Yes, I'll eat them in a park! Yes, I'll eat them close to dark!

My wandering gypsy friend Dawn is in town, and Friday we made plans for the evening. After a nice walk outside, we thought we'd try a random little Nigerian restaurant. Why? Well, why not, but also, Dawn is the undisputed Queen of the Happenings Book. And this little hole in the wall place was in the Good Book.

We arrived at around 7:45. It was an hour before the posted closing time, but we had to get takeout since the owner apparently had somewhere else to be. One menu item was Yams with fried egg, tomato, and onion.

Fried egg and yam?

Would I? Could I?
In a car?
Eat them! Eat them!
Here they are.

As a matter of principle as a children's librarian, that's what I ordered. Plus, yams sounded good. And as it turned out, we didn't need to eat them in the car; there was a park complete with picnic benches not far away.

When I opened up the container, I was surprised to find a certain lack of...orange.


I had no idea that large, white, and mostly tasteless was an option for yams, but there they were. So no, Sam-I-am, I do not like Nigerian yams that much, but the rest was good. Apparently the local squirrel population isn't really down with big white yams either. A little beggar was loitering, so I threw him a small chunk. I had never before in my life seen a squirrel forcibly spit out food and run away. I'm serious. I think his bushy little tail was even flicking at me in disgust.




The bottled beverage you see is called Malta India, which our all-too-brief hostess described as "kind of like root beer." Yeah, not so much. If there's such a thing as malted molasses, we have now tasted it. Not horrible, but....hmm. Kind of what I imagine third-world sarsaparilla would taste like.

Our next stop, and really the goal for the evening, was a random little independent film festival, but by the time we got there the watching short films part was over, and a Q&A with the filmmakers just isn't quite as interesting when you have no idea what they're talking about. But on the upside, I did get to meet my favorite boozing robot in the entryway, so the trip wasn't wasted.