Au Soleil d'Afrique — Restaurant in Ixelles - Elsene

Let's be clear, this is not a fine dining place and I do not give it five stars for sophistication. This is an extremely casual restaurant, where you'll likely sit at a large communal table with other diners. A lot about it is very simple, Spartan even.

It shines in other ways though! I give it five stars because this is a terrific little gem of a place that I have been repeatedly and regularly going back to for 15-20 years, because in its simplicity it is consistent and it charmingly and wonderfully succeeds in being everything that it tries to be and more! The owners are extremely sweet and friendly. The food is cheap but great. There are not many options on the menu, in fact you could order almost everything on it to share between your party, but the food is wonderfully fun, tasty and in some cases absolutely exceptional. The chicken wings in particular are the best I have eaten in my life by a stretch: they are so great I have many times ordered second helpings or even third helpings in the same meal because I just can't get enough. I mean angels come down to sing for you every time you order these damn chicken wings - seriously, try them. And I don't even usually like chicken wings! I would not order them anywhere else. And it's all terrific value for money. This is a place I've visited more times than I could possibly ever count and that has simply been a ton of fun every single time I visit without even one exception. It's a place that I think I'll simply never get tired of going back to. All the friends I have taken over the years love it. And all those reasons are why they absolutely deserve five stars. If you want simple, cheap, casual, fun, friendly place with fun and simple but great food, do not hesitate...

The food was really good and I would definitely come again for the food.

I gave the 3star because in my opinion service can be improved. The guys were friendly, but the old lady was a bit agressive. We are not a regular so we don't know the "rules" in the house (as apparently there are rules). Don't take the softdrinks yourself though they are located at the seating area without a label stating that it can only be opened by staff - the old woman came to us and quite harshly told us about this. With the default portion (I forgot which we ordered) we were still hungry and we had a lot of chicken left. Naturally we wanted more rice to eat the chicken with. We asked for extra rice and they ignored us for 20 minutes (purposely not looking our way when serving others, ignoring our 2x request for extra rice). When we finally confronted them, they said that they have given us the quota for our order, saying they can't make profit bla bla bla if we order extra. We don't care about that. They should have approached us, explained the situation about rice portion, and asked if we wanted to pay extra for the rice - which we gladly do. We were hungry! After saying that we would pay they finally gave us the extra rice. They made some miscalculations which we were unaware of with the change and the old lady came and kinda took the 5 Euro from my friend's hand for...

This was a sad disappointment for me. I was expecting the food to be as vibrant and flavourful as the decor and paintings. Sadly, it seems like the food or the chef has lost their passion.

The vegetarian plate was on par or below. The vegetarian "samosas" seemed straight out of a frozen Asian food section. It was clear they weren't handmade. The peanut sauce also seemed premade but couldn't be for sure.

The chicken wings seemed tl be the star of the restaurant and they were better than the vegetarian plate, but nothing to really rave about. They seemed like your typical wings with a bit different flavour.

I love the concept of this restaurant, the idea of community seating and bring this culture into a city. Sadly, it reminded me more of school cafeteria food, rather than a cultural experience.

I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone, especially someone wanting to take a trip with...