The Global Gourmet

Dar Es Salaam is an interesting city. In fact, I can honestly say that Dar is like no place I have ever been. It inhabits a world with one foot in Africa and one foot in the West.

Take food, for example. Today I went into Dar with Liz, a fellow volunteer at the orphanage. We left the orphanage shortly after breakfast and we spent a very busy day running errands and attempting to rectify a problem that Liz was having with the airline on which she had flown to Tanzania. By the time we finished Round 1 of Liz versus @#$%^& Airways, it was 1:00 PM and we were hungry, so we headed for that fine Tanzanian establishment -- Subway.

That's right, the submarine sandwich franchise is in Dar. In fact, it is going strong in Dar, with at least three locations that I have personally seen. There were, of course, a few changes. There was no turkey, for example, and there were some local foods on the menu, but for the most part the foods were the same Western fare that you could get on the corner of Mulock and Davis in Newmarket. Even the wall paper was the franchise-wide New York subway system wall paper.

After indulging in only my second Western-style meal since I arrived, we went on to Rounds 2 and 3 of Liz versus @#$%^& Airways, before a truce was called and the venue for Round 4 was changed to the Airways' ticket department at the Nairobi airport. Although the dala dala ride had been perhaps the least painful experience I have ever had, I really didn't want to face a crowded mini-van full of sweating people and large shopping bags, so I contacted my acquaintance, Samora, and successfully mooched a ride.

Somehow, talk turned to food on the drive home, which in turn turned to vegetarianism and meat, which turned to beef and pork, which turned to goat. At this point, Samora discovered that while I had eaten (and enjoyed) goat, Liz had not. This was clearly a situation which could not be allowed to continue, so Samora took us to a favourite restaurant of his whose speciality was goat.

Now, I have discovered a lot about myself this trip, and I am happy to say that I am a much tougher, less squeamish person than I had previously known myself to be. This was just as well. The goat meat itself was not the problem. That had been well-cooked and was tasty, especially when dipped in the pili pili sauce. The challenge was the soup that preceded the roasted goat.

The soup was also made of goat meat. Actually, to be technically correct, I think I should have said, "The soup was made of goat by-products" because the meat in the soup was goat tripe and intestines, or at least that is what it looked like to me. Samora dug into his soup, so I gave it a shot. I salted the soup, something I seldom do, ladled a big spoonful of pili pili (hot pepper) sauce into the bowl, and squeezed a quarter lime into the broth. Then I added the hot yellow-green chili peppers that I later found out were called "goat peppers" in Tanzania because people usually eat them with goat meat. Having dressed the soup the way Samora had, I took a bite of the tripe, chewed, and swallowed.

It was not too bad. In fact, it was rather good. I cannot really say the same for the intestines, although the issue there was not a bad taste but rather a lack of taste. Eating the boiled intestines was rather like chewing tasteless, rubbery noodles, so I was glad for the lime, pili pili, and goat peppers. Anyhow, I finished the soup and even considered having some of Liz's. (Despite the fact that she is a southern girl and an heir to a cooking tradition that includes chitlins, she was not terribly interested in eating the soup.) In the end, I opted to stick with the single serving and glad I was of that decision when the plate of roasted goat arrived.

There was one interesting similarity between the two dining experiences, though. In both cases, I accompanied the meal with a Coca Cola. Once again, I fell under the sway of that most imperialistic of sodas.