STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More Eats

• Review: A little bit of Spain in the heart of Naples
• Paradise Lost? Not at The Lazy Flamingo!
• Origami is More Than Just a Paper Swan

Share and Enjoy [?]

Before I even walk through the door of IBO Café I am pleased. A tiki torch lights the restaurant’s simple entrance, and the front door is stopped wide open, letting me peer into the soft interior of this East Naples eatery while the quiet buzz of conversation and acoustic guitar flows into the parking lot.

The overhead lights are off as my friend and I enter the small dining room and pick out one of the dozen or so tables to sit at. Only the glow of a small candle on each table and a few strings of Christmas lights that wrap around the windows serve as illumination. The effect is one of truly effortless ambiance without the contrived perfection of more elaborate designs. It feels like an inexpensive vacation, which is wonderful.

IBO smells of cooking food; a warm, pungent and vaguely spicy scent that is easily enticing though unidentifiable. It wafts through the restaurant seeming to complement the décor, which is done in soft desert and earthen tones reminiscent of the African savanna or anywhere hot and dry.

Unlike most restaurants in Southwest Florida, IBO has both its front and back doors flung wide on the night that we stop by, and the air that drifts through the room is a welcome break from the over air conditioned venues that often require a sweater on even the steamiest of nights.

The menu at IBO Cafe is in itself an interesting experience. It’s cuisine is generally indefinable, combining Nigerian, Caribbean and Floridian influences in dishes that range from salads to wraps to entrees to quesadillas. Only the entrees, of which there are four, top the $15 mark and even they only add up to $16.95. We stick to the wraps and more casual food, ordering up the Imo beef wrap and a Jamaican patty along with a Caribbean pizza appetizer to share. Both of our selections cost less than $10, and the pizza weighs in at $6.95.

The Caribbean pizza takes its time in arriving, but I am too content with the live music, the dim lighting and the tropical bamboo-floored setting to really mind. However, when it does find its way to our table it is a disappointing little circle of non-descript pizza. The mango and pineapple toppings that were to lend it “Caribbean” flavor are hidden under some bland cheese and barely register. We nibble at it absently, unimpressed.

Soon thereafter our main courses arrive. The portions are again rather diminutive, but presented carefully on a folded banana leaf beside a small pile of banana chips and a tiny dish of fruit. I begin to nibble on my beef wrap, and find inside an odd assembly of ingredients. The beef has excellent flavor, but is clearly an inexpensive and rather stringy cut. It is crowded into the tomato wrap with red peppers and onions. The red peppers are cooked to a yielding texture, and their sweetness is one of the highlights of the dish, but the red onions are served raw and overpower the rest of the ingredients in my mouth.

Photo by SARAH FELDBERG

Our delightfully colorful dinners. Banana leaves are a nice touch.

On the side the banana chips are a tasty little bundle of yellow crunchy slices, both sweet and starchy they are the potato chip evolved. However, the dish of fruit that I was fairly certain would be a stand out at a restaurant serving African and Caribbean food, (two cuisines where fresh fruit is readily available and regularly utilized) is obviously out of a can. Its mushy syrup sweetness lacks the refreshing quality of the fresh stuff.

Meanwhile my friend nibbles gradually on his Jamaican patty. A small flat flaky pastry filled with spiced ground beef, the turnover is a staple snack on the island and an authentic nod to Caribbean cuisine. While he decides to wrap most of it up to take home, he declares the dish yummy and seems fairly satisfied with his dinner.

When the bill comes it registers at $26 and change, safely under our $30 limit. Though I am not blown away by the quality or quantity of the dishes that we sampled, I am totally relaxed as I leave IBO Café’s calm interior and step into the humid night air. Slumping into my car and heading west on Tamiami Trail towards downtown, I almost feel that I’m returning from a brief vacation.