That's right, Mali. As in:
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/fintastique/fintastique0702/fintastique070200012/735961-map-of-mali-and-malian-flag-illustration.jpg
Mali, West Africa.
The owner, Michael, is super sweet and recognized us even though we hadn't been in over a year. When he saw me he laughed and said, "I remember you! You're the girl who asked about the chickens!"** I just kind of smiled.
Michael brought us all of his favorite dishes including his most famous Yassa dish, which is actually Senegalese. We're not really sure what's in Yassa, something along the lines of onion and lemon, but the dish tastes more like spicy honey mustard. Doesn't stop it being delicious, though!
This is Michael's favorite tilapia with brown rice and an onion bell-pepper salad:
Photo courtesy of Emily
Through dinner Michael came over and talked with us about our summers, his summer, and his big plans for starting a new company. The cool thing about his restaurant that I've always loved is how essential it is to the Malian community in Philadelphia. To be honest, it's not a very big community. But it centers around Le Bercail, as far as we can tell. Michael knew everyone that walked through the door and packed into every available seat. It felt like we had joined some huge family who's house was the restaurant
When we left, Michael smiled and asked us, "When will you come hang out with us again?"
"Soon," we told him, although it might take us as long to be hungry again.
----
*If you need to sing the song every time I write this, I won't judge. If you don't know the song, good for you. It's like Gilligan's Island, can't quite ever get it out of your head.
**This is a reference to an embarrassing moment where he told us that the chickens we just ate were local, so I asked him if he raised his own chickens. Apparently this is a hilarious question to ask a Malian.
No comments:
Post a Comment