Yola cuisine

A frequent question I got prior to embarking for Nigeria, and one I was personally especially curious to find out the answer to, was "what is the food like?" I had no clear idea or input coming in, so my best guess while still back home was that it might include either dishes akin to what one finds in Ghana (and southern Nigeria, judging by the food at the Wazo Bia restaurant in DC (which may have changed it's name after taking on a new cook from further west of Nigeria)) ...

• like groundnut stew, palmnut stew, "spinach" with ground egusi melon seed, beans in red oil, accompanied by some sort of maize or cassava fufu dumplings, rice, boiled yam, or fried plaintains, among other things (as found in the DC area at such restaurants as Sahara Oasis, GhanaCafe, Bukom Cafe, among others)

or dishes similar to what I knew from Cameroon

• which, excuse me to say, with the exception of a some appetizers that I'll get to in the next blog entry, hasn't been quite as appealing as that of West Africa. For example, while you find an okra stew in both Ghana and Cameroon, the Ghanaian variety is much like Cajun cuisine back home but the Cameroonian variety which I was introduced to during Peace Corps training has earned the name 'snot sauce' due the texture of the sauce as the okra seeds have been pounded to death.

or something more like northern Ghana

• with somewhat mysterious yet tasty sauces, accompanied by ample varieties of rice or more commonly by a millet-based hardened porridge (called tizert or t.z., short for tuwo zafi -- I think that name came from Hausa, so presumably it's found somewhere here in Hausa-Fulani land).

or something in between all these of a mixture dishes from these of the sort I would be somewhat familiar with.

Plus, I figured I would most likely come have access to some cuisine catering to westerners given a substantial number of faculty from American and elsewhere outside of Africa had been living in Yola for a number of years by now.

Indeed the first meal I was greeted with barely an hour after I landed in Yola was a mortadella pizza (they were out of pepperoni) at Pizza Night at the AUN Faculty Club (a weekly theme on Fridays). I guess I mentioned the pizza briefly in my first blog entry. Among the other pizza selections, they offer "ass vegetables" :| Uh, maybe I'll pass on that. For anyone who is considering visiting and might otherwise be scared away by what follows, the University Club also offers soups, salads, burgers, fries (or "chips" of course, as the U.K. connection with the former colonial power wins out over the American namesake and educational environment of the university), and various specialties that are likely to grow and improve when the neighboring hotel and conference center is completed and the hotel management academic program takes off.

So, the ordeal with my stove discussed in an earlier blog entry has given me some opportunity to explore the local cuisine, but I still have much more to learn and report. Here's what I've got so far: 

I think I already introduced "suya" which I guess is a word that can be used in reference to any sort of grilled meat but it is typically understood to refer to peppered grilled beef which tastes more or less like a fresh or soft beef jerky. The roadside suya stands sometimes serve that with small banana pancakes which I found enjoyable.

On another night I wandered up to the Tasty Menu restaurant located maybe a quarter mile from my house, with flashing lights serving as a beacon to would-be patrons on the otherwise poorly lit main road between Yola and Jimeta. For the most part, I found the array of food options a bit disappointing. Apparently, a popular local favorite is cow leg pepper stew. I presume the consistency of this stew would be somewhat like the "light stew" in Ghana which I didn't bother to mention in the summary of Ghanaian cuisine above as that is one of my least favorite dishes from Ghana. No groundnut stew, no egusi with spinach, no palmnut stew. (Sidenote here: apart from a lack of substance, I avoid light stew because you either have to scald your hand trying to enjoy it while it's hot or wait forever for it to cool down!) What I ended ordering at the Tasty Menu's was fairly reminiscent of a dish from northern Ghana. Tuwo shinkaafa (rice balls) with bitter leaf stew, to which I added some roasted or fried beef. I was happy with that, but it's not the kind of thing I would introduce to any visitors and expect them to enjoy, since it's a bit of an acquired taste and, in this case, came with some boney smoked or dried fish. On the way out I went back up to the counter and inquired about some other items on their menu and ended up taking away a serving of "moi moi", which is some sort of gelatinous bean-based snack, decorated with a slice of boiled egg in the middle. I really don't know what to compare it to. Hardened bean dip? I heated it up for breakfast the next morning. It wasn't bad. 

"moi moi" to go

I came across a shwarma sandwich stand on another occasion and decided to order one just to see how it was. I was actually more curious to see if they sold the tortillas that they use to make the sandwiches, but they didn't. The shwarma grilling machine wasn't in use, so I'm not even sure where they went off to to make the sandwich and what sort of meat they used. It was pretty awful, albeit edible. Just meat, mayonaise, and cabbage rolled up in a tortilla or very thin pita.

Last night I went out to the main street again in search of more local dishes. This time I headed west on the main road where I had seen another restaurant even closer to my place. They mainly served typical acceptable fast food like grilled chicken and rice or wolof rice. They also had what appeared to be a working shwarma meat griller, so I'll try that for comparison some day. They didn't have a printed menu and the host kept mentioning one thing that sounded unique. I couldn't hear well enough to walk away with a word to remember and inquire about, but I at the time I just said okay I'll try "that one" (whatever you said that I didn't understand). Unfortunately they were out of whatever it was, so I'll save that for another day. I'm sure I'll end up being an occasional patron there in the long run given the convenience of location, but I was on a mission to find something besides grilled meat and rice.

So, I wandered back the other way and headed to Tasty Menu again. This time I tried the downstairs section where they had advertised Ramadan specials. More cow leg pepper soup which they tried to convince me to select, but I was more intrigued by the liver stew which had a more substantial looking sauce. I asked what people typically eat with that stew, and I was shown the "masa" which I understood to be rice-flour based pancakes. So, I had kuranu (I think that was the word for liver stew) with masa and a side of two bean cakes (a bean flour-based beignet or fried donut) that are like "hush puppies" not that that's necessarily a helpful clue. I'll go back for more of that soon. (I'll have to verify and/or add local names for these things later. The bean cakes are known as kosai in Hausa, but they menu entry here was different, 'asuka' or something along those lines,  possibly the Fulfulde term.)

liver stew with masa (fermented rice pancake) and bean cakes (kosai), pairs with Schweppes  bitter-lemon

That's basically all I can report (out of the ordinary anyways) for now. They do have several unique berry-like fruits and a small melon that didn't have much flavor but somewhat of a honeydew taste and look, in addition to more typical fruits (mango, banana, papaya, watermelon, even apples from somewhere).  

Maybe I'll take a cue from my friend Ezra in South Sudan who has posted restaurant reviews for local food spots in Juba.