As far as CBD warehouses go, the home of newly opened Adelaide café Mama Jambo has had quite a history. Once a storage facility for spare Real Estate Agent furniture gathering dust between open house inspections, the lofty Eliza Street space has since housed the original incarnation of Adelaide studio and exhibition space Tooth & Nail and hip, but short-lived, café Hello Yes.
Now after a few months downtime it has been reborn once again, with co-owners Connie Fiala Mmadike, Caroline Mosha and Troy Bellchambers polishing some of the grunge out of the place without losing character. Building on the charming but rudimentary set up of the previous tenants, Mama Jambo boasts a full kitchen and a plan to further expand upstairs with a gallery space to maximise their small venue capacity.
Behind the scenes, it’s taken a while to get to this point.“We discovered termite damage, which delayed us,” Mosha says of the subtle but significant renovations.
“We knocked down a wall and it all just crumpled around us,” she says. Having jumped through the requisite planning approvals and soundproofing for their small venue licence, they’ve now thrown open their doors with for a series of Fringe shows.
“Our philosophy is recycled – we’ve used a lot of recycled material where we could,” Fiala Mmadike says, the evidence easily spotted from repainted vintage furniture to walls lined with repurposed shipping crates.
On the plate the café draws inspiration from Mosha and Fiala Mmadike’s other halves. “We’re both married to African guys, Connie’s husband is Nigerian and my husband is from Tanzania,” Mosha says. “I spend a quarter to half a year in Tanzania every year, [and] a big part of our lives is cooking with the different flavours.”
“[So] our menu is modern Australia with African flavours, it’s not a full African restaurant but we’ve got flavours from north to south, east to west, Morocco to South Africa.” Reliable lunch menu features like beef or mushroom burgers – with haloumi, of course – sit alongside Moroccan meatballs with couscous. A cocktail menu also takes pride of place, featuring entries like Pole Pole Martini and Nigerian Chapman, a particular favourite among staff.
“We wanted to keep it quite broad, it gives us a chance to experiment with different things,” they say.
Open from early in the morning to late pretty much all week, the café is also testing its mettle as a live music venue during the Fringe with a residency by Acoustic Africa. It’s something they’re keen to see continue. “We both have a love of arts and music so we wanted to incorporate that,” Fiala Mmadike says. “So we wanted to have a place that helped the African community as well, to share their culture.”
Mama Jambo is officially open from Monday, February 22
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Where
12 Eliza Street, Adelaide
Opening Hours
Monday – Friday: 7.30am – 12.00am
Saturday: 8.00am – 12.00am
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