Suya Joint
Dan Andelman: “We are inside one of the most colorful and flavorful restaurants in all of Greater Boston. The place is called Suya Joint. It's in Roxbury. And I'm sure you probably go out for Chinese food, maybe Indian food, but have you ever tasted Nigerian food? If your answer is no, then you have to come here and meet my friend Cecelia Lizotte, because she is serving up some of the most delicious food in Greater Boston.”
Cecelia Lizotte – Owner, Suya Joint: “Suya Joint is a West African restaurant primarily from Nigeria. Nigerian cuisine is extremely healthy and very, very flavorful. There's a lot of habanero in it, so if you like spice, heat, this is the place to come. This restaurant, it is comfort food. It's a home away from home. The goal, part of it also is for us to educate you about the food. So if there's an item on our menu that you're not too familiar with, we make it a point to just bring you a sample of it so that you can have a taste of it before you purchase. The culture in Africa, it is very vibrant, that's what we're trying to achieve over here. When you come over here, you should be able to leave with some kind of a memory.”
Dan: “The most popular dish at Suya Joint is the jollof rice. Now that is like Nigeria's number one national rice dish cooked in one pot. It's slow cooked with some tomatoes, some onions, some spices. China has fried rice, India has basmati rice, in West Africa they have the jollof rice.”
Cecelia: “The recipe that we have at Suya Joint, it's like roasted red peppers, onions, curry, thyme, and then it's all cooked together. The broth is all simmered and it's served with your choice of chicken, fish, beef, or goat, and then a side of plantain.”
Dan: “Has this great vibrant reddish, orange kind of color. Oh the flavor is spot on. Hint of spice, a little nuttiness. It is so good.”
Cecelia: “It's an unforgettable experience. It's like a burst of flavor, right? It's like, oh, wow, okay, where has this food been all my life. So that's what we hope that you experience if you take a spoon of jollof rice, because that's how I feel so.”
Dan: “Every culture has their dumpling. There are empanadas. There are kinishes, there are gyoza. Here at Suya Joint, they have meat pies.”
Cecelia: “The meat pies are stuffed with like ground beef, carrots, potatoes, thyme, curry, and then some other African spices. And it's all folded and it's baked in the oven. And it's amazing. The meat pie comes with the side of stew, that we call the mother sauce. So there's a lot of people that like to dip, they like it saucy, so we give them the stew to use it.”
Cecelia: “The Suya Wings is our take on the buffalo wings. I do love buffalo wings too. But then over here at Suya Joint, we created our own version it has onions in it, sauteed red peppers, lots and lots of habanero pepper in it.”
Dan: “I've had a lot of buffalo wings in my day, but I've never had a Nigerian style wing or the Suya Wings as they're called here. Great smell. You got peppers. You got onions. They're fried. Smothered in sauce.”
Cecelia: “The flavor profile in the Suya Wings, a lot of people can't even describe it. The flavor just like it takes you to the next level. It's like okay, I've never had something like this.”
Dan: “No reason to go to Buffalo, when you can have spicy African style wings with peppers and onions? Now we're talking!”
Cecelia: “Goat pepper soup, basically, it's a brothy dish, just almost like the chicken noodle soup. It has a lot of meat in it, but then the broth is where all the flavor is. And some of the ingredients we have this particular African type of nutmeg. You can't even find it over here, so I do travel to Africa to go get it. And it has that, habanero pepper as well in it, and then what we call scented leaf, just also like give it a flavor.”
Dan: “Now this is the number one Nigerian comfort food, it comes out of the kitchen piping hot. You can smell it from across the restaurant. You can smell it from outside. Apparently it is very spicy but very soul satisfying. So I'm going to try it and I like spicy food. But she keeps warning me.”
Cecelia: “So there are some people that are it's a little too spicy for them and then we just cut it down for them. Also, we do give you like a small side of the pepper. So you could just add it based on your own spice level, whatever you can take. But it's one of those dish that the more you sweat, the better off that thing is.”
Dan: “Now a lot of traditional Nigerian cuisine comes as soups or stews. So this is really a key to Nigerian food, which is Fufu. This is the Fufu. Hello Fufu.”
Cecelia: “So Fufu it's a doughy type of consistency, and it's made from different type of grains. You can make it with rice, pounded yam, cassava and you just get like a boiling pot of water. You stir in the flour and then you just turn it until you get like a smooth consistency.”
Dan: “So their Fufu recipe has some ground yam and flour and it actually comes out sort of like mashed potatoes. They wrap it in the cellophane. So you're taken out of the wrap. And you're left with this kind of sticky, gluteny it's fun to play with, frankly. This is just like I want to bring my kids here and just have a Fufu party.”
Cecelia: “You could just treat it almost like a pita bread right. So take a little piece of the dough, you dump it into the sauce, and then you put it in your mouth to get the flavor.”
Cecelia: “So if you've never had African food you've been missing like a lot of flavors, like different flavors that we put together. Different levels of adding different ingredients to achieve whatever it is that we put in front of you. So if you've never had African food, I think this is the time just come over here. We're here to educate and then just give you the best experience that you could possibly get. And we hope that you keep coming back and back again and then spread the word.”
