Les Gourmets Cuisine is a new Congolese restaurant inside Urbana’s Broadway Food Hall, and it is now open serving chef specialties in addition to lunch plates with a choice of side.
Les Gourmets’ lunch plate options include chicken wings, pork ribs, beef kebab, red snapper, tilapia, and goat meat, served with a choice of plantains, kwanga, fried potatoes, fried rice, or fufu. The chef specialties include salted fish, whole chicken, and a Congolese legume bowl with pondu, fumbwa, musaka, ngai-ngai, and ndunda.
I went on Friday, and I tried the pork ribs lunch plate with fried rice ($12.50) plus an extra side of plantains.
Photo by Alyssa Buckley.
The dry rub pork ribs had a delicious smoky barbecue taste. The three ribs had a lot of meat on the bones, and the smokiness of the pork was just amazing. The fried rice had a little of everything: peas, green beans, egg, bell peppers, corn, carrots, beans, and shrimp — and the scoop was huge for a side. I liked the flavor of the rice and the yummy shrimp, but the menu did not explicitly say the fried rice included shrimp, so if you have allergies or prefer not to eat shrimp, be aware. The plantains had a little bit of a crisp edge with a soft, potato-like center and a salty-sweet taste.
Check out the new restaurant’s menu.
Photo by Alyssa Buckley.
Les Gourmets Cuisine
401 N Broadway Ave
Urbana
T-Th 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
F 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sa 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Top image by Alyssa Buckley.
