Madagascar Restaurant Tips by ATLC

Restaurant Name: Le Cocoteraie

Langouste, grilled to perfection, eaten outside
Le Cocoteraie is also the top hotel on the island.
We came here by boat from hotel Le Crique, along a wonderfully blue sea under blazing sun. After lunch we napped on the beach and found sea stars.

Favorite Dish: Langouste !

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Theme: Other
Comparison: least expensive
Prices: less than US$10  » Currency Converter
Phone: 57 401 72
Address: North part of Ile Sainte Marie, Madagascar
Website: http://iles-et-adventure.com/hotel_cocoteraie.htm

Restaurant Name: Mariette Andrianjaka, a food story.

Mariette Andrianjaka has invented Malagasy Cordon Bleu Cuisine.

Somewhere amid the ripe, exotic mysteries of Madagascar, Madame Mariette Andrianjaka has honed an unique culinary extravaganza.
Adam Levin did lunch.

High on a hilltop in Madagascar's mad, marvellous capital, Antananarivo, the mad, marvellous Madame Mariette Andrianjaka is cooking up a perfect storm. Her kitchen is ripe with ingredients: strange mafana blossoms that tingle in your mouth like electricity; silkworm pupae sauteeing in chicken stock; fresh algae; and a vast Royal Carp. Chef's hat cocked slightly atilt, Madame ensures her eucalyptus-wood fires are keeping the food at perfect 80 degrees - a hotter stove would amount to no less than a profanity.
'I'd never use gas', she exclaims, visibly horrified. 'How could I? This is food. Nourishment'

Ten years ago, this imposing villa belonged to the country's prime minister. Today, it is one of Madagascar's best kept secrets: an unique and exclusive table d'hote, run by one of the city's most cultured couples, Ludger and Mariette Andrianjaka.

Ludger, with his bushy, greying beard, stuffy cravat and grey sports shoes, is the country's only baritone singer. For years, he ran restaurants in the port city of Tamatave. 'The first one burnt down when the Malagasy soccer team lost to Zambia', he laments with a shrug of cheery resignation. When political riots saw a second restaurant up in flames, Ludger and Mariette stopped tempting fate and moved to Tana.

Decades ago, Mariette had honed her craft in Nice, under France's most distinguished chefs. On her dining room wall, a smorgasbord of certificates backs up her credentials: La Societe des Chefs de Quebec; Commanderie des Cordons Bleus de France; L'Ordre de la Gastronomie Francaise; and somewhere among them all, Commandeur de la Chaine des Rotisseurs. 'The only female Commandeur in the Indian Ocean', she remarks, raising a slim eyebrow. 'Probably in Africa'.

Favorite Dish: Tonight, as usual, Madame has whipped up Madagascar's answer to Babette's feast. Step outside the front door, and you could be in Provence or New Orleans - what with Madame's pet lemur scampering about the orchid garden and that dense thicket of cobwebs safeguarding the villa against mosquitoes and the ravages of vulgarity. Inside, the ambience is one of grand and wilted nostalgia. A stiff man in a stiff, white uniform pours me a Chivas. I can see my reflection on the polished parquet floor, and I could most probably hear a shrimp drop - indeed, if it weren't for an obstinate scrap of beige, brocade wallpaper, peeling away in the tropic heat, this could well be Paris.

Of course, that this is Antananarivo makes for intriguing contrasts. West of here, the city folds out into eight, steep hills, most of them crawling with aging Citroens, running out of petrol. Tall, narrow villas cling to the hillsides, betraying a small, but persistent sliver of local aristocracy. Below, there are rice paddies and a vast gutter of a market, which brims with a fresher and broader variety of produce than you'd find in most African cities. So despite a grim curtain of poverty, the rich strangeness of Madagascar's natural resources shines through.

There are stacks of little, red goat peppers, bundles of vanilla, and towers of ready grated carrots in rusty, enamel bowls. Then raffia hearts, baskets of green peppercorns or pale pink, unpolished rice. There are lots of things without English names. Madame, of course, will have none but the very best of these. 'The very freshest', she drills. 'If a dish isn't perfect, I won't serve it. How could I? I'd rather waste money than waste the honour of serving a fine meal'.

Tonight's fine meal is an exquisite, silver-domed hotch-potch of 15 exotic dishes, each the fruit of years of careful research.

