There are a lot of secrets in the kitchen at Gorée Cuisine, a new Senegalese restaurant in Kenwood. There are secrets in the soupe khandje, a thick stew of lamb neck, red snapper, and okra that is the most elemental and forthright expression of surf and turf I’ve ever encountered. There’s a secret going in the Senegalese omelets the cafe is planning to serve during breakfast. And there are some very old secrets in the tiebu djeun, a sort of West African paella revered as the national dish of Senegal, which accepts a multitude of interpretations but demands that one firm rule be obeyed:
So Adama, his older sister Fatou, and younger brother Djibi went into business, offering outsourced pastries, coffee, and tea in the morning and, at lunch and dinner, the hearty, deeply flavorful food of their home—food that could have only evolved through the decades upon decades of international colonialism, commerce, and slavery. Africans, Arabs, the French, the Portuguese, and even the Vietnamese have made some contribution to the food of Senegal.
The food at Gorée might seem unfamiliar on paper, but it bridged the Atlantic hundreds of years ago with the arrival of the first African-Americans. Senegalese cuisine is, in essence, soul food—something that’s not so secret after all. v
1126 E. 47th 773-855-8120goreecuisine.com
