Khartoum Centre Restaurant & Cafe, 143-145 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 0452 639 329

Sometime soon after an early CTS story on  Khartoum Centre, we stopped considering the place as an eats option.

This was largely due to service that was genial but disconcertingly haphazard and a confusing menu that was difficult to navigate in terms of options and prices.

That’s all changed.

The place has been given a makeover, the food choices and their prices are clearly laid out in a big back-lit menu behind the serving counter, and there is a reassuringly routine process for ordering, receiving and paying.

This is great!

Because while this eatery is nominally Sudanese, the menu ranges across quite a broad spectrum.

This is illustrated by the fact that much of the menu is available in alternates based on injera, Lebanese bread, spaghetti or rice.

And the super grilled-meat-with-rice dishes are very similar to those to be had at Sunshine’s hot new kebab spot.

This diverse approach and a more user-friendly experience mean CTS is likely to use Kartoum Centre as a playground in coming months.

There’s one dish here that is clearly the most popular – at lunchtime anyway.

Foul is delicious, nutritious, dirt cheap and at Kartoum Centre comes in configurations that range from plain to the more ritzy that include extra vegetables, salad and so on.

A complementary bowl of lamb broth with chunks of aromatics is nice enough but plain as can be and defiantly under-seasoned.

Ordering lamb curry ($12) in African restaurant may appear to be folly.

But I’m so comfortably secure with the level of food here that I’m happy to give it a go – on the basis that it will be good and that this Footscray curry will bear little or no resemblance to a West Footscray curry.

I’m certainly correct on the latter count – no orthodox curry is this.

The tomato-based gravy seems to be seasoned with little more than salt and pepper. And certainly not with any of the spices we routinely think of as being curry.

But as for being good goes, I’m dead wrong – it’s very, very good!

All is richness and deep flavour, with the lamb pieces – some of them on the bone – ultra-tender and the fat easily discarded.

Forget curry – this is more like a fantastic stew or goulash.

With heaps on injera and good salad bits on the side, it’s a winner.

See our earlier story here and a more recent one at Footscray Food Blog here.

145 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 0452 639 329

Khartoum Centre is a popular place – groups of friends, young families and extended families come and go.

It seems the perfect place for Saturday lunch – especially after I had discovered a sensational new barber in “Little Khartoum Arcade”. So gentle, thorough, professional!

We’d been to Khartoum Centre once – for a nice falafel plate.

One young family near us is having fish with rice and salad, but most of the larger tables around us are tucking into big communal bowls of ful.

But we know that we’re going to be taking our pulses that night in the form of  homemade dal, so we head off in a different direction.

There’s certainly a lot from which to choose. There seem to be no written menus – the food range is displayed in photos and lists at the end of the room, where customers place their orders adjacent to the kitchen. Unfortunately, the many intriguing photos have no captions, so it’s hard to place a dish’s name with its pic.

There’s Sudanese dishes, of course, but also an Ethiopian section, dips, salads, soups – and even a kids menu. A lot of the dishes seem to be close kin to those served by the likes of the Iraqi joint across the road and other Middle Eastern places.

Since our initial visit, we’d walked in and walked out several times, finding no one much interested in explaining the menu to us or taking our order. There seems to be an expectation that customers already know what they desire.

Today we soldier on – with an order of meat soup and mixed grill.

As expected, the meat soup, thoughtfully served to us in two small bowls, is a sibling to those found at our Ascot Vale friends Yemeni Restaurant and Safari Restaurant – meat soups in which nary a strand dead sheep is to be found but which are explosively, deeply meatly flavoured. But where those efforts are clear, tangy and spicy, the meat soup at Khartoum Centre is cloudy – but the depth of flavour is no less impressive.

The mixed grill is a delight.

Bennie declares the boneless pieces of fish – fluffly, light, mellow of flavour and with a soft (eggy?) batter – the best he’s ever had.

They share the plate with a handful of garlicky, pan-fried lamb cubes, some equally garlicky and charred pieces of chicken thigh and three similarly charred and tasty lamb chops.

Attending the lot are a small serve of finely chopped salad of tomato, cucumber and more, rice of no great distinction and good dollops of humus and cucumber/yogurt dip

(BTW, the Khartoum mixed grill was adjudged one Ms Baklover’s top five dishes when she was covered, with us, by Leader newspapers.)

The Khartoum mixed grill is a fine dish to share. Unless you’re a shearer taking your lunch break!

Satisfied, we arise to pay our bill. And discover that instead of the $3 listed for the soup, we are being charged $5. And instead of $16 for the mixed grill, we are charged $18. We don’t make a big deal of it, as at $25 including two cans of soda it’s still a fine cheap eat.

There’s so much food to explore at Khartoum Centre, but we’d feel happier about repeated return visits if we didn’t feel like we are somehow out the eatery’s loop. Maybe the fault is ours – maybe we need to be a little more assertive in such circumstances.

On the way back to the car, we meet the most friendly and beautiful tabby kitten. Gorgeous!