Madiba Restaurant

My husband took me here for a dinner and it was fantastic. The Lamb Beryani is to die for, and the ambience and service was excellent. I'm returning with 6 friends this Saturday! I love this restaurant!

I am from South Africa and was dying for some South African food and that is totally what I got at Madiba! The atmosphere was great and the food was everything to bring me back to South Africa... They can do better on the desserts, but otherwise it was awesome!

I had been dying to eat here since we moved to Fort Greene last winter, and was so excited to finally try Madiba tonight, as I'd heard a lot of good things about the food. Unfortunately, it was a huge disappointment. The restaurant was so dark we couldn't see the menus, which felt really greasy. The food is extremely expensive and we ordered kind of blindly; the menu descriptions aren't very helpful, or even very descriptive. My boyfriend started with an $8 bowl of what tasted like Campbell's minestrone, but with lentils instead of pasta. Very salty, veggies so small and overcooked you couldn't tell what they were. $8 for a bowl of overcooked veggies in broth! Not a good start. I had the oxtail stew and my boyfriend had the sausage for mains. His sausage was good, but it was overwhelmed on the plate by a giant, gelatinous cube of cold polenta with about 1 tablespoon of tomato sauce on top. As good as the sausage was, it couldn't stand up against the literal brick of cold starch on his plate. My oxtail stew was fine, not stellar. However, it was $20 for a smallish bowl of oxtails - one of the cheapest 'cuts' of beef - and some carrots in an unnecessarily fatty broth. Our server only came over once during our meal, to try to seat some other people at our table. She was friendly, but ineffectual. She also put someone else's wine on our bill...we never had a drink because we were never given the drinks menu. The food was universally so salty that I've been chugging water compulsively for the past 5 hours. Ugh. Bottom line: Food is passable but ridiculously overpriced. Unfortunately, we won't be going back.

It has been on and off, but lately i've had only fantastic experiences. We had chosen to sit inside this time and we were served by two (a guy and girl, it was nice since one was actually south african) servers who were highly attentive, very charming and funny and gave us fantastic service. their suggestions were spot on and they lended an air inside that made our evening spectacular.

What's with the hipster habit of disdaining clients? Absolutely horrendous. Some guy actually picked up my plate while I was eating to get under the bar. After that, while paying my bill, the waitress didn't have any change and asked me to go around the corner and get some for her...Amazing! Never going back there again. The place does a disservice to Brooklyn, Fort Greene and the concept of a neighborhood hangout.

Don't bother making a reservation--you'll come all the way there just to find out that there are actually no available seats and you'll have to sit there forever and wait anyway. Ask about this, and you'll simply be told in a surly tone: "We're a very busy restaurant"--because clearly, your time doesn't matter.

Went to dinner there before a show at BAM. The food was excellent and the servers were personable and made my dining experience so much fun! I'll definitely go back for more. Love the guava martinis!! worth the trip to brooklyn.