Experience new flavors, textures at African
Village in Irving
By MARK STUERTZ
Special to
dfw.com
A whole section - tables pushed together, men slumping over Fantas and Cokes and palm wine - explodes in bellows and shouts. Turn quickly. On the 50-inch plasma screen is the replay of the goal. It's a scene from the African Cup of Nations competition, a biennial soccer championship that this year began Jan. 10 in Angola and concludes at the end of the month.
The walls and light wood paneling in African Village Restaurant are scrapbooked with photos of soccer teams from Nigeria, Tonga, Egypt, Algeria and Ghana, among others. And like that collage, African Village draws from virtually every crook and jog in the second largest continent on the planet. Here you'll find chapatti (flat bread) from the east; nshima (cornmeal porridge) from the south; goat stew from the west, and occasionally couscous from the north.
The most straightforward dishes on the menu include grilled whole fishes; stews cooked with peppers and tomatoes; and various permutations of goat, chicken and beef. Here's one: goat's head, chopped and simmered slowly before a patina of spices and palm nut oil is applied. Not the typical Jerry Jones temple tailgate fare.
Goat stew ($8), generous with chunks of tender goat flesh, is slow cooked in a bright, zesty slather of tomato (enhanced with heat), peppers and spices, all ladled over a mound of white rice.
Among the most recurrent African Village menu entrants is fufu ($10), a staple of west and central Africa. Fufu is a thick blend of rice and yam flours pounded and molded into dough that is then formed into grapefruit-size balls or - as is the case at African Village - smooth, elastic logs as white as news anchor teeth, and skinned in plastic wrap and swaddled in foil. Think of fufu as Africa's starchy retort to the pasta of Italy and the rice of Asia. At African Village, fufu is coupled with soups and sautéed spinach or with nothing at all, left to brazenly flaunt its culinary blank-canvas glory.
Fufu also is served with Edi-kai-koh/eru/afang (a variance of designations depending on the African country of origin) or a mass of dark, semi-bitter kalelike greens interlaced with spinach until it assumes a blackish green mush consistency. It cowls craggy chunks of beef.
Fufu ritual: Pinch off a nub from the log, roll it into a ball, then clench swaths of the green blend and plop the ensemble into your mouth. The chunks of heartily cooked beef flavored with the palm nut oil are dry, hard and tough and when combined with the greens, sweat a musky, weedy flavor and aroma.
No surprise: Among the most popular dishes is simple charcoal grilled fish with doh doh (fried plantains, $11). A whole tilapia - its stiff tail reaching beyond the edge of the plate, its lips partially opened - is moist, and though grill marks imprint its skin, there is no char crispness to add textural contrast. A dark, stringy mass of spinach, tomato and onion is tucked under the fish's chin. Cradled atop the convergence of these three foods is a saucer of brisk pepper sauce - tangy and salty, bridled in mild heat.
Drinks - dispensed from a glass cooler near the door - include Fanta, Coke ($1.50), bottled water and palm wine, a slightly alcoholic sweet drink.
African Village opened in a sparse Irving strip mall in 2002 with the intention of proffering authentic, approachable African cuisine. Yet this isn't dainty cuisine. Dishes are hearty and often prepared with the leanest, meanest cuts of meat.
The tastes are acquired. Yet these flavors deserve to be vigorously explored and adopted.
