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Don't play with the fufu

by Emily Hall


Wazobia West African Cuisine
170 S Washington St, 624-9154

Tues-Thurs 11 am-10 pm, Fri 11 am - 2 am, Sat 2 pm-4 am, Sun 4-10 pm.


It's not very often that you order something and have no idea how it will taste. The other night at Wazobia, sitting with a friend among an army of African masks, I was wondering if I was going to like egusi melon seeds. I had a vague notion about fufu--I thought it might be like the starchy foo-foo balls at the great and long-gone Caribbean restaurant Islabelle's--but I wasn't sure.

Sometimes the payoff for such uncertainties is a pleasure as intense as it is unfamiliar. As it turns out, fufu is like a heap of mashed potatoes, although eerily smooth and slightly more rubbery (a word that, like "gluey," although accurate, does not do fufu justice). When it arrives on the table, it's hard not to play with it. What you're meant to do is to take a bit of fufu, make a ball of it in your fingers, and then scoop up some egusi and okra soup served over chicken ($15, also available with fish or goat). The fufu has a mellow, starchy flavor, and the stew is spicy, filled with greens and little seeds that pop in your mouth (they could be the elusive egusi seeds, or they might be from the okra); served over salty, crisp-skinned chicken it is a perfect balance of flavor and texture.

My friend's tilapia ($12), served with something called jollof rice (rice cooked with tomatoes and spices) and plantains, seemed somehow more familiar: a whole fried fish, tender under crackling skin, served with a sauce redolent of chilies, and only the fried plantains, slightly but undeniably sweet, adding an unusual dimension.

What I didn't try, but will certainly be back for, is the traditional Nigerian pepper soup. It is, the menu informs us, "consumed in great quantities by beer and palm wine drinkers." I would like to eat what palm wine drinkers eat.

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