EXPLORING SOMALI EATERIES
In the last week, I devoted several of my meals to a long overdue culinary fact-finding mission. The subject of my research: Ottawa's Somali restaurants.
But if anything, my samplings of that East African fare generated as many questions for me as conclusions. Below are some of the queries that sprang to mind.
Why was the flavour profile of the beef suqaar from one Somali restaurant thrillingly and surprisingly spicy when another restaurant's beef suqaar, which had its own distinct virtues, was not spicy, although I had been given the choice of ordering it spicy and said yes to that question?
Why is spaghetti on so many Somali menus?
Who made the world's first samosas?
To be honest, my focus on Somali food is meant to address a gaping oversight in my coverage of Ottawa's restaurants over the last nine years. Until this week, I had not visited a Somali restaurant in town. From what I can tell, neither did my predecessor in her 19 years on the beat. At least in 2012, my colleague Bruce Deachman, reviewing in an interim capacity, did consider, and positively so, the now shuttered Somali restaurant Sambuza Village. Still, this column owes Ottawa's Somali restaurants an apology for not thinking of them sooner and more frequently.
The eateries that I visited to pick up my takeout orders were tiny, simple places located in modest neighbourhoods. Arta Restaurant and A'Rey Tea and Coffee Shop are in the same block of McArthur Avenue in Vanier South. Asli Dining is where Sambuza Village used to be, on the ground floor of an apartment building near Ledbury Park. Al Huda Restaurant is two kilometres north of Asli, on Bank Street technically but well offset from the street, hidden in the back of a building behind the Canadian Tire. One location of Safia is in a St. Laurent Boulevard strip mall, while another is the only Somali restaurant in the Ottawa's west end, in a humble Cobden Road strip mall.
But while some of these places are off the beaten track, their best treats from their concise, similar menus were worth the trip.
For example, the beef samosas from Al Huda were exceptional (following a reheating at home in my air fryer), not only because of their savoury fillings but also due to their crisp pastries that made them preferable to many a doughier Indian samosa that I've had. If Wikipedia is correct, samosas originated in neither East Africa nor India, but in the Middle East and Central Asia, from which they spread. That was news to me, and perhaps to you, if all your samosas before this revelation came from Indian
restaurants.
From Al Huda, I also took home delicious and moist chicken drumsticks that had been marinated and slow-roasted and which brought tandoori preparations to mind. On the side was enough angel hair pasta mixed with meat sauce for dinner plus two or three lunches. Pasta, it turns out, figures prominently on Somali menus because from the 1880s to the early 1940s,
Italy had colonized part of present-day Somalia.
The internet also showed me that some Somali pasta dishes include East African spicing in their sauces. But if that was the case with Al Huda's pasta, it didn't really register with me.
From Asli dining, I ordered the beef suqaar, a stir-fry of beef cubes with onions, peppers and more. (Suqaar stir-fries can also be made with diced chicken or lamb.) The meat was robustly spicy, mouth-jangling in a good way, and I ordered it with a flatbread called sabaayad, which some restaurants compare to Indian chapatis or pita. Asli's sabaayad was oily and a little leathery, not as pliant or absorbent as some Indian flatbreads. I also ordered the range of samosas from Asli, but found that they did not top the pastries from Al Huda, even with redemptive reheating.
I also tried the beef suqaar from Arta. “Would you like it spicy?” I was asked. While I said yes, the stir-fried meat, which I had on a baguette rather than with rice or spaghetti or in a wrap, had no chili heat to it. But it was juicy and filling, and closer in appearance to some beef suqaar that Google showed me.
Wanting one more take on beef suqaar to split the difference, I went to Safia in the west end, which was formerly called Shifa. The beef suqaar and the spaghetti that I ordered with it were more neutral in flavour. But the hot sauces provided with my meal kicked everything up several notches. After some reheating, the beef samosas from Safia were good and punchily flavoured, while the lamb broth in a coffee cup was piping hot and restorative — probably my favourite item from Safia.
Finally, there's the food I had from A'Rey in Vanier South, a business whose operator is from Djibouti, just north of Somalia, and who was more comfortable in French than English. I quizzed about her menu, and ordered lamb on rice, although I could have had ground beef or chicken drumsticks, goat, or kingfish on spaghetti. In my filled-to-the brim takeout container were massive slices of bone-in lamb in a salty, onion-y gravy.
If only I could have sampled more widely of these restaurants' menus, but I was down a few dining companions and sometimes the above eateries were out of my first choices. Regardless, my expertise in Somali cooking will be a long time coming. But at least after these initial forays, I can say that I'm a curious fan.