(read further in next tip)

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Theme: Other

Address: Antananarivo

Restaurant Name: Mariette Andrianjaka Bleu Cuisine

When Madame embarked on her quest, Madagascar was at the tail end of 60 years of French Colonial rule. French cooking had practically wiped out the traditional Malagasy table. 'We knew about our cuisine', she recalls, 'but no-one was serving it. So you see, I was the first'. And much as a shuffle of restaurants have subsequently followed suit, none has achieved quite the same level of intimacy, detail or sophistication.

Here, the lines between food, culinary science and visual art blur with the likes of Zebu beef steaks, picked into painfully fine strands, then deep-fried in their own grease. The fresh carp has been rolled into brochettes and prepared with its own neon orange caviar. Even the zanadandy, or silkworm pupae, are beyond reproach. 'You should try one', Madame quips mischievously. 'They're an aphrodisiac'.

We eat and eat and eat. A goose arrives - it has been cooked overnight - served with black pudding. Then a romazava, the clear soup most Malagasy subsist on. Madame's romazava however, is her own creation: a mix of fresh fish, prawns and languostines, delicately flavoured with a rare algae, found only off the Malagasy coast. Then a chicken stew, spiced with ginger and bitter vegetables. The fact that I'm running late for a key appointment with the editor of one of the country's dailies, pales quickly under the warm thunder of Madame's hospitality. 'Pah', she snorts. 'I know the man. He'll understand. He's an artist'.

To be sure, she dials his number on her mobile phone, and promptly explains where cuisine fits into the country's priorities. 'It is the vector of tourism', she concludes, turning to me.

'I should come to South Africa some time', she continues. 'I should come and find your best local ingredients and prepare a meal of the highest, French culinary standards. Ah, yes', she commands, distracted by the sight of the waiter, 'the koba ...'.

Favorite Dish: I've already tried koba on the streets here. And I'm not quite sold on this Cinderella of a cake the hawkers slice so finely and spear onto a scrap of newspaper for busy commuters. But Madame's koba has come to the ball. It is a song of wild honey and minced pistachios, served with a sweet, orange papaya coulis.

Somehow the papaya tastes sweeter here than it would somewhere else. It could be softness of the light or the warm, naive smiles of the Malagasy. More likely, it's simply the thrill of this oddest of feasts, served here in this oddest of places, that tingles so in my throat.

Coffee time, and Madame is happily oblivious to any sense of urgency. One glass of French red and she trades her pompous professionalism for a string of warm anecdotes and deliciously dry asides. My watch ticks as a box of photographs transpires. This cooking demonstration in Canada. The time she cooked for Mitterand. Then, 'Oh, I should never have sent my children to study in Europe. Une grande erreur! They've all become hypochondriacs, you understand. When they come here for their holidays, it's one little scratch and they're moaning for medicines'.

Through the sarcasm, there is warmth, and through it all, there is passion. Even in the slickest of Western establishments, this perfectionism would reach rare standards; here in this bizarre, dilapated paradise, it is all the more poignant. The richest of culinary traditions in the poorest of African states. Haute uptightness, here, on the most laid-back of islands.

In a final plea to take my leave, I tell Madame I'm journeying to the East Coast this evening, to the pretty, pirate island of Sainte Marie. Any recommendations? Madame shrugs. Tosses her small, dark pupils up under her eyelids in despair, then reluctantly, lets me in on a certain noteworthy dish. 'The resort is called Le Crique, she winks, 'and actually, I hear they do a chicken in coconut milk which is not all bad'.

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Theme: Local

Address: Antananarivo
Directions: I found this story on the net but I lost the link. Will try and find it back.

Restaurant Name: Le Bateau Ivre

Upmarket restaurant run by an English woman Helen Hodgson who has worked and lived in Madagascar for 8 years and had a restaurant/hotel before in Mauritius.

Favorite Dish: Everything looked good and tasted good too. But they specialise in seafood.

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Theme: Other

Address: Le Bateau Ivre, Tamatave. (261)20.53.302.94
Other Contact: batoivre@dts.mg

Restaurant Name: La Brasserie, Hôtel de France

Very European. Most main courses 27.000 MDG (4.35 USD).
Bill for 6 people (incl. 10% service): 394.000 MDG (63.56 USD) - main course, soft drinks, coffee and dessert

Favorite Dish: Filet de mérou grillé (a fish), côtes d'agneau grillées, Ile flottante, tarte au citron meringuée etc.

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Theme: French

Address: Center of Antananarivo
Other Contact: 34, avenue de l'independance, An