Into Africa

Wazobia serves a kind of nourishing, richly seasoned fast food for the slow-food eater.

by Elisa Ludwig

Imagine the heartiest meal you've ever had — then imagine it brought to your table and devoured within minutes. Wazobia, a white-tiled Nigerian eatery a few blocks north of Spring Garden Street, serves a kind of nourishing, richly seasoned fast food for the slow-food eater, catering mainly to a working crowd of West African immigrants coming in on lunch hour to pick up called-in orders.

Inside Wazobia is a stripped-down, beyond-casual affair, with toothpicks and paper towels on each of the handful of tables. At the back of the room is the kitchen, which is walled off by Plexiglas — it's through this window that you make your requests. You can help yourself to beverages from the refrigerator stocked full of American soft drinks, plus bottles of ginger beer and Goya malt sodas. A large bottle of Maggi Seasoning, a soylike sauce made from vegetable protein extract, is on hand, as are shakers of spices, but the steaming, fiery dishes hardly need much more flavor.

Wazobia's menu is small, beginning with a selection of starches like amala (yam processed into a doughy ball), banku (fermented maize), eba (cassava flour) and iyan (or fufu, mashed yam or plantain). All of these come wrapped in foil alongside stews of beef, goat, turkey, chicken or fish. The doughy balls are meant to be pinched into pieces, rolled into smaller balls and dipped to absorb the sauce and deliver bits of meat to your mouth in place of cutlery. (Right hand only!)

The second half of the menu is devoted to stews delivered with plain white rice and woody-flavored, pinkish black-eyed peas. (With a bit of advance notice, you can also order moi-moi, a pudding of black-eyed peas with corned beef.) Another accompaniment is dodo, or plantains, which are cut into fat cross sections and fried until their edges are crisp, sweet and heavy enough to sate an appetite.

But it's the stews themselves that are most fortifying — a dish of improbably large chicken legs lavished with a rich orangey tomato sauce sneaks up on you with the creeping heat of chili pepper. The beef version comes with equally generous but densely chewy hunks of meat. Huge platters of food, all of them — but they go down faster than you might think.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Wazobia 

616 N. 11th St.

215-769-3800

Entrées, $8-$12

Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat., noon-8 p.m.; closed Sunday.

Cash only. Takeout and delivery available.