Sure, we like a leisurely meal now and again; Green Street Café often takes two and a half hours. However, when you order at a counter, you expect certain things. Namely, your dishes to come out in less than an hour and a half. And to get the dish you ordered. And the kitchen not to tell you two hours after the fact that one of the dishes you've ordered is no longer available.
Luckily, we weren't starving, but at one particularly desperate point, a table adjacent to us (the former Amherst Crepes space is small enough that every table is adjacent to every other table) left behind a few scraps. Sarah looked around, saw an opening, and went for it-to the cheers of the entire restaurant, none of whom had been served yet. And while all two members of the wait staff (particularly the 7-year-old) were very nice, our friend Dan paid for our third order of fried plantains; we felt like they should've been free, a peace offering for our patience.
And the problems didn't stop with the waiting. Things that we ordered but never received: fresh salads with all of our entrees, bread with Nick's goat meat pepper soup ($4.25), green beans on the side of certain dishes (peas came instead), yam porridge ($5.50), Emily's pineapple juice ($1.50) … and to top it off, Nick's main course, stuffed chicken with tropical seasonings ($7.50).
But enough about the service. As food reviewers, we have a responsibility to discuss the food we ate, not the food we never received. The mango salsa was the pinnacle of the meal. The delectable condiment and the plantain chips ($2.00) or fried plantain pieces ($2.95) it accompanied got us through the long wait. The salsa was sweet and spicy, with chunks of mango intermingling with tomatoes, onion, pepper and other zesty flavors; it was good enough to eat unaccompanied. The fresh fried plantain pieces (dodo) were superior to the rather stale chips.
The second-best dish we sampled was Nick's soup. The goat pieces were on the bone, making it resemble a stew, and the broth was light (water-based) and flavorful. The goat had the consistency of a good steak but a much earthier flavor. The dish belied Nick's preconceived ideas about tough, stringy mountain goat. Unfortunately, everything else we were served was more or less average.
Sarah and Nick ended up with the same dish, much to our surprise and epicurean horror (Sarah despises double ordering)–since we had ordered different meals. We both received one of the house specialties: signature jollof rice with chicken pieces, peas and dodo ($6.95). We liked the spice rub seasoning on the chicken, which was thick enough to affect its texture, as well as the seasoning of the rice. The jollof rice was yellow and sticky and bore a strong resemblance to the type of food we've always associated with the Caribbean. Sarah thought the chicken was dry, but Nick disagreed.
There was no such disagreement concerning the salmon ($8.95) that Kate (our resident karate champion) ordered. Nick put it best when he said, "It tastes like something I cooked in my kitchen in Paris." That is to say, it was cooked properly but without any adornment. Emily's flavorful beef mango ($7.95) fared better, though it bore a suspicious resemblance to Dan's supreme curry goat ($7.95). We eventually determined that the goat was bonier than the beef.
Will we return to Baku's? Perhaps-but we won't do it on a weekend or during peak dining hours. We think the service can be improved with a shorter menu, more items ready-to-go (soups, salads, plantains) and an extra hand in the kitchen and on the floor (though the 7-year-old certainly pulled her weight). African food (the owner is Nigerian and told Emily that the cuisine is Western African) is a welcome addition to the Amherst eating scene, and we hope Baku's improves with age.