My First Taste of Senegal

Friday night we went to Teranga in the South End, known as Boston's only Senegalese restaurant in the city. Its unassuming facade and small, dimly-lit dining room was nothing out of the ordinary, save for a few African pottery pieces on the tables, but the food was anything but ordinary.


Typical Senegalese appetizers, I learned, are of the fried variety: accara (seasoned and fried black eyed pea batter), fataya (savory pastry stuffed with fish), nems (spring rolls), and croquettes de poisson (pan fried fish cakes.) The fare seems to be predominately lamb and fish, with a number of savory stews - tomato stews fish fish or chicken, or lamb stew with a ground nut sauce - and everything served with jasmine rice. With the rich Muslim heritage in Senegal today it's rare to find pork on the menu, and instead coastal cooking such as fresh grilled fish prevails.

Tasting each the meat and fish (my preference is of course fish over red meat any day, but that's just me) we found the Michoui to be the best dish on the menu, marinated roasted lamb shank served with Moroccan couscous. The meat was cooked to tender, almost buttery soft pieces that fell off the bone, with the deep marrow flavor permeating through the meat and accented by the carmelized onion sauce with a unique flavor unlike any onions I have tasted before, taking on the spices of the marinade. My first taste of Senegalese food was truly delectable.


The national dish the Thiebou Djeun, herb stuffed white fish cooked in tomato stew, was served as is traditional, which is too dry for my taste. The firm swordfish filet had not enough of the aromatic red sauce to dress the otherwise bland-tasting fish, and honestly at first I thought the herbs wrapped around it was skin (though upon discovering the herb's peppery bite that sent a sudden surprise to the tongue, I found it sparked up the tangy sauce.) They served the filet atop stew-soaked broken jasmine rice - really good, begging the question why the sauce could not have soaked into the fish likewise. I would have preferred even more vegetables, as there was only one of each: carrot, cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, pumpkin, and a starchy root I learned to be cassava, a woody shrub native to West Africa and South America, which I tried for the first time and found to be very good and filling.

I paired the meal with a South African Chenin Blanc, which seemed more culturally appropriate than an Italian Pinot Grigio. Though Senegalese cuisine has a strong influence of foreign cooking styles, due to the integration of French and Portuguese colonists' traditional fare into the African dishes, it retains its own distinct flavor. As for Teranga's authenticity to its mother country I am hardly the expert to determine, but I did enjoy the traditional percussive mbalax music (though it did add to the already cumbersome noise level with the closely-packed tables in the small place.) Set away from the "South End strip" of busy Tremont Street, Teranga appears to be a quiet unknown restaurant but come inside and discover it's packed.

To cleanse the palate Teranga has great thirst-quenching juices, such as the Bissap juice - sorrell and hibiscus juice and Bouye juice, which is the fruit from the baobab tree - each respectively mixed with pineapple juice and and flavored with orange flower water and vanilla sugar. The juices were incredibly fresh and sweet, with the perfect hint of vanilla; as if a hibiscus flower bloomed in my mouth (the red sorrell leaves are dark in color; stained my tongue pink) and the Bouye was a creamy white froth, silky smooth and refreshing. The juices washed down the hearty meal serving as a liquid dessert, and bringing a feeling of the tropical breeze of West Africa to Boston.

3.5/5 stars.

Metropolis Cafe: South End Chic

Metropolis Cafe in Boston's historic South End first caught my eye when I noticed its Parisian cafe style facade, but the food was not exactly that of the City of Light. Still, with an intimate setting - Metropolis can accomodate less than a few dozen diners at a time - the cafe is a good pick for a romantic date. Strolling down fashionable Tremont Street, one can pretend it's a trip to Paris ... Metropolis Cafe's servers were certainly as snooty as the French stereotype. And the wine list offers a nice selection.

One of the Aquitaine Group's restaurants, which include its namesake Aquitaine and the Gaslight Brasserie (also in the South End), Metropolis is Executive Chef Seth Woods' first Boston restaurant after his move from Manhattan's world renowned Union Square Cafe. Yet it's clear the cafe is lackluster in comparison to his more recent ventures, as the menu lacks a certain "je ne sais quoi." Offering the standard bistro entrees- chicken, steak, pork chop, fish, it lacked creativity. The gnocchi with duck confit, Vermont brussel sprouts, rosemary jus and parmiggiano reggiano was the highlight of the meal, with a nice hint of herb infused in the dish without overpowering it. The warm beet carpaccio with crumbled feta, toasted walnuts and frisee was poorly executed, however, with the beets overcooked so that they melded to the plate, forming an almost leathery skin. The risotto simmered in "market ingredients" (code for root vegetables in the winter, take into account) and sweet butter had the gluey consistency of so many risotto attempts outside of Italy; to be fair, achieving perfectly-cooked risotto is a difficult feat. The seared sea scallops with lemon fragola, golden corn and sweet pepper salsa was quite tasty, but the meager portion hardly satisfied the appetite or justified the price of a $20 plate. Though a pleasant, mellow atmosphere, the poor execution of the first courses left an unenthused impression. The chic decor may have reeled me in but the food itself left me unimpressed.

A better choice for a nice glass of wine to enjoy the atmosphere, perhaps after an evening at one of the local jazz hot spots as it's open until 11 pm most nights, than for a sit-down meal.

3/5 stars.