Africa doesn’t leap to mind as a hotbed of culinary delight, does it? But look around: across Capitol Hill and into the Rainier Valley you’ll find one Ethiopian café after another, where contented diners of all colors are mopping their tefs and wats with hunks of injira. And right here in Belltown we have Seattle’s only Senegalese restaurant, Afrikando.
West African cuisine as practiced here shows the influence of its French colonizers. Jacques Martin Sarr arrived in Seattle in 1991 and opened Afrikando five years later. It’s an unpretentious, relaxed place, decorated with African prints and fanciful figurines snipped from colorful tin cans. Sarr, tall and thin, handles the kitchen chores with dispatch, then settles himself onto the couch to watch an episode of Cops! on the big-screen TV.
He knows his flavors, that’s for sure. Debe, a shoulder steak of lamb rubbed with spices and grilled, was served over a fragrant couscous topped with spicy, mustard-flavored onion sauce and a beautifully dressed salad of field greens. Thiebu Djen, described as the Senegalese national dish, was a halibut steak simmered in tomato sauce and served with eggplant, carrots, cassava and cabbage over basmati rice. What lifted both dishes out of the ordinary were the dabs of habanera-style hot sauces on the fish and the meat.
Beverage choices were limited, as Sarr, a Muslim, didn’t serve alcohol at all until recently. I tried all three of the homemade drinks: zurik, yogurt sweetened with pineapple; bissap, a deep purple concoction made with hibiscus and fresh mint; and a refreshing yellow-green drink flavored with ginger that reminded me why ginger beer used to be popular: it had real zing to it.
And that’s what Afrikando offers: nothing fancy, just authentic and zesty.
