In article >,
Dog3 > wrote:

> > We parked our car, fed the meter, and walked across the street to the
> > address we had for Myconos. Not there. We spotted friend Steve, held a
> > small conference and decided to check out Safari, next door. It's east
> > African, Somali fixin's. (We have a fair number of Somali refugees
> > living in the Twin Cities.)

I _really_ need to learn to post about these things quicker! Barb
covers all the good stuff!

This meal was one of those happy accidents. Safari actually had been
on my list to try for quite some time, but I just never found myself
in the neighborhood (just south of Minneapolis downtown). Turns out
they've been there for five years; I'd heard about them only because
of the recent StarTribune review that Barb linked. I'm glad that Barb
and Rob are pretty open about trying different food.

I decided on the goat (cutlet) as soon as I saw it on the menu. I've
never had goat before, though it is widely available at most of the
ethnic food markets in town. It very much resembled beef, except for
the texture (denser, but I suppose that may be because goat, at least
in the U.S., has not been bred over the years for marbling and
tenderness the way beef has) and for the presence of several flat
bones in this cut (not quite like beef- or pork-rib bone segments).
Sade Hashi, the host, said they pressure-par-cook the goat and _then_
roast it to give it tenderness. No marinade or rubs were mentioned. It
turned out great. I definitely will try some again.

The rice served to all of us was a basmati rice with some relatively
mild herbs in it -- no strong individual flavors. Mixed with the hot
relish and bananas, though, it was a wonderful side dish, and while
the relish and banana were readily identifiable, they played well
together. It's not like any of those ingredients was horribly out of
place. I would not have thought of that particular combination. I'm
glad someone did.

The foul maddamas is fava beans, mixed with onion, garlic, a little
bit of lemon juice, and, in the case of our dish, lots of vegetables,
and allowed to sit long enough for flavors to mingle. It's meant to be
a dip and is served with (nowhere near enough) pita bread. Very tasty,
very substantial, and probably pretty healthy if you don't know how
much olive oil goes into making it (!). :-)

"Besbes" (the hot relish) aside, none of the food was hot-spicy. It
definitely was flavorful, in almost an Indian way in that it was
difficult to isolate individual spices and ingredient flavors, but the
combinations were very pleasing. Even the relish itself was not hot in
the
"I-swallowed-it-a-minute-ago-and-only-now-is-the-searing-heat-arriving"
sense; it was a clean, quick heat that didn't overwhelm.

Sade said they had to tone a few dishes down to appeal to Minnesota
palates, but I don't imagine the besbes was one of them. And, judging
from the number of East Africans in the place (several parties by the
time we finished), I don't think the dishes could have been toned down
too much without driving away the majority clientele.

Rob and I had the mango drink; it tasted to me like fresh-squeezed
mangos -- not from a can and not cloyingly sweet -- a good counterpart
to the earthy dishes we were eating.

The rest of the meal? Good conversation, lots of laughs, and a very
personable host. The restaurant was clean (if a bit dark), the menu
navigable (with menu items well-described except for one "grilled
lamp" dish that Rob was thinking about trying for a few moments), and
the prices extremely reasonable considering the locale (almost
downtown), the quality of the food we were served, and the fact that
it wasn't hard to get two meals out of the goat-and-rice combination
(or, probably, the others).

I'm going to have to find a few more people I can bring over to
Safari! (Barb and Rob and I have too many other places on the list to
come back soon!)

sd