Paean to Fast Food Adonis

Every town needs a good, reliable, cheap, greasy place (several, actually) and Adonis is my favourite Bamako exemplar of the species. You can sit down in the flyspecked, dingy restaurant (that does offer a TV showing soap operas – ridiculously, I do consider this an enticement) or get your grease to go. There are lots of options: sandwiches with schwarma, merguez, brains, hot dogs, hamburgers with eggs and cheese, etc. etc. I don’t love the schwarma (it’s served in a pita that does not have the tensile strength, as it were, not to dissolve halfway through from the accumulated moisture of meat and toppings) but the merguez sandwich – a half-baguette with mayonnaise, sketchy ketchup, french fries, a few dry, spicy merguez sausages – is simply delightful. I got the falafel sandwich once, in an uncharacteristic bid for healthiness, and it was great – lots of parsley in the crispy-but-not-oily falafel, not too much tahini splashed on, a little bit of chopped salad tucked into the pita. It’s an energetic place, lots of orders being shouted, customers filing in and out (including infinitely cooler-than-thou teenagers from a nearby school) the cooks shaving meat for the schwarma, frying eggs, and packing your sandwich right in front of you, and at the end of this mini-opera you get to leave clutching your treat with joyful anticipation. It is in Niaréla/Quinzambougou, here is a map: