So many factors combine to make an evening at Senegalese restaurant Le Petit Dakar, nestled down a small street in the Marais, such a memorable one. Whether it’s the delightful Wolof music playing in the background, the colourful art hung from the walls, or the alluring smells wafting out from the kitchen, everything is brilliant – and that’s before we even get onto the food.
The wok-cooked seka salad of lettuce, peppers, aubergines and courgettes is a fantastically refreshing starter, kindly paving the way for the rich and filling yassa dish, which is essentially a plate of chicken cooked in lemon juice, garlic and onions (once recommended by French film-star royalty Léa Seydoux in an interview with Le Figaro). The spicy thieboudienne (a fish and rice dish), meanwhile, isn’t for the fainthearted, but well worth it if you can stomach the heat. Either way, you can always cool down with a fragrant house hataya (mint tea) afterwards.
TRANSLATION: FLORA HUDSON
