the confined nomad

The second portion of our double-barreled blast of Confined Nomad  weekend fun came just hours after leaving Menahata, the disco we hit up as part of our quest for Bulgarian food.  We fell asleep around 5, woke up late the next day and got in the car, heading to New Jersey via the Holland Tunnel in Manhattan.  This was a mistake.

The Deadly Mantis (1957) attacks the Holland Tunnel

The Holland Tunnel is a marvel of modern engineering, at the time it was built it was the longest tunnel ever engineered for the movement of vehicular traffic.  Its designers confronted enormous challenges, including how to diffuse the lethal buildup of carbon monoxide gases and how to alleviate the symptoms of nitrogen poisoning that tunnel workers suffered as a result of their labors in the highly pressurized tunnel.  In order to solve these problems, a ventilation system, consisting of 42 blowing fans and 42 exhaust fans, running at 6,000 horsepower, was created that replaces all of the air within the tunnel, continuously, in just 90 seconds.  In addition, a system of airlocks was constructed so that workers could properly acclimate to working underwater.  Absolutely amazing stuff.

What the engineers didn’t anticipate was a humid and muggy Sunday summer afternoon where 9 lanes of dense traffic would attempt to funnel into two lanes.  As we sat, listless in the car, windows rolled down because the Nomadmobile has no air-conditioner, we thought of Harlem and 116^th Street because we’d heard, “Senegalese food is just like Burkina food.”  Instead, the sweat pooled in our shirts and we wondered why everyone who ever lived in New Jersey and Pennsylvania had chosen this particular weekend to visit the big city.  It took us 55 minutes to drive six blocks.

For the project, though, we persevered, and arrived at Mimi’s African Restaurant (55 William Street, Newark, NJ 07102) shortly before dark.  Just a little bit outside of downtown Newark’s commercial district, Mimi’s shared a quiet block with an electronics shop displaying Nollywood DVDs in the window and a hair salon.  Two women were grilling corn and shish kabob on what looked like a Weber outside.  We guessed that the restaurant itself might have been a converted Chinese place because the seating area was a small square with a few table and because the menu was displayed on a back-lit board above the counter.  French commentators were deconstructing the triumphs and failures of Fidel Castro on the television set mounted in the corner.

Mimi’s serves a variety of western African food, but when we specifically asked for food from Burkina Faso, the woman at the counter told us that we were to order Peanut Soup (mafe or sauce arachide) and Okra Soup (soup kandia) with rice, and that two orders would be enough for three people.  She was right.

The Okra Soup, which arrived first, with a very spicy red chile sauce on the side, was a stew of dark forest green.  Pools of warm palm oil congealed on the surface.  We dumped it on the rice, revealing large chunks of tender and relatively lean goat meat.  I didn’t really taste the okra, but the stew was rich and very tasty, reminiscent of mutton saag or another spinach dish you might find in an Indian or Pakistani restaurant.

The Peanut Soup came next, also with rice.  This dish was almost a glowing red, with a base of peanut butter and (almost certainly) tomatoes.  Laden with palm oil, it was milder than the Okra, smoother.  We ate both dishes and thought about ordering repeats.

Dessert was dege, a smooth and cool blend of sour cream, yogurt, and African couscous.  At first, we thought that the grain was pounded cassava or some type of yam, but we were told by the friendly proprietress that unlike the couscous most Americans are familiar with, the African variety is generally larger, almost the size of a tapioca ball.

For drinks, we had bissap, which is a sweet drink made of hibiscus flowers and sugar, as well as homemade ginger which is, well, lots of ginger and a little bit of sugar so that you get that sweet, satisfying warmth all the way down your throat and into your belly.

We left happy and decided to take the Goethals bridge home, thinking that Staten Island traffic would be easier to navigate than the trip back east through the tunnel.  Of course, almost an hour and a half later, we arrived safe and sound.

Tags: Africa, Burkina Faso, New Jersey, Newark, restaurant

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 7:18 pm and is filed under B, Burkina Faso. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.