Since its debut, Safari has spotlighted the tumultuous richness of Somalia’s culinary roots. Safari’s bisbaas (available for purchase at their online shop) is a longtime family recipe that Birjeeb enhances with her own additions. There was also bisbaas, the lime-hued piquant sauce that silhouettes many Somali dishes. Opening its doors in the spring of 2015, Safari introduced new audiences to its globally influenced cuisine, quickly garnering recognition for its deeply-hued, spice-laden dishes like hilib ari, goat marinated for six hours and placed atop basmati rice beef suqaar, sautéed meat infused with rosemary and mitmita, a Somali spice mixture and the ever-popular sambusas, deep-fried golden triangles housing meat or vegetables. She realized then that there was genuine interest in the cuisine, and after speaking with Farah a decision was made-it was time to take the leap. Beyond that, New Yorkers, she soon learned, had an impression of Somalia that was limited to models in magazines and pirates at sea, predicated largely by the media.ĭespite that, friends in the city were curious about the food of Somalia even in her previous career (she worked in finance, her husband, Farah, in engineering), clients would ask if she knew where they could enjoy Somali food. And though she saw Ethiopian, Senegalese, and other restaurants of the African diaspora in Harlem, none were Somali. The aromas of her mother’s cooking and watching her sister’s hand at the stove flooded her memories when she came to New York. “I’m the one who used to go to the market to buy everything, helping them is how I got introduced at an early age to food.” As one of the youngest in the family, she was often sent to purchase staples that needed replenishing, like cumin or rice. “I’ve always been around women cooking in our home, my mom and older sisters,” says Birjeeb. In Swahili, the word safari means “journey,” an apt name for the origins of both the restaurant and its Somali owners-reflecting their migration to America becoming first-time restaurateurs in NYC and re-introducing the culinary legacy of Somalia on 116th street, an area known today as Le Petit Sénégal. Mid-century, they made their way to Harlem and for decades, ran businesses there (delis, clothing shops, markets), with the majority closing for good by the late 2000s after civil unrest in Somalia led to migration shifts (little has been documented of these early decades though, either written or photographed). “I just came across it, sometimes there is a spiritual connection that leads you.” Photo by Cole Saladino for ThrillistĪs the first African and Islamic immigrants to come to the United States in the early part of the 20th century, Somalis arrived as sailors from British Somaliland. “I was reading the history of the time, and before the war in Somalia, there were Somali seamen who used to come to Harlem-particularly to that area,” says Birjeeb, who was born in the southern port city of Kismaayo and grew up in Sweden (Farah, her husband, hails from Galka’ayo in northern Somalia). It’s a void she and her husband Shakib Farah, who is also the restaurant’s co-owner and chef, aim to fill with Safari-widely regarded as the only Somali restaurant in NYC. While Birjeeb (who goes by Mona) sees more people of Somali descent in today’s Harlem, traces of the neighborhood’s historic ties to her East African homeland have long faded. When Maymuuna Birjeeb opened her Harlem-based restaurant Safari over six years ago, she had little notion it was once the site of a social haven-a lively spot to enjoy a cup of tea or have a smoke-in the 1950s for fellow Somali immigrants in NYC.
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