A warm, stylish Ethiopian-Eritrean restaurant with excellent sharing platters, strong vegan choice and welcoming service, though event coordination, portions and occasional value complaints warrant sensible expectations.
Savanna Restaurant & Cocktail Bar delivers strong food quality and attentive service that anchor a reliable dining experience, with staff particularly skilled at guiding first-time visitors through Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. The refurbished setting and welcoming atmosphere support its role as a neighborhood destination, though unusual review patterns create modest uncertainty in our assessment. Consistency across repeat visits and dimensions keeps it solidly performing, just short of grade A territory.
Savanna is a stylish, cosy city-centre restaurant opposite the O2 Academy, balancing warm hospitality with a lively cocktail-bar feel. Diners repeatedly describe staff as welcoming and unusually helpful with unfamiliar dishes; one representative impression is that the team made a first Ethiopian meal feel "easy, generous and genuinely welcoming." The setting suits a social dinner, celebration or pre-show stop, although the venue is reported to be compact. The cooking is rooted in Ethiopian-Eritrean classics—injera, berbere, shiro, kitfo, tibse and colourful sharing platters—while the menu also takes an East-meets-West detour through berbere spaghetti, chicken Alfredo penne and fusion sides. Food quality is the clear draw, with especially strong praise for vegetarian and vegan platters, fresh injera and bold seasoning. Current prices are moderate: expect roughly £28-38 for a full food experience before drinks, with cocktails potentially pushing the bill much higher. Families can find workable choices, especially vegan or vegetarian platters, plain rice, fries, mild stews and familiar chicken dishes, but there is no dedicated children’s menu in the supplied information. The communal format can be fun for adventurous older children; picky eaters may prefer sides or a simple rice-and-chicken combination, and the spice level should be discussed with staff.
Area vibe: Inner-city, diverse commercial strip linking the city centre and Sparkhill.
Safety: Generally busy during day; evenings quieter with occasional street-level anti-social activity, so exercise normal urban caution.
What's nearby: Close to Digbeth/Birmingham Coach Station, near shopping on Smallbrook Queensway and industrial-to-creative clusters in Digbeth.
Build your meal around injera and a sharing platter, then choose from bold classics such as Zilzil, Kitfo, or Zigni Dorho.
Expect a sociable, sometimes noisy evening with variable wait times, and budget beyond the moderate food prices if you plan to order drinks.
The room combines cosy design and welcoming service with a lively cocktail-bar energy that works especially well for social occasions.