Indian Ocean Restaurant

You have to know what to expect when you come to Indian Ocean Restaurant and review it accordingly. Walking into this restaurant isn’t like walking into your typical American restaurant. It’s eastern African. Imagine walking into a restaurant in Somalia or Kenya and you’ll get a better idea of what Indian Ocean is like. It’s gritty but clean, disorganized but welcoming.
My wife and I, eager to try Indian Ocean, stopped in for dinner recently. It was a one-​man-​show. The owner took our order and then went back in the kitchen to make it. He was very very kind and proud of his little restaurant. He made everything from scratch, including the flatbread, which was some of the freshest and most delicious flatbread we’ve ever had.
We each ordered a «wrap» (my wife chicken, I beef) but it comes out on a plate, so you can wrap it up or eat it like a plate of food. For $ 7 each we got a heaping pile of deliciously seasoned (but not overseasoned) meat, a helping of fava bean stew, and endless amounts of that flatbread. It was really good! We haven’t experimented much with African foods (really only Ethiopian and Moroccan) but we we both thought the food was excellent and a nice new change.
In addition to the wrap we also received a salad for starters and, my personal favorite, a large glass of house juice! That’s right, the owner mixes up a juice made of a blend of tropical fruit nectars and OH MY GOODNESS it is sooooo freaking good! Arguably among the best juices I’ve ever tasted. I have no idea how he made it, but good lord!
So again, you have to take Indian Ocean Restaurant for what it is. You don’t review a restaurant like this against Portland’s big hitter Ethnic restaurants like Pok Pok or Nicholas or Piazza Italia. It is a very small, very ethnic ma’n’pa establishment that serves a very unique meal and deserves props for what it is. And besides, the price is right, the food is very good, and it’s a very unique experience. When you’re tired of the typical ethnic food around town, the plethora of Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, and Lebanese restaurants around town, try something new and stop in to Indian Ocean. I would suggest coming for lunch, however.

A couple weeks ago while driving down SE Powell Blvd I caught a glimpse of a restaurant called «Indian Ocean» in a tiny little strip on the north side of the road. I’m always on the lookout for new Indian places, so did a little interweb searching to see if this might be a new (or new to me) Indian restaurant.
Nothing on Unilocal,so time to hit the goog, but all I could find was one rather obscure biz listing on
(
). Was this place still open? Maybe it never opened and died on the vine? I decided to make a point of checking this place out and as it turns out today I got a chance.
Pulling into the postage stamp sized parking lot was a bit of a challenge. There are a few diagonally positioned parking spots, but to reverse out of them you basically have to back onto the sidewalk. They had an A-​board sign advertising «Healthy & Delicious» food for dine-​in or take-​out; the adjacent halal market was also listed on the sign, giving me the impression they may have the same owner.
The place is very small with zero ambiance and virtually no decoration to speak of. It kinda had the look of a neighborhood deli or restaurant you’d find in a 3^rd world country… not in any unclean or unhygienic way, but more in the no-​frills, 4-​walls and a ceiling, couple tables and chairs kinda way.
There were a couple Moslem women speaking an Arabic dialect and having lunch with their well-​behaved young children, and it was beginning to dawn on me that perhaps this was not an Indian restaurant after all. I guess there was no real reason for me to assume that it was (there are LOTS of countries bordering the Indian Ocean), other than it’s listing on an Indian business website.
Well, I was starving and pretty much game for whatever they were serving, so when the lone woman I saw working there greeted me and told me they had a lunch buffet, I decided to give it a shot.
Looking across the relatively small variety of options (none of which were named) in the buffet was all the proof I needed that this was neither Indian nor Pakistani food. Putting 2 and 2 together I started thinking that «Indian Ocean» was East African (later confirmed that it was Somali).
As I said, the buffet was small and, not being familiar with Somali cuisine (or any African food outside of Middle Eastern or Ethiopian), I didn’t know what I was putting on my plate. A little post-​lunch research and I think I can now identify what I was eating.
There was a nice rice dish (barriss?), a rather bland pasta dish with meat that seemed to have been cooked in butter (basto?), and another dish of long-​simmered, slightly sweet reddish-​brown beans (Cambuulo?). The latter almost gave me a «baked bean» type vibe, but the sweetness was just an undertone and could have come from nutmeg or cinnamon. Beyond that there was some sauteed, mildly spiced chunks of chicken (good, but a little too dry) and a thick porridge-​like dish that had a pleasant, almost grits-​like flavor and texture.
In fact, the only item that I really didn’t like was some meat kebobs that I think may have been goat. They were a little oily and fatty, and like most of the other items could really have benefited with more seasoning. After sitting down a small, rather boring salad of iceberg lettuce with a couple slices each of tomato and cucumber and a lime wedge was brought to my table, followed by some soft, chewy flatbread (sabayad?). She also brought me a dish of semi-​spicy, somewhat tangy, green sauce as a condiment. Very similar to what Horn of Africa serves (though not as hot), it added much needed zest to each of the dishes I tried.
With few exceptions the food was all pretty decent, and while it was worth Unilocaling about (what isn’t?) it wasn’t worth writing home about. Unfortunately the $ 10 this cost me seemed way too much; I was expecting $ 7, maybe $ 8, but $ 10!!! If they want to attract customers new to the cuisine they’re gonna have to drop their prices; heck even fans of East African food have lot’s of other options with better pedigrees, nicer environments, and similar (or cheaper) pricing.
I asked and my server (who may be the owner as well) how long they’ve been open and she said about 4 months; so maybe they’re still figuring things out. It’s only a couple miles from my home so perhaps I’ll return, but if I do I’ll probably skip the rather poor value buffet and see what their dinner menu looks like.