Haraf East African and Mediterranean, Grangetown: review

The cutlery at Harafs doesn’t have elegant lines and reassuring weight: it’s a jumble of odds and sods in a canteen style plastic tray. There’s no written menu either, and you’ll probably end up eating with your fingers- there’s a basin by the kitchen if that bothers you- and drinking your soup straight from the bowl. And its cash-only, though with an ATM nearby. If any of that is a problem, or if you care whether a place is ‘Instagrammable’, Harafs probably isn’t for you.

But I hope it is.

This isn’t an affluent area. In fact, in late 2019 The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivations listed this stretch of road as the single most deprived residential neighbourhood in the entire country.

So you shouldn’t expect anything plush. But that has been a theme on this blog recently: I’ve been keen to tell you about places in and for Grangetown. Places which have grown out of demand from the area’s people, and Cardiff has one of the UK’s longest-established Somali communities. To eat out as those communities eat out.

So if you’re looking for a scintillating review of a Sunday roast- even if such a thing exists- you might be in for a wait.

Harafs is busy today. A screen livestreams a view of the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site, and broadcasts a steady steam of prayers. Everyone seems to know everyone else and the owner is having his lunch with friends a table away.

I supose they call this setting the scene. I may be laying it on thick. I tell you this to head off any misunderstandings. If any of the above makes you uncomfortable- if it somehow clashes with your idea of what eating out should be- then it’s best to know, no?

Today’s menu is binary: chicken or lamb. Lamb it is, then, with chops coming on the bone, of course. And very nicely done lamb it is, too. It has to be: almost everyone around me has ordered it, with a solitary chicken, and as the sole Somali restaurant in the immediate area, it couldn’t survive if its lamb was a let-down. Maximum enjoyment comes from getting to grips with it and sucking every bone clean.

Yes, it’s our old friend ‘meat and rice’, but that translates well wherever you find it. There’s a scattering of salad and a vegetable curry, chunks of potato bobbing about, some starting to slump into the smoky tomato-based sauce; and another little pot which lulls you with a moment of subtle, deceptive sweetness before it turns on you, bristling with garlic and chilli brawn.

That lamb soup is similar to the one served at recently-reviewed Hadramowt, though this one carries more heft I think. It’s a plastic bowl of the meat’s cooking liquor, brightened by a sprig of mint. It’s unadorned, unpretentious and utterly compelling as you lift the bowl to your face and drain it dry. I’d come here just for this, the kind of bowl you’ll find yourself raving on damp autumnal evenings.

There aren’t any on display, but on a tip I chance it. Do you have any Samosas, I ask. Sambusi? he answers, and smiles and nods. Yes please. They’re crisp little things, piping hot, crammed with beef and peas and brought on kitchen towel to drain any excess oil. Well, I did tell you it was no-frills. And it’s all the better for it: all this, and a bottle of water, will cost you a cash-only £11.50. And I’m reliably informed I should come back for the suqaar, a one-pot mix of vegetables and meat that is a Somali staple.

I love places like this. The inconspicuous, the under-reported. The uncomplicatedly wholesome. That might mean stepping outside your comfort zone, but that’s where the fun is, isnt it?

Harafs, 17 Corporation Road, Grangetown. CF11 7AN

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