Immy’s African Cuisine is open
For 11 years, festivals kept Immy’s African Cuisine busy all summer and into fall. Enter 2020, and we all know what happened to festivals.
“With the pandemic, everything was closed, so we had to find something new to do,” said Immy Kaggwa, who came to the United States from Uganda 30 years ago. She worked for Time Insurance, later Assurant Health, for 15 years before leaving that job to raise her children. That’s when she began cooking professionally, working at festivals and catering.
This summer, she began serving entrees like her curry chicken with spinach, and snacks such as sambusas — savory pastries filled with meat or chickpeas and other vegetables — at farmers markets in Shorewood, West Bend and Waukesha.
The markets opened new doors and let her reach a new audience, she said.
“They were excited,” she said of the market shoppers; some customers had never had African food before.
But as popular as her stand was at the markets, the brief nature of them didn’t compare to the revenue from festivals — three hours or so at a market, vs. 13 hours at the Brady Street festival, or three days at Holiday Folk Fair International and four days at Pridefest.
“I never thought about having a kitchen” for selling takeout meals, Kaggwa said. “Until the COVID, that’s when you have to start thinking.”
Now, Immy’s African Cuisine sells lunches and dinners to go at 8103 W. Tower Ave., where Kaggwa operates out of a shared kitchen that houses other businesses, including Mr. Dye’s Pies. Immy’s is in its second week of operation.
That’s been good news to longtime customers from festivals and markets who’ve already sought out her dishes, using curry, garlic and ginger among its seasonings. One customer, Kaggwa said, drove from Cudahy to the kitchen on the northwest side.
Besides appetizers like those sambusa (two for $3, or 12 for $14) and bajia, potato fritters in chickpea flour ($3), the takeout menu has entrees of chicken curry with spinach, spicy smoked jerk chicken with vegetable stew and goat curry. It also has vegetarian stews: chickpeas with black beans, and a stew of lentils, peanuts, spinach and sesame seeds.
Immy’s also sells two kinds of hot sauce, and sides including greens and chapati, the wheat flabread.
The catering menu is more extensive, with items such as jollof rice, fish curry, black-eyed peas and pumpkin stew, and ugali, the east African cornmeal dish.
Prices range from $7 to $10 for entrees and $10 to $13 for combo plates — one of the stews plus rice or couscous, a sambusa and bajia.
A portion of sales during Thanksgiving week will go to the nonprofit group Grandmothers Beyond Borders, which supports grandmothers and grandchildren in Uganda affected by AIDS.
Immy’s hours are 11 a.m. 6 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday. Customers can order online the same day or days in advance through the website, immysafricancuisine.com. Pickup is inside the building; the entrance is at the back. Immy’s also takes phone-in orders at (414) 502-9535.