon on the top. .
On days when you are simply tired of heavy rice, spaghetti, tuna steaks, there is always an option for a lighter meal either plain omelette or omelette mixed with ham. And if you can eat more, you can opt for a large sandwich bun for you to stuff the omelette in (see at the top right corner).
The stuffing part is a bit messy so I normally cut the bun into small chunks and mix it with the omelette and ham. It is more cleaner that way. And top it off with an actual freshly squeezed orange juice – naturally sweet and full of pulps.
Surprise, surprise – there was a few Chinese restaurants dotted in Praia and one of the guys found one immediately behind our hotel. There was no signboard at the front and in fact, when we walked in, it was like we had walked into someone’s kitchen. The amount of flies on the tables did not give me the confidence to eat there but since I followed my guys, I decided to stay on first. Good thing was the flies flew off after the owner switched on the fans and cleaned up the table.
There was a Chinese guy, his wife and his daughter sitting at one of the table and one of my guys had a chat with him who came out with a rough menu. Most of the guys went for noodles but I decided to play safe and opted for Chinese Fried Rice. Surprisingly the fried rice – the texture, taste and even the ingredients were the same as the fried rice that I usually buy from my neighbourhood Chinese restaurant.