Edo Kitchen

I’d love to give more than two stars, the restaurant owner and operator Easter Momodu, is a really friendly and fun chap. A meal spent chatting to him about his food and country is worth five stars, but, the restaurant itself and the accessibility of the food brings that down.
The restaurant is fairly threadbare — basic card tables and chairs, there are no menus, just an overhead board at the counter. Food comes served in styrofoam bowls and plates. For drinks, you are limited to the odd soda or water.
The food is West African/​Nigerian, which I expect will be completely new territory for most people. Several of the dishes are soup based. Hunks of meat served up in a thick soup — with a side of fufu. Fufu serves as both starch and implement, and is a soft, elasticy, neutral almost sweet substance made from pounded white yam. Its a completely new experience, and can be tricky with some of the dishes — ogbono soup with goat meat for example. Egusi soup thickened with melon seed and beef chunks is better.
The most accessible menu item is the fish, with fried rice and plantain. Ask Easter to cook you up a whole Tilapia. He smokes and roasts it in house with a blend of spices. Its pretty much the whole fish, bones and all, just the head lopped off. Its easily enough for three to share, and is fantastic served over the rice, with a sweet sauce and sweet plantains.

West African cuisine tastes as West African cuisine tastes… and if you don’t like it, you better acquire the taste or go eat somewhere else. (Might I recommend Oh, Falafel! just down the street?)
But what is it and what does it taste like?
Hidden in the back of a strip mall just off of 2100 South, Edo Kitchen looks and feels like something right off the streets of Nigeria or Ghana. The tables are of the wobbly, folding type, covered with an inexpensive white plastic. The walls are painted in yellows, reds and greens. The lighting is low, mostly for lack of lights, and comes from natural lighting through the smallish windows. The proprietor is a round, smiling character who is eager to please.
Looking around at the «restaurant on the cheap,» I couldn’t help but feel like I was in an African country.
The food: definitely a departure from what I am used to. I ordered the Egusi Soup with Fufu, which the proprietor called yam. It was served in the styrofoam bowls that you can pick up at any grocery store, and not the expensive type. It was a slightly spicy soup with spinach and some kind of meat described as having shrimp and beef. I liked the flavor. I didn’t like the meat. Also, it was very oily.
The fufu? Starch city. It was giant blob of white starch. Designed to be dipped in the soup, I tried it. A few times. But I couldn’t get past my western predilections that I was dipping dough into the soup (piping hot dough, at that). I had a hard time enjoying it.
Do you like West African cuisine? Then I think you’ll enjoy this. My lunch partner, who has had it before from other West Africans, says it is authentic.
Looking for a more conventional (and safe) meal? Then pick something a little less «ethnic.» This isn’t the place for you.