A monday for new things.

So many beautiful foods tick by without time to write. Today is that auspicious overlap of the venn circles for "Time to write a blog post" and "I ate something novel yesterday that I haven't written about yet."

This novel thing was not breakfast, however, which was the tried and true bacon egg and cheese on a croissant from a cart vendor. This one was from the cart on the north west corner of 62nd street and Broadway. Unlike a lot of carts which opt for the Muslim-friendly turkey bacon, these guys use real pig, and for that, they will eternally have my $3.50 for cart breakfast in the neighborhood.

Lunch was also typical of these posts, in that it was free. This wave of institutional windfall was catered by Dallas BBQ. I had a chicken breast with a wing still attached, a spinach salad with raisins, walnuts and a creamy mustard dressing, some corn bread and a giant pair of beef ribs that had everyone going through the line making Flintstones jokes. It wasn't BBQ to break your heart, but it sure filled me up. It almost shut down my desire to even think about food for the rest of the day, save for a spare chocolate covered pretzel or two.

I was so full of cornbread and char that I was debating skipping dinner, but the girl friend wanted to get out a bit, so we finally ate at Madiba, a South African joint near her apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. I've had African food before, but mostly Ethiopian, so I wasn't really sure if I knew what to expect. I tend to expect African food to consist mainly of curries, to be very bold without as much heat as Indian food, and to be very comforting and satisfying. While I realize the absurdity of lumping African food together, much like generalizing American cuisine is a misleading attempt to draw homogenous characteristics from a vast wealth of disparate regional cuisines, I found that in this case my assumptions were graciously upheld.

In the mood for a broad culinary adventure, we split an entree and several of their sides. Heading the spread was their Durban Bunny Chow, curry served in the hollowed-out end of a loaf of bread with a selection of three sambals, similar to Indian chutneys. We had the mutton curry, which reminded me of the curry in Japanese karepan, except that this meat was not mysterious balls of indescriminate spongy parts, but rather sizable chunks of stewed mutton. There was a very prominent note of corriander and another curry spice I cannot place by name outside of the similarity to karepan. The sambals, banana and coconut, cucumber mint and yogurt, and a mango chutney went from feverently addictive to satisfying to inedible in turn.
The banana and shredded coconut soaked in coconut milk was fantastic. We actually asked for seconds as the first dish went in the first five minutes of eating as we destroyed two amagwinya, a deep-fried flatbread that I would recommend as a "must-order" for anyone dining here, especially if you can get them to bring you some of the banana coconut sambal on the side. The mango chutney had that edge of basement that you find with some canned foods that makes me think that the can was not sealed tight enough or the food had just been in the can too long. Fortunately, it was very easy to just throw the cup of sugary basement paste to the side and forget about it.
There was plenty enough food. Of the other two sides we ordered, I would definitely recommend the chakalaka, a stewed blend of beans, carrots, tomatoes and onions that was rich, deeply satisfying and surprisingly tangy. Good but not gaga was the uputhu, boiled cornmeal topped with onions stewed in a tomato sauce. I could see this food being a staple of the Zulu diet, as the menu claims, but we had a large portion of the cornmeal, akin to grits or cream of wheat, left naked in the bottom of the bowl after we'd eaten down through the tomato-onion gravy in what I thought were reasonable proportions. Even after using the grits as an excuse to make our way through the second bowl of banana-coconut sambal, we still abandoned more of the unsalted and unseasoned white gloop than the untouched mold-tinged mango jelly. With a little salt in the grits and a higher gravy to cornmeal ratio, the uputhu could be a regular favorite of mine as well.

In terms of general restaurant review, the waitstaff were welcoming and attentive and the food was all very earnestly satisfying and, save for the cornmeal, very robustly flavored without taxing my girlfriend's limits of spiciness. Hopefully they buy a new jar of mango jelly before the next time we go, but we will definitely be back.