Onja Taste of Tanzania: Cardiff City centre restaurant review

On January 30, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

‘Would you like more lamb?’ Godfrey offers. ‘Just so you don’t have to waste that bit of rice.’

As if.

My first Tanzanian meal at Onja had already put me in a good mood. For a few minutes I had forgotten the ache in my back and my feet complaining about being on them for hours, and it’s hard to put a price on those moments.

I love an underdog. So let me give you the headlines:

Owner Justina runs the kitchen, with brother Gidfrey managing front of house with easy warmth and charm. Justina, a force of nature, has lived in Cardiff for twenty-five years and in this, her first restaurant, she is desperate to show people what Tanzanian food is all about.

The name? ‘Onja’ is an invitation. ‘Taste it.’ That’s the offer, from someone confident in what she does.

She should be, because this is hearty, wholesome stuff. Tucked away on Barrack Lane, to the side of the St Davids 2 shopping complex, launching a Tanzanian menu is a bold move. Not just with the counterintuitive January opening, with Arctic winds about to blow even harder through hospitality, but with a style of cooking which will be unfamiliar to most in Cardiff.

You think ‘eating in St David’s 2’ and you think bland ubiquity. Corporate, head office test kitchen menus, the same from Cardiff to Carlisle. The edge of the capital’s busiest shopping area might not be the most obvious place to find something to change your mind: this is the sort of cooking you might be surprised to see in any city centre.

But it’s exactly places like this we need to colour Cardiff with character, to inject it with some heart.

That generosity of spirit implied in the name is writ large in the inclusive menu- there’s vegetarian and vegan strength in depth. The entire menu? Halal. Not for personal religious reasons, but because everyone is welcome.

‘Taste it.’

Lamb stew is served very much on the bone. This is not a dish for the prissy, and if you’re thinking that someone you’d like to go with wouldn’t like eating like that, then quietly rid them from your life. You don’t need friends like that, do you?

It comes with a thali-like bunch of sides. Creamed spinach is an immediate favourite- creamy, earthy, warming: a touch of sweetness. A long-established immigrant community means Indian influences are significant in Tanzanian cooking, with samosa, chapati and pilau familiar names on the menu, and kachumbari is an easy guess- here, a sprightly salad of carrot, tomato and red cabbage.

(Pilau and all its local evolutions must make for a fascinating story. Pilaf, paella, pulao, Afghan kabuli and the maicha I had at Taste of Peshawar recently, Persian polow and more.)

Add kidney beans cooked with onions and tomato paste in coconut milk, still with some bite, and a raw, hot paste of red and green chillies which hits hard at first but calms down, and it’s a lovely introduction to what they do here. A complimentary plate of fried cassava, crisp yet floury, is another winner.

Samosas are very well done indeed, plump with lamb, crisp and very welcome dipped into more of that robust chilli paste and that perky kachumbari. More of that fried cassava? Don’t mind if I do.

Grilled meats feature heavily. Tender little lamb chops, marinated in ginger, garlic, black pepper, turmeric, chilli and more are a joy, with no encouragement needed to chase the flesh and gnaw at the char. If you’re in an expansive mood, you can reserve one of the Nyama Choma sharing platters for larger parties of four or more, where you might have lamb chops, beef skewers and chicken legs, or king prawns, tilapia, sea bass or squid.

It’s Swahili for ‘barbecued meat’ and a staple everywhere from roadside stalls to restaurants. A chef friend is misty-eyed as I tell him about my meals at Onja and he recalls his time in Tanzania- ‘The barbecue I went to there is something I’ll talk about till the day I die. Beef chicken, goat… salad, sides and fries. The barbecue itself was the size of a massive kitchen table. There was meat cooking at different stages all along the grill: it was insane, the taste. I’ve no idea what they did with the meat, especially as they were lean-looking animals, but it was so, so good’- and although you’ll have to settle for a less dramatic backdrop than Kilimanjaro, it’ll be one of your better decisions.

Justina tells me she would usually serve the lamb with rice and spinach but the latter had sold out the previous night, and the next batch isn’t quite ready. That’s a pity- it’s memorable stuff and has been playing on my mind since yesterday- but everything I have read about Tanzanian food tells me I should ask for ugali. It’s the national dish- maize meal boiled until it becomes a stiff paste to accompany sauces and stews- so when Justina asks if I’d like to eat it ‘African style’ I do, using my fingers to dredge the dough through a bowl of peas rich with tomatoes, onions, carrots, peppers and coconut milk.

In for a penny, in for 3,160.65 Tanzanian shillings. In rural areas, Godfrey tells me, ugali is what you eat to set you up for the day. At around 80% carbohydrate, that starchy heft is ideal fuel for farmers and labourers.

Onja is Justina’s debut restaurant. You sense they are learning as they go, so I dare say there will be changes. The menu display could do with being more descriptive, for those- like myself- new to Tanzanian food. The eventual printed versions will follow suit, I’m sure. The menu is long and may slim to a core, with regular specials. We’ll see. But these are secondary impressions: that Onja exists at all is something to celebrate.

Workday lunches, a weekend shopping break, even a pre-cinema treat- Onja is open in the evening, and has a bar- mean this adds significant interest to your city centre options. Independently owned places offering something genuinely interesting are in short supply, and a menu this vivid and unfamiliar is something to prize.

‘When you’re passing next, stick your head round the door and I’ll give you the day’s special to try,’ Justina says as I leave. I’ve never yet come across that same spirit of hospitality in the city centre. And yet: somehow, it doesn’t surprise me.

You know what to do next, don’t you?

‘Taste it…’

9 Barrack Ln, St Davids Centre, Cardiff CF10 2FR

Monday 12–8 pm
Tuesday 12–8 pm
Wednesday 12–8 pm
Thursday 12–8 pm
Friday 12–9 pm
Saturday 12–9 pm
Sunday Closed

Instagram: Onja Taste of Tanzania

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