New in South Louisville: Bela's Cafe

I hadn't been down Fourth Street in a while, but I noticed this week that the gym at 4th and Heywood has been chopped up into a bunch of commercial spaces, up near the front (on the 4th street side) is an institution called "Bela's Cafe", which seems to have Somali food and coffee. It's cafeteria-style, with fried food under heat lamps, but the prices are terrific and there's definitely stuff there which is enjoyable and different. This afternoon I had a blend of the familiar (sambusas, which are kind of the same as the food of similar name known throughout northern Africa and southern Asia), and nafaqo, which was a hard-boiled egg with a potato crust and ground beef. It was near the end of the tray, so I don't think I was getting them at the peak of freshness, but they were quite tasty, spiced but not overaggressively so. A cappuccino rounded out the meal -- it wasn't exceptional but it was a nice addition. It was quite reasonably priced at $4.50 ($1 for the sambusa, $1.50 for a meat nafaqo, and $2 for a cappuccino).

The atmosphere is friendly and convivial; it's a small and lively place, and both the proprietors and regulars are welcoming. It seems to serve mostly the local Muslim community (with a fair bit of walk-in take-out sambusa business), but I didn't feel too much like an outsider.

The mall's thus far pretty unoccupied, although there's a sit-down restaurant at the opposite corner that I don't know much about.

[Robin Garr]

Whoa, great catch! Thanks, Jake!

I assume you're talking about the gym at ... Holy Name? The big yellow church with the tower you can see from Churchill Downs, across Heywood from Santa Fe Cafe?

I tried the sit down restaurant in the back. You need to be careful, we ordered lamb with veggies and as the waiter set the food down, he asked us to make sure, "lamb is the same thing as baby goat, right?" It was the first time I have ever had goat for lunch!

It was the first time I have ever had goat for lunch!

Heh. I kind of like goat, and it's actually as I understand it a pretty common meat in Africa, so that wouldn't bug me, but, yeah, if you want to know what you're getting I can see how that would be a problem (OTOH, the most likely meat-specific dietary restrictions are actually pretty well covered: I think both of the eateries are halal, which means they're also close enough to kosher for anyone who doesn't demand strict-orthodox shechita). For my part, I ended up a bit caught off-guard by the description of nafaqo: I heard that it was egg and meat, and I was kind of expecting a patty made up of a sort of miniature omelet with meat, and was actually kind of surprised to realize that when they said "egg" they meant a whole hardboiled egg.

Adventures in eateries which cater to a specific culture you don't belong to always carry the risk of misidentified food, I guess, particularly if there's also a language barrier. (My story on this subject involves my first experience with horse sausage, which is, incidentally, the same occasion on which I learned what the Hungarian word lóhus means)

But the important question: was the goat tasty? It's usually tougher than lamb or beef, and thus popular as a stew meat, so there are definitely good preparations (Dakshin does goat too, although I think all their goat dishes are available in lamb-based variations).

The goat meat with veggies & rice was terrible. Dry, overcooked, poorly seasoned, and at $10 a very poor value. Sorry to be so blunt, but I was asked.

Bummer to hear, but thanks for the honesty.