Ralph Gardner Jr. goes on a culinary adventure in Harlem
Until last week, I’d never tried Senegalese food, and can’t say I feared I was missing much. But then I enjoyed it twice within seven days. First at Café Boulud on the Upper East Side and then in the section of West Harlem known as “Little Senegal.”
“Thiebou Djeun is the national dish of Senegal,” Cherif Mbodji, my guide in Little Senegal and general manager at Café Boulud, informed me. Mr. Mbodji grew up in Senegal. “It’s served at least once a day. In the morning when you wake up, there’s the smell of Thiebou Djeun. Imagine the entire neighborhood, every home.”
I can happily imagine waking up to the smell of bacon and eggs. Fish I’m not so sure about.
Mr. Mbodji was hoping to whet our appetite when I got together for lunch with him and Aaron Bludorn, Café Boulud’s executive chef, at Pikine, a Senegalese restaurant on West 116th street.
I’d been introduced to the cuisine of Senegal a few days earlier at Café Boulud. The “Le Voyage” section of its menu is featuring the foods of Mr. Mbodji’s homeland through the spring.
ENLARGEUnder normal circumstances I’d probably shy away from that section of the menu, sticking at a French restaurant to staples such as escargot and steak frites.
But this was a special dinner collaboration, suggested by Mr. Mbodji, between Mr. Bludorn and Pierre Thiam, a Senegalese chef and cookbook author.
Daniel Boulud, the well-known chef whose restaurants include Café Boulud, introduced the evening’s talent. “He’s excited when he knows very little and has the potential to learn a lot,” Mr. Bludorn explained. “He’s like a kid in a candy store.”
I wish I could say the same. My idea of exotic food is lobster roll. I believe any dish can be improved with a side of fries. Given a choice, I would prefer my dinner not be served on a bed of anything.
But I was cautiously optimistic about the Thiebou Djeun—a fish stew with cassava, carrots, eggplant, white cabbage and cauliflower, served over brown rice. Dinner at Café Boulud, after all, had been delicious, the Senegalese hors d’oeuvres in particular.
They included “Daxaar,” which are dates stuffed with spiced lamb sausage, and “Akara,” black-eyed-pea fritters.
ENLARGEThe flaky sea bass with onion confit was also lovely. The whole roasted lamb with peanut sauce couldn’t have been less controversial. And pastry chef Ashley Brauze’s coconut rice pudding with roasted mango, as well as salt-caramel ice cream with baobab fruit, tapped the six-year-old in each of us.
As we awaited our Thiebou Djeun at Pikine, the music of Youssou N’Dour, Senegal’s superstar singer played in the background.
Mr. Mbodji recalled playing soccer barefoot as a child and watching his father walk home from work with a “thiof,” as grouper is known in Wolof, Senegal’s language, under each arm.
“They go four, 5 feet long and feed eight people for the month,” Mr. Mbodji explained.
The month?
“My mom will scale the fish, put it in bags and freeze it. Every day my mom will take out a portion of the fish and use it for Thiebou Djeun.”
This led me to wonder whether the stew about to arrive was fresh, frozen or somewhere in between. After lunch we’d retire to Adja Khady, a grocery store and fish market next door, where the freezer featured large chunks of dried fish.
But here came lunch! It certainly looked festive, arrived with limes—which is always a relief because citrus can serve, if necessary, as the culinary equivalent of a topical antiseptic—and small mounds of strange green and brown sauces whose appearance offered no clues as to whether they were mild or spicy enough to send you to the emergency room.
And then there was the fish, which smelled, well, slightly fishy. “If you look at our menu it says branzino,” Mr. Bludorn said, referring to Café Boulud’s nouvelle cuisine-like version of the dish. “And in parentheses it says, ‘Thiebou Djeun.’”
That made me feel marginally more secure. I know branzino. I like branzino. But was this branzino?
Or perhaps red snapper, bluefish or even thiof?
We asked our server, but I’m not sure we ever got an answer.
Fortunately, the Thiebou Djeun turned out to be tasty enough that it caused Mr. Bludorn to dream aloud of visiting Senegal. I’d like to go, too, though as likely for the beaches as the fish.
Write to Ralph Gardner Jr. at ralph.gardner@wsj.com