Hi guys, its me! The restaurant crasher again… my last visit was to banana republic, Maitama. Kindly read our previous post for more details if you haven’t checked that out…
Today we’re talking about Nkoyo!! It was randomly selected from my list of potential food places to crash. I even heard there’s a cooler “branch” in Ceddi Plaza but my mind was already set on visiting the one at K-City plaza so I went a’crashing. I went with a friend for a second opinion. For the sake of convenience, let’s call him Paul.
So we arrived at K-City plaza at about 6pm and climbed the stairs as quickly as possible to get to Nkoyo (frankly speaking we were quite hungry). Nkoyo was a name that rang a bell, I had heard of it before but I didn’t really expect too much especially because It was in a plaza. When I stepped in the place, I felt like I had travelled back to the 1980’s with the beautiful wooden tables and chairs. A film that comes to mind when I remember the place is the movie “Half of a yellow sun”. I’m always a friend of retro things so I was quickly overwhelmed by the ambience and I had already forgotten the plaza effect.
The Items on the menu seemed reasonably priced with most meals ranging between N2,250 and N3,850. I ordered the “Peppered minute Steak”, a dish containing fillets of beef dusted in crushed peppercorn served with fried onion rings. For my side order, I went for mashed potatoes. Paul had the spicy grilled boneless chicken, marinated in Nigerian spices with Jollof rice on the side. I like the waiting strategy at Nkoyo because you are served some fried sweet-potato crackers and some minty-green spices to take your mind off the wait for your main course.
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The meal came in good time (not too sure, if it actually did or if my patience level was slightly distorted by the “mini-bribe” from Nkoyo. In any case it worked for them.. lol). We also enjoyed the quality of the meals and I particularly enjoyed the tenderness of the grilled steak in combination with the Nkoyo barbecue sauce. I didn’t pay too much attention to the mashed potatoes (not much there for me) but all in all I’d say I had a great meal. I couldn’t even finish my steak portion so I’l give them 100% for quantity. For drinks we had chapman and fresh orange juice which tasted just about right. To round off we were served little shot glasses of lime or lemon shaved ice. We were told that this aids digestion and helps to refresh the breath. I was impressed, never experienced that in a Nigerian restaurant before.
In summary, I would rate Nkoyo (K-city plaza) a whooping 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best score for the quality of service, ambience, food quality and quantity). I think its good value for money and it may not be the choice location for a cosy date but its definitely a place to go hangout and enjoy quality food with a group of friends.
Words by Victor Odiba
