Typical Somaliland food consists of "hilib" (meat), rice and pasta - or baastoo, as commonly called here (it's inherent to the Somali language to double vowels wherever possible). These three basics are served by 99,9% of all restaurants in town. Only one place seems to resists this diet:The "Club, Hotel, Restaurant, Meeting Room" Venezia.
Besides offering a variety of Barilla pasta, with pesto, dried tomatos, mushrooms, and other specialities such as Gnocchi, the restaurants has another peculiarity to offer: It is managed by two middle aged men from Bozen! For all those who dont know it: Bozen is the capital of the northest region of Italy, in brief, the region where I was born and raised. So, how do two middle aged men from a small town in the heart of the Italien Alps end up running a restaurant in Somaliland? To be frank, it's a mistery that I have tried to solve for the past two years.
Every week I visit the place at least one or two times, but instead of finding answers, more and more questions are popping up with each visit to the restaurant.
Food, apart from being different, is not particularly tasty, at least not always. For instance, yesterday: the pizza was soggy, the crem caramel was frozen, the drinking water was warm. Against our recommendation, the place still has no music, leave alone a glass of wine.
Due to these shortcomings, the place is most of the time empty. Which I personally dont mind, since it means more privacy (a pure luxury in Somaliland). But it raises another question: how can these two guys support their restaurant? Its a miracle.
But than again, my mandate here in Somaliland is not really to find out about the past of restaurant owners. I should rather appreciate the fact that there is a place that offers something else than the usual diet :-)
