by Zachary D. Lyons | Tablet Newspaper

Sarr has brought a taste of his home country to Seattle, with a simple, unpretentious menu that is quite affordable by Belltown standards. The menu is built around a handful of ingredients: root crops like sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots and yams, a spicy tomato sauce, couscous, and fish, chicken or lamb (which might more likely be goat in Senegal).

The starter menu is short: a soup, an appetizer and a salad. Soup de la Mer is made with a thinned base of the spicy tomato sauce, with onion, potato and carrots, as well as halibut. We liked it well enough. Akra, the lone appetizer, consists of fritters made with black-eyed peas topped with spicy red sauce, and bay shrimp added to it. These were pretty much inhaled by our group. The Salad Afrikando is probably the most familiar item on the menu to those of us of European descent, being more of a French colonial addition, and topped with cashews, it was fine, if not a rare appearance of green.

Debe, grilled small lamb rib chop, is seasoned nicely. Served with couscous and a spicy onion mustard sauce known as yassa, and sided with a green salad, this dish is a winner. Yassa au Poulet pairs the same yassa sauce with a tasty baked half chicken served over rice. Baked chicken, available with no less than four of the ten entrees, is seasoned deep into the meat. Just remember that old slogan, "when in Rome," and feel free to eat it with your fingers.

Mafe (pronounced ma-fay) is a spicy peanut sauce with a variety of root vegetables served over rice - an African classic. It can be ordered with or without the baked chicken. (My advice to vegetarians: be sure to order Akra and a salad with this dish, as when it is sans chicken, the portion is dwarfed in relation to the other entrees.) Another dish that might leave the recipient wondering what they did wrong to receive such a relatively small portion is the Boulette, a traditional Senegalese dish of two fish balls made with untraditional halibut and salmon. It is served in the red sauce with an assortment of roots, over jasmine rice. While small in portion, it is definitely large on flavor - perhaps too large for some American palates - but I enjoyed it.

For dessert, the Thiakry (cha-kry), a thin pudding made with couscous, tropical fruits and raisins in a yogurt, sour cream and vanilla sauce is quite refreshing. And the Tarte a Mango is yummy.
Do try out the beverages, like Zurik, a wonderful yogurt drink, or one of the fresh juices. Bissap is a juice made from hibiscus, and is just plain good. The fresh ginger root juice is by no means as intense as you might think, and is surprisingly refreshing.

Afrikando is a nice find, and a real change of pace, both in Belltown in particular, and in Seattle in general. Treat yourself to some new flavors in a friendly place at very reasonable prices. Just don't show up with the kind of rushed expectations you might bring to the more fast-paced eateries in the neighborhood. You are entering a different cultural zone here. Come prepared to relax for a while.