Chris Ihidero Unedited: Ocean Basket Joburg: 3, Ocean Basket Lagos: 0

By Chris Ihidero

The temptation to make the clichéd South Africa Vs Nigeria comparisons is ever present and I have successfully rejected it till now. I try not to remind arrogant South Africans I make contact with in my line of work that I contributed to the liberation they enjoy today as a primary school student who donated part of his lunch money to the anti-apartheid project. But my lunch at Ocean Basket on Tiamiyu Savage Street in Victoria Island has brought about the need to make these comparisons.

On a trip to Johannesburg late last year, I found a branch of Ocean Basket tucked somewhere in the food court at Sandton Mall. I had never eaten at any Ocean Basket outlet at that point, although I was very aware of the brand and had heard good things about the one that opened in Lagos. So I popped in for a bite and loved it immediately. Service was quick and generally pretty good. As a rule,  I do not get carried away by the decor or pleasantries of the waiting staff at a restaurant. My business is with the food. If the food is great and service and decor are good too, then that’s perfect. However, I will manage great food with crappy service and decor. The ambience is secondary; the food is primary.

I had dinner for 3 straight nights at that branch and it was top-notch every single time. Beyond the great service and ambience, the food was full of flavours and very tasty. The prawns and calamari had great texture and the rice and fries were properly seasoned, the fish too. I had 3 different dishes on the 3 nights and I loved each one.

Thoughts of eating dinner somewhere else during my short stay never crossed my mind, not even once.

Last Thursday I and the wife had an appointment on the island and decided to have lunch before returning to the mainland. I had been raving about Cafe Lydia since I had lunch there with some friends about a month ago and had promised to take her there.

Their seafood platter, Jollof rice and green vegetables was an instant hit; you should try it.

However, Cafe Lydia is in Ikoyi and with the notorious Victoria Island traffic looming, we needed to get out of the island soon. So we settled for Ocean Basket.

The ambience was cool and the service quick. Except for the overbearing tendencies of the young woman who must be the floor manager or something (she was too effusive in a way that rubbed me off the wrong way), the staff were generally up to speed with their duties. The problem was the food. We picked dishes that were shown with fried rice but got jollof rice when they arrived. We complained and were brought a plate of fried rice at no extra cost, which was nice. Problem was the rice, both jollof and fried, tasted as if it has been brought out from a freezer and warmed. The flavour was gone. The four king prawns in my dish lacked any sense of royalty. They felt more like distant cousins to true royals, without even the benefit of acquiring flavours by association. My fries lacked ambition, seeing that they refused to let spices rub off on them; same for the fish, which takes the crown for Bland Fish of the Year Award. On the other hand, the wife’s rice was over salted. The Calamari was memorable though…it reminded me of what chewing rubber bathroom slippers felt like, something I indulged in quite randomly as a child.

Don’t get me wrong: Ocean Basket in V.I was not that bad. Perhaps the chef had a day off; perhaps he/she had a hangover from the night before or pathetic sex recently, I don’t really know. But when you pay almost N10, 000 for a meal for two in an economic recession you do not expect a mild disaster on your plate, for whatever reason. That’s all I’m saying.