Africa Experience — Restaurant in Venice

TLDR: great atmosphere, good food, bad business model (WARNING: avoid the place if you don't like surprises that involve your money).

Initial review; perfection (2019): 5/5 Current review; tourist squeeze (2022): 2/5

Genuine atmosphere and satisfactory dishes. Good alternative when you get tired of most restaurants in Venice competing with each other by using basically the same selection of dishes.

BUT.

Having been there several times before: something has definitely changed about the place (I suspect it has been sold off to new owners). The review I left on 2019 was very positive. Not sure what happened since.

Just when we were about to leave, we asked for the bill (naturally). One was not given (even when asked repeatedly). What was given instead was the overall sum, verbally. The sum itself also did not make sense as it was more than the sum of the things we had ordered from the menu and the explanation given on the difference was that the rest was for the service.

Fine. Having visited the same place before - they had never pulled this on us. Did feel like one is being ripped off, but fine (it was some 15% extra which we could live with).

So just make sure to ask them beforehand if they are able (and willing) to produce the "conto" on paper and what is the % of service fee they are charging (as none of this is mentioned...

We went here because of the high rates, but I don't know which of you lied because we came out deeply disappointed. When we arrived the owner/waitress was out smoking and she basically stayed there the whole evening, only coming in to take our order, carry the heater back and forth or cough loudly in the kitchen. Her Italian was not great and her English non existent, so we kept miscommunicating about the temperature. Whenever we were happy, she took the blessed heater away from us again after which it we sat shivering over our plates. The food was okay, but that's about all there is to say about it. I already forgot what we ate, that's how memorable the meal was. I remember what we didn't eat, though: bread. We were absolutely not allowed to order bread because it did not go with our dish and after 5 minutes we gave up and went for the couscous, which she accepted with a sigh (the correct answer would have been rice). From the food to the temperature to the extremely wobbling chairs: everything was just a little off. When the woman came out with a face mask after her excessive coughing, we just burst out laughing. At least it was...

The food was fine but unfortunately our experience left a lot to be desired. Wait times are extremely long. We arrived around 7:20pm and by 9:30pm we were still waiting for our main dish…

We waited over 40 minutes to place our order (waitress took orders from people who came after us first…), then had to wait over 40 minutes for the appetizer platter which required 0 cooking. The only “cooking” was heating up the pastries and bread, everything else was premade. By 9:30pm we were still waiting for our main when tables that arrived and ordered 1hr after us got theirs…we eventually got tired of waiting and just asked for the main to go which they did in 2 min by just scooping out the already premade food onto a disposable plate…

Haven’t had an experience like this in Italy until now. They also didn’t bother to waive a drink or cover fee and the take out portion of our main looked a lot smaller than what other tables got. If you have the time and are willing to wait, the food is a nice change from Italian food. But our last few precious hours in Venice was spent just waiting in that restaurant watching everyone else...