MEALS ON WHEELS | February 11th 2008

jvree/Flickr     

In search of hidden culinary gems in New York City, Lou Howe tracks down the streets lined with taxi-cabs. Cabbies, with their worldly palettes and local savvy, know the best haunts for fried goat, tandoori quail and a steaming plate of thiebu djeun ...

Diop Mor eats thiebu djeun once a day, and a Big Mac once a year. And really, who can blame him?

The Senegalese native recently explained his simple dietary philosophy to me while deftly weaving his yellow cab through northbound traffic on Sixth Avenue. We were heading up to Little Senegal, a two-block stretch of 116th Street, which Diop assured me is the New York heart of all things West African. I began to worry for my safety as his culinary proselytising grew more passionate, his eyes darting from the road to me in the backseat as he explained the simple tenets of his dietary creed.

According to Diop, Thiebu djeun, the national dish of his native Senegal, is the perfect food. A spice-soaked fish stew, it evokes the pristine beaches and percussive rhythms of his homeland. The Big Mac, on the other hand (arguably the national dish of his adopted homeland--and my own), makes him sleepy--a side effect too dangerous during a 12-hour shift behind the wheel in Manhattan traffic. I made a feeble and entirely unconvincing attempt to defend the benefits of the mass-produced burger, but Diop quickly shot me down. You'll just have to wait and see, he told me. The wait was well worth it.

Within ten minutes of hailing Diop's cab, I was sitting in front of a steaming plate of thiebu djeun in the expansive second-floor dining room of Africa Kiné, Diop's regular haunt in the heart of Little Senegal. The restaurant, on 116th Street just east of Frederick Douglass Boulevard, has been a mainstay in the neighbourhood since 1995, and is one of the first outposts of West African immigrant life on this bustling block. Little English can be overheard on these streets, having been replaced by a mix of French and Wolof (the Senegalese dialect). Storefront speakers blast African beats while the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, flows out over the sidewalk five times a day from the nearby Masjdid al-Aqsa (Holiest Mosque).

I had the excellent luck of arriving for lunch during a heated football match on television, and the restaurant was packed. While the crowd buzzed with the flow of the game, my focus was trained purely on the food: a heaping pile of red snapper; cassava, okra, and carrots bathed in a thin tomato sauce sat next to a mound of broken rice. An underlying heat burned deliciously throughout the meal, accentuated by a single scotch bonnet perched atop the dish.

The flavours of the spice-saturated stew were dense, rich and often surprising. Washed down with homemade ginger juice--made with freshly grated ginger, pineapple juice and vanilla extract--the meal was everything Diop had promised. I couldn't help but imagine those pristine beaches that he longs for daily behind the wheel of his cab.

My meal at Africa Kiné set me off on a gastronomic mission to discover some hidden New York culinary gems. And who better to guide such a search than those who have migrated from distant corners of the globe to ferry passengers through every nook and cranny of this metropolis: taxi drivers. Cabbies know the city better than anyone, and that knowledge, combined with their distinct palettes, honed in cities like Port-au-Prince and Islamabad, give them a unique take on the city's buzzing culinary landscape.

My search bore some delightful discoveries. The stretch of Lexington Avenue between 27th and 29th Streets is lined in taxi-cab yellow, as drivers of South Asian heritage congregate to fuel themselves up on their native cuisines. The small area is occasionally referred to as Curry Hill, a moniker combining the nearby neighbourhood Murray Hill with the area's dominant cuisine, Indian and Pakistani fare. The majority of these establishments serve serviceable, hearty meals, specialising in standards such as tandoori chicken and a varied selection of curries.

Many offer combination-meal deals, notably the bi-level Curry In A Hurry on the corner of 28th Street and Lexington, which handles the standard Indian menu with impressive skill. The wide array of combination meals are served cafeteria-style, and the surroundings leave something to be desired. But the food is skilfully flavoured and arrives, as promised, in a hurry. The neighbourhood star, though, is surely Haandi, just a few doors down on Lexington. The simple hole-in-the-wall café serves surprising Pakistani fare buffet-style, with standouts such as tandoori quail and the best chicken biryani on the block.

While Curry Hill clearly takes the prize for sheer volume of cabbie haunts, Le Soleil, a tiny Haitian restaurant on an unremarkable stretch of Tenth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, wins for authenticity of atmosphere. My high-school French struggled to keep up as an argument broke out, eventually consuming the entire restaurant. "Aristide" seemed to be the most frequently used word, and as the virulence with which it was spouted seemed to escalate, I buried my nose deeper into the simple menu. Translated in both French and English and divided into daily specials, the menu luckily featured the house specialty: tassot griot, or fried goat, which had been repeatedly recommended to me during my informal survey of Haitian cabbies.

The earthy, dry goat arrived with reinforcements of raw onion, fried plantains, a heaping plate of rice and beans and a small bowl of peppery tomato sauce to douse them all down. A spicy pickled-cabbage condiment, set out on every table, topped off the dish with an unexpected flair. With each bite of transcendently spicy goat, I saw the prospect of a Big Mac in my future diminishing at a delightfully rapid pace.

A banana soda, delivered by a waitress who communicated solely with her bright smile, completed the meal. I was converted.  Now if I could only get my hack license...

(Lou Howe is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City.)