Story and Photography by: Tom Perkins for the Detroit Metro Times
You could be forgiven for not having yet tried — or even heard of — Maty’s African Cuisine. The city’s only Senegalese restaurant opened a month ago on Grand River Avenue just north of McNichols, but most of Detroit’s food writers seem too focused on downtown or Ferndale to notice. And while there’s worry about food deserts in Detroit’s outer neighborhoods, the northwest part of town is home to a growing number of restaurants serving deeply flavorful dishes.
Maty’s in Old Redford is one such spot. Stepping into the plain shop in a strip of Grand River storefronts, one expects a meal that’s something totally new in the city. Owner Amady Gueye took over the restaurant (which was to be called La Galette) from a friend who set it up but never opened the doors, so there’s no recent Senegalese precedence in Detroit. Thus, it’s likely going to take a transplant or someone well-traveled to seek or identify the tastes of yassa, dibi, and Senegal’s other dishes.
“Dishes typically arrive with one of three forms of mustard, vinegar, and pepper marinated onions…”
And yet, for cuisine that — in theory — is so unusual in Detroit, the suite of flavors in Maty’s jumbo portions of meats and fish alludes to something familiar. That’s due in part to some ugly geopolitical forces like colonialism leaving their mark. It’s also partly attributable to the West African nation’s proximity to tastes more common in our city. One can find traces of French, Arabic, and even Vietnamese cuisine in Senegal’s food, but the most obvious connection is to Caribbean dishes. So bites of Gueye’s charred lamb shanks ramped up with zinging, acidic marinades and hot peppery sauces, for example, are reminiscent of some other plates in town, even if it is something new.
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