Somalia
Busy day today but I managed to get down to Central Avenue to Jamile’s Cuisine International or Jamile’s Cuisine & Grocery Store depending on the sign you choose to believe. Either way it was the designated representative for Somalian cuisine. This is a place you’d never find if you weren’t looking for it. It’s in an older plaza that looks like it might have started life as offices but since to other things like Jamile’s which takes up two suites, one for the restaurant and one for the store but they share a common entrance. You turn between one obvious Mexican restaurant and another that doesn’t have a name that I could see and Jamile’s is on the left.
I was among the first diners of the day and the lady who was my server came over from the connected store. There is nothing fancy about Jamile’s, it’s kind of dim and decked out with a number of 4 seat tables covered with blue and white checked plastic table cloths but it was clean. The menu is very limited with 6 main dishes plus a choice of 5 sides and a couple of other meal options. You don’t have to worry about getting hung up making decisions. When she gave me the menu the lady mentioned they were out of 2 of the 6 main dishes and 2 of the 5 sides further facilitating decision making. She asked if I’d been there before or was familiar with the food and since I hadn’t been and wasn’t she explained a bit about the choices. I opted for the goat meat with rice. As an aside I’ve had more goat since I started this blog than I have in my 50 plus years prior, I kid you not.
With the meal there is an optional free soup that I opted to receive. As you can see in the photo below it is served in a stemmed heavy glass bowl that looks like it would be right at home with a frozen fruit drink in it. This soup however was the opposite of frozen, oh my was that stuff hot. Initially it was just heat hot and when it cooled enough to taste I discovered it brought a little spice to the party as well. It was a pretty much just a meaty broth with an occasional bit of herb spotted but it did have enough salt and spices to add too but not overwhelm the broth’s meaty flavor.
The main course came out just as I was finishing the soup. It was a healthy portion of rice with a good amount of meat and a token salad, my favorite kind. The rice was good by itself and had some herbs mixed in to make it pleasant tasting and there were a small number of raisins scattered at the edges that added a hint of sweetness. The goat was very tender and seasoned well but it was also bony. Not a bad thing necessarily but some of those bones could have been used to shank someone. It did have a good taste though. Now if you will direct you gaze to the center of the plate in the picture you will see a small little container of an innocuous looking green sauce. Another aside, I found this place just this morning when I was checking the hours of the place I originally intended to go and I checked them out on Yelp to make sure they didn’t specialize in ptomaine and one of the reviewers gave one of my new favorite descriptions on Yelp ever. This sauce was described as “hotter than the devil’s daughter”. Being prepared I didn’t just start lapping in up and dipped a small goat chunk in to get a feel for the heat. My conclusion is that while it was no joke in the spicy department I think the devil’s daughter is likely hotter.
Once I got that salad out of the way and settled in to a rice, goat, sauce rhythm the meal was quite enjoyable. As with a lot of the places I’ve been to since starting this blog the patrons were mostly from the same area as the food represented by the restaurant. Verdict for Jamile’s is that it was an enjoyable meal that felt authentically Somali. I couldn’t find a web site or Facebook page for them so just Google them to find more info. As always stop by the Tell Me More page for some additional content on Somalia.
