Occasionally or more like shamelessly three to sometimes every day of the week, I spend a couple of hours looking for a restaurant to go to for dinner. I start with searching restaurants based on convenience and change the location if none of the eateries interest me. Sometimes I get those "good" days where I find a couple of places and think, "I HAVE to go there" while other times it is more like, "hmm looks okay" and settle. With that said, Simba's Grill has been on my list of interest for quite some time because I always notice the restaurant when passing by. So when I finally decided to look up some comments on Urbanspoon and Yelp, Simba's Grill seemed like a must visit to me.
Okay, honest to truth, I was obsessed for the whole day about going to Simba's Grill and had bad cravings to come here. Since there are not many photos of the dishes online, I even resorted to searching through Instagram and looking for their geotag just to find more photos! From what I remember reading, the owner is very friendly and welcoming especially towards first time visitors. I am big on supporting family businesses but at the same, only those who I believe deserve to be successful. By "deserve", all I really mean is for the owners to show they care about their clientele. To further simply put it, owners that do not act miserable.
When we walked in on a raining evening with dripping umbrellas, a friendly waitress provided us with a seat by the door when the restaurant was not busy. We asked if it was possible for a different seat, one not so close to the door, and she was happy to oblige. The waitress gave us the option of seating anywhere and we asked if a four person table is okay because we tend to order a lot. This is when the owner stood up from his seat, pointed towards a table in a corner and said, "no!". There is no exaggeration with the exclamation mark. At this time, BF wanted to leave because of the rudeness from the owner but I begged him to stay because I literally spent like three hours looking for photos online and I really wanted to dine here.
Vancouver may have a decent amount of African restaurants, but primarily Ethiopian and East African cuisine. I guess we do have South African restaurants if Nando's counts. Furthermore, there are even noticeably more Ethiopian than East African restaurants too, which I find surprising because I believe the former would be more popular to the locals. The reason is because Ethiopian cuisine is definitely an acquired taste in my opinion and it is not because of the stews, but due to the injera.
Lalibela is a family operated restaurant, where the owners are very humble and inviting. The restaurant is located in New Westminster right beside Hon's Wun Tun House and the interior is fairly spacious. Despite that there are only around ten tables however, I appreciate how the restaurant passed on squeezing in more seats. The atmosphere is very homey too and it truly feels as if you are stepping into someone's home. Even the restroom was squeaky clean! Cleaner than some of my friends' washrooms too.
