African Food
Nov. 20th, 2006 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebIn Disney World, the most expensive place we ate was Boma, an African restaurant with a buffet. The restaurant was not actually in one of the parks but in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, a hotel near the Animal Kingdom park. One of the employees was very proud that this is one of only two African restaurants in all of Florida, the other being in Miami.
One could argue that an African restaurant is just as ridiculous as a European restaurant or an Asian restaurant, as I expect there is a wide variety of cuisines. But we tried it. All I know about African food is what I remember reading about in Chikuru's journal, which isn't much. Large loaves of bread, which you can buy pieces of. Meat on sticks, perhaps? And pizza in season.
I didn't see any of those particular foods there. Inauthentically, we each had our own set of silverware, and there were also utensils at the serving dishes.
I made myself remember the name of one dish I had never had: fufu. It looked like mashed sweet potatoes with bits of something light-colored in it, which I guessed were regular potato. I couldn't taste it, but I'm guessing, based on these references, that it was plantain. Apparently there are all kinds of fufu, just as there are all kinds of bread. The kind I had could not be easily formed into a ball with one's hand, or so I assume. It was the texture of mashed sweet potatoes or regular mashed potatoes.
Everything I tasted seemed familiar. The fufu tasted like mashed sweet potatoes with a lot of cinnamon and/or cloves in them. Yummy. There was also "African fruit salad" which tasted like regular whipped-cream-based fruit salad only with coconut in it along with more traditional fruits like grapes. There were also three kinds of hummus plus falafel and couscous.
There was also a bread that was shaped like thin cornbread (in other words, cooked in a pan and cut into squares) but which was white, dense, crispy on the bottom, and tasty.
And there was a ground meat pie item that reminded me of a dish I've seen in a Greek restaurant. It was sweeter than I expected because it included some kind of fruit, like raisins or dried cranberries.
Not to mention macaroni and cheese, peach crumble, rice pudding, and banana bread pudding.
I don't remember any other specifics, other than that R. found steak, but I do remember coming to the conclusion that several things were sweeter than expected because of the inclusion of fruit.
And that's what I know about African food.
If you would like to know something about African food, instead of almost nothing, I recommend reading this site I found with google. They mention that "groundnut" is the African word for "peanut." It is also the (British) English word. At Disney World I actually got to see a peanut plant at an educational exhibit. And I got to hold back the leaves to show R. the peanuts that the exhibitor had dug up from just under the surface of the soil.
Yes, I am from the city (actually, even worse, the suburb).
One could argue that an African restaurant is just as ridiculous as a European restaurant or an Asian restaurant, as I expect there is a wide variety of cuisines. But we tried it. All I know about African food is what I remember reading about in Chikuru's journal, which isn't much. Large loaves of bread, which you can buy pieces of. Meat on sticks, perhaps? And pizza in season.
I didn't see any of those particular foods there. Inauthentically, we each had our own set of silverware, and there were also utensils at the serving dishes.
I made myself remember the name of one dish I had never had: fufu. It looked like mashed sweet potatoes with bits of something light-colored in it, which I guessed were regular potato. I couldn't taste it, but I'm guessing, based on these references, that it was plantain. Apparently there are all kinds of fufu, just as there are all kinds of bread. The kind I had could not be easily formed into a ball with one's hand, or so I assume. It was the texture of mashed sweet potatoes or regular mashed potatoes.
Everything I tasted seemed familiar. The fufu tasted like mashed sweet potatoes with a lot of cinnamon and/or cloves in them. Yummy. There was also "African fruit salad" which tasted like regular whipped-cream-based fruit salad only with coconut in it along with more traditional fruits like grapes. There were also three kinds of hummus plus falafel and couscous.
There was also a bread that was shaped like thin cornbread (in other words, cooked in a pan and cut into squares) but which was white, dense, crispy on the bottom, and tasty.
And there was a ground meat pie item that reminded me of a dish I've seen in a Greek restaurant. It was sweeter than I expected because it included some kind of fruit, like raisins or dried cranberries.
Not to mention macaroni and cheese, peach crumble, rice pudding, and banana bread pudding.
I don't remember any other specifics, other than that R. found steak, but I do remember coming to the conclusion that several things were sweeter than expected because of the inclusion of fruit.
And that's what I know about African food.
If you would like to know something about African food, instead of almost nothing, I recommend reading this site I found with google. They mention that "groundnut" is the African word for "peanut." It is also the (British) English word. At Disney World I actually got to see a peanut plant at an educational exhibit. And I got to hold back the leaves to show R. the peanuts that the exhibitor had dug up from just under the surface of the soil.
Yes, I am from the city (actually, even worse, the suburb).