Out of Africa
BLACK HISTORY MONTH | Cuisine of the African diaspora woven into the fabric of Chicago's neighborhoods
It's Friday morning, and a group of men have gathered for breakfast and lively conversation at Edna's on the West Side.
The homey restaurant at 3175 W. Madison is filled with regulars. On the tables, small placards advertise Friday's dinner specials: meatloaf, red beans and rice and oxtails.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
Tickie's Belizean Cuisine, 7605 N. Paulina
B&Q Afro Root Cuisine, 4701 N. Kenmore
Tropical Taste, 3330 W. North
La Plena, 2617 W. Division
Habana Libre, 1440 W. Chicago
Edna's, 3175 W. Madison
Armitage Produce, 3334 W. Armitage
Old World Market, 5129 N. Broadway
Moo & Oink, multiple locations
Across town at Tickie's Belizean Cuisine, 7605 N. Paulina, friends chat over plates of chicken with rice and beans, conch fritters and Belizean-style tamales. The Rogers Park restaurant serves a bounty of plantain and yucca-based dishes as well as oxtail with rice and beans.
At Tropical Taste, 3330 W. North in Humboldt Park, meat and fish stews dominate the menu along with plantains, various tubers and rabo encendido, spicy oxtail served with copious amounts of rice and beans.
While the spices and some ingredients might differ at these and other West African, Caribbean, soul food and Latin restaurants across the city, the similarities are undeniable. The common link among all: Africa.
All of these groups make up the African diaspora, a term that most often refers to the ancestors of West Africans brought to the Americas and Caribbean during slavery.
Since the 1960s, West African immigrants have steadily settled in neighborhoods on the North and South sides, opening restaurants and grocery stores that bring a taste of home to their surroundings.
One of the most interesting things about the food of the African diaspora is how closely it connects the people who prepare it, often without them even realizing it.
There are several characteristics that almost all cuisines of the African diaspora share: seasoning techniques; cooking techniques such as stewing and frying; the prevalence of starchy mashes or porridges eaten with stews and soups or on their own; and a preference for offal.
Across cultures, there is heavy use of chilies, okra, dark leafy greens, smoked or salted meats and fish and corn in various forms.
Dishes like stewed oxtails, fried okra and beans with rice (made with various types of beans and flavored with meat or chilies) are common.
Among African, Latin and Caribbean cuisines, ingredients are nearly identical, most likely due to the similarity in climate. Tropical foods such as plantains, cassava, coconuts and palm oil are staples in West African and Afro-Brazilian cooking.
African-American food differs because the cultural mix in the United States includes English rather than Latin influences, Louisiana notwithstanding.
But take a culinary tour of Chicago's slice of the African diaspora, and you'll see what makes these cuisines such close cousins.
Tony Anike, owner of Divine Food Market, 4445 N. Broadway in Uptown, carries everything necessary for a well-stocked West African pantry, including palm oil, fresh yams, cassava, chilies and a meat counter with everything from chicken and lamb to cow skin, goat and smoked and salted fish.
While the market draws mostly Nigerians and Ghanaians, many of the ingredients necessary for Caribbean, Afro-Latin and African-American dishes also can be found at Anike's shop.
When asked if anyone from those groups shops at his store, Anike says with a smile, "Yes, if they have West African boyfriends."
Another standout in the neighborhood is B&Q Afro Root Cuisine, where Queen and Briggs Imarhiagbe prepare flavorful traditional Nigerian dishes like yam porridge, efo -- a Nigerian version of greens made from finely shredded spinach, stewed in a light, chili-infused tomato sauce -- and jollof rice, a piquant, tomato-based rice dish ubiquitous throughout West Africa.
The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil are just a few of the Latin American countries that boast significant Afro-Latin populations. The cuisine of these countries clearly bears the mark of West African foodways.
The preference for offal -- ears, tails, snouts and various organ meats -- is apparent in Brazilian dishes such as feijoada completa.
Stewed oxtails and fried or stewed pigs' tails, feet or snouts eaten with pungent, chili-spiked vinegar sauces make appearances throughout Latin America.
At Tropical Taste, a Dominican restaurant in the heart of Humboldt Park, stewed meat, chicken, oxtails and salt fish (bacalao) share the menu with beans stewed in a rich tomato sauce. The beans can be eaten with mangu, a buttery dish of fried, mashed plantains topped with fried onions.
You'll find similar items on the menu at Puerto Rican restaurants like La Plena on Division Street, also in Humboldt Park.
At Habana Libre, 1440 W. Chicago, oxtails are served Cuban-style with sides of stewed black beans and rice.
All along Howard Street in Rogers Park, Caribbean and African immigrants and African-Americans commingle.
At Tickie's Belizean Cuisine, the brightly painted turquoise walls mimic the cheery warmth of the Caribbean.
Chef Claudia Young, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Hubert, prepares spicy Belizean food from recipes passed down from her grandmother.
Young makes everything on the extensive menu to order, including desserts. You can find rice and beans cooked in coconut milk and oxtail, cow foot soup with tripe and spicy conch and fish fritters.
Belizeans most often order the meat dishes with beans and rice, while others tend toward the tamales, Young says.
The Belizean version of a tamale consists of a whole chicken leg encased in a spicy masa dough and steamed in banana leaves.
Around the corner at Jamaica Jerk, 1631 W. Howard, Stanley and Paulette Waite offer up traditional Jamaican food and dishes they've created themselves, such as delicately spiced spinach and plantains and Salmon Run Down, a dish usually made with mackerel stewed in coconut milk.
Jamaican cooking is a melange of culinary traditions -- English, Asian, Indian, Native American and Spanish -- but it is most heavily indebted to West Africa.
It is the subtle presence of spices in savory foods, particularly allspice and nutmeg, combined with peppery flavors, that gives Jamaican cuisine it uniqueness, Stanley Waite says.
That combination "makes you feel as if you want to eat, and when you do you feel good," Paulette Waite says.
With its unique spicing, use of chilies and dishes like curry goat, brown stew, rice and peas and the omnipresent stewed oxtail, there is no denying the influence.
At Edna's in the Garfield Park neighborhood, cooks prepare traditional African-American dishes using owner Edna Stewart's family recipes.
On the menu are butter beans stewed with smoked pork and served with cornbread, oxtails, fried chicken, blackeyed peas and red beans and rice.
Edna's food is soul food -- and only part of the diverse story that is African-American cuisine.
While the term soul food often conjures up limited notions of fried chicken, chitlins and greens, African-American cuisine is much more dynamic and includes many different kinds of meats, seafood and fresh vegetables.
From the spicy food of the Gulf Coast region to Low Country Carolina cooking to the soul food of the Deep South, all contribute to the diversity of African-American cuisine while incorporating the bright, flavorful, inventive cooking of Africa and its diaspora.
Rachel Finn is a Chicago free-lance writer.