African – Writing With My Mouth Full

12 Chairs

56 MacDougal Street between Houston and Prince
212/254.8640
about $120 for four, with drinks, with tip
â™¥

12 Chairs tastes so much better from the outside than inside. We were famished, but another restaurant around the area couldn’t accommodate four people for at least another hour. We walked down one of my favorite streets in the city and stopped in front of 12 Chairs. It’s one of the restaurants on the block I’ve been meaning to check out but never remember to visit when I’m in the neighborhood. It looked good when we peeked from the street, so we went inside.

And then a shock of light surprised us. Did it all of a sudden transform into a pizza parlor? Why the hell is it so bright inside? We were there with a couple more people, but the space felt abandoned and lonely. The Mediterranean menu looked simple enough, but nothing was so exciting that we just ended up ordering a bunch of appetizers.

I liked the stuffed grape leaves–I never skip them when I see them on any menu. A soft yogurt dip drizzled with olive oil came with them. I appreciated that the beets weren’t from a can, and believe me, even New York restaurants do that. 12 Chairs roasted them just right. The egg salad guacamole was a more interesting dip than it sounds and a good accompaniment to the falafel and pita bread. The veal dumplings were on the heavier side, and the chicken pockets–I don’t know why any restaurant would admit to calling them that–were stuffed with spinach. I was a little more hungry, but because I was already feeling unsure about 12 Chairs, I ordered the safest thing on their list: a medium-rare burger. It unfortunately came with Thousand Island dressing, which I’ve asked to be left out, but it was satisfying until the last bite.

Fr.Og (French Origine)

71 Spring Street between Crosby and Lafayette Streets
212/966.5050
$120 for two people, with four drinks at the bar, with tip
â™¥

I haven’t been to a nice bathroom with communal sinks since my clubbing days–and I mean, like a real club, not the ridiculous Sea in Williamsburg, Brooklyn–and I’ve never been to AIX Brasserie either, chef Didier Virot’s first venture with Philip Kirsh, so it was like a new experience walking into Fr.Og with pink leather seats and silver-beaded walls. What could possibly come out from the kitchen of a place looking like this in the middle of SoHo?

The menu is French with Vietnamese, African and Middle Eastern influences, but really sounds less confusing on a plate. Fried spring rolls, or Vietnamese nem ran, has the traditional pork and shrimp with cucumber, lettuce and carrot on the side dressed with mint and garlic dressing. They were perfectly dainty and crunchy; the mint starting a party in my mouth. The Lebanese tabbouleh was better than the seared lamb loin served on top of it with its texture giving life to the cold, almost-limp tongue slivers of lamb. I only wished there was more of the foie gras encrusted in ginger. I didn’t even need the mango coulis and the soy-balsamic sauce with it. The drinks were even better than the appetizers. A coconut-lemongrass infused martini was beautifully done and so was a request for a citrusy and fruity cocktail after our meal. The maitre d’ and the bartender were equally nice and accommodating, quite a pleasure from a restaurant that plays dance music in the background.

Chef Didier is known for the short-lived Virot at the Dylan Hotel (later taken over by none other than Britney Spears’s NYLA, also short-lived) but his partnership with Jean-Georges Vongerichten as executive chef at JoJo should be taken more into account. The guy can obviously cook and has a tremendous palate to be able to translate different cuisines on each dish, but at $120 for three small plates and four drinks, I don’t know if people are hurrying to flock the place. I would come back, though, to use that bathroom.

Le Baobab Restaurant

120 West 116th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenue
212/864.4700
$25 for two, without drinks, without tip
♥

Named after the “upside-down tree” native to Madagascar, this Senagalese restaurant is one of the many African restaurants in Harlem serving whole fried fish for less than $12. We ordered one with a bowl of lamb curry and Senegalese couscous. The lamb curry had a nutty taste to it instead of the coconut milk I’m used to and it was made better by the white rice that came with the fish. The couscous had such an overwhelming texture I couldn’t really eat it with a thick sauce so I ate it with the fried fish and the hot salsa they gave us.

We walked in looking forward to eating a simple dinner but we came out with a whole new view of Harlem. A stream of people–women wearing exquisite fabrics, brilliant swatches of cloth knotted in bandanas and men in lose tunics–stopped by to talk, laugh and argue with the other patrons while we ate. We felt like we were in someone’s house in Africa but no one treated us as if we didn’t belong in there.

Nomad

78 Second Avenue at 4th Street
212/253.5410
about $200 for five, with two bottles of wine, without tip
â™¥ â™¥

Three of us drank two bottles of Algerian red wine while waiting for the rest of our group. When the five of us were complete, we shared two lamb shanks that were so tender, the meat just came off the bones when our forks touched it. Two order of crab cakes were the least African on the menu, yet they were still tasty. I liked their tagine so much I could have eaten one more serving. The seafood pancake was so-so and the chicken kebab tasted like, well, chicken.

We were seated at the front and the breeze would come in every time someone opened the door. We asked to be moved when the back room freed up, but the manager never returned to accommodate us even though they told us they just needed to clean up in the back. Minus that one slip, the waiters were almost unnoticable which could be a good thing when you’re just enjoying the food and the company you’re with.

Cafe Mogador

101 St. Marks Place between First and Avenue A
212/677-2226
about $80 for two, with two drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

Whenever I’m craving for a lamb dinner but don’t necessarily want Indian food, I go to Cafe Mogador. Their tagines are excellent here and my favorite is the lamb with couscous in saffron sauce. The staff is not the friendliest–every time I visit, I always wait outside for at least 30 minutes to be seated even though there are empty tables inside. I’ve learned to bug the waiters, though, and point to an empty table and volunteer my party to be seated right away. I don’t understand how they work, but it’s hard to say no to a comforting tagine.