To Give African Food a Bigger Stage in New

To Give African Food a Bigger Stage in New Orleans, a Chef Reaches Across Restaurant Scene By Ian McNulty

Grill, the MidThat series begins on September 22nd in

City restaurant known for its own exploratory approach of diff erent cooking cultures. Kin,

Willie Mae's

Scotch House, MoPho, Bywater American Bistro,

Turkey & the Wolf

and Mosquito Supper Club are all on deck for the weeks ahead. “African cuisine doesn’t get as much credit as it should, so how can I show people how it connects to other cuisines?” said Mbaye. “Making Chef Serigne Mbaye prepares a dish at his pop-up Dakar NOLA inside the Southern dishes with these Food & Beverage Museum, which showcases the flavors of Senegal photo Ian McNulty diff erent chefs, I think it shows

SERIGNE MBAYE SEES LINKS to the food cuisine is part of so many cuisines and can be of his ancestral home of Senegal all around his related to them.” adopted home of New Orleans, in the gumbo, At 27, Mbaye had already racked up a remarkable the rice dishes, even the beignets. résumé in the highest levels of American cuisine,

The young chef wants to build new connections cooking at Commander’s Palace and the Michelinthrough modern New Orleans cooking, and one starred restaurants L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon avenue is a series of collaborations with local in New York and Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. restaurants. Today, he runs a recurring pop-up called Dakar

how Senegalese conjunction with chef Marcus Jacobs, of Marjie’s see page 34

catch with aromatic caramelized onion and roasted sweet potato; fonio, an ancient millet grain of Africa, soft and earthy, became a salad with tomatoes and cucumber and lemon vinaigrette; akara, the blackeyed pea fritters, fi lled a sandwich heaped with more melting, caramelized onions on crusty ciabatta from Gracious Bakery. By showcasing traditional food in Chef Serigne Mbaye prepares a dish at his pop-up Dakar NOLA inside the Southern new ways, Mbaye Food & Beverage Museum, which showcases the flavors of Senegal file photo hopes he can keep the story of its roots and global reach alive. from page 33 “If that doesn’t happen, I’m worried the culture will die,” he said. NOLA at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum. Mbaye is working to eventually turn A journey, with familiar fl avors Collaborations such as the ones Mbaye is charting Dakar NOLA into a full-service New Orleans now have been cropping up in recent months. restaurant. Addis NOLA, for instance, has been pairing with

He's driven by a mission to see the fl avors of other restaurants to bring its Ethiopian fl avors to Senegal recognized and celebrated in the same way as French or Italian cuisine, both through more people. Jacobs, at Marjie’s Grill, said the idea resonated traditional preparations and the kind of creative with him as restaurant people seek ways to move energy chefs bring with their own interpretations. forward and build new bridges through a vexing

“My idea is to bring classic and modern together point of history.in a way that makes sense for people of diff erent “I think solidarity is always important, and right generations,” said Mbaye. “The dishes I cook are now, we really need each other, from a business traditional to Senegal but based on my technique standpoint and from a personal standpoint,” he and style and what I’ve learned.” said. “There’s COVID, there’s increased awareness

His changing pop-up menus for Dakar NOLA of the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s the show the cornerstones of Senegalese cooking — politics right now. Restaurants and food are a way with its prevalent French, Portuguese and regional can we can come together.”African elements — with nods to the local Creole At Marjie’s Grill, Jacobs combines elements style, itself a tapestry of infl uences. At a recent pop-up, redfi sh yassa paired a deftly cooked local of the American South and southeast Asia, with slow-cooked meats, chile-splashed seafood, lots

Yassa

Akarra Sandwich

of herbs and abundant vegetables. To plan their collaboration, he and Mbaye started where their styles intersect and built from there.

“We found a lot of common ground in our cooking and our ideologies, and when we sat down to talk food, I was really blown away by the knowledge he was laying down,” Jacobs said. Mbaye was born in New York and spent much of his youth in Senegal, where his parents were born and where he developed his love of cooking. Back in the United States, he graduated culinary school and embarked on a restaurant career. That journey led him to New Orleans, where he found a culinary landscape with many touch points to the one he knew back home. There’s pride in local ingredients, especially seafood, one-dish rice dishes for communal eating (like jollof, a dish akin to jambalaya), and the infl uences and even shared food language from a French colonial past. For instance, the main diff erence between the beignets he tried at Cafe du Monde and the beignets he ate as street food snacks in Dakar is the pronunciation of the name (something like “bin-yet” for him, as opposed to the local “ben-yay”). “I couldn’t believe I was all the way here in New Orleans, and I was eating beignets,” Mbaye said.

For more information, see www.dakarnola. com, and look for updates on Mbaye’s Instagram page, @dakarnola. www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_ ded42cb8-f454-11ea-859b-3fbbe4587863.html