LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
"Good Day! I am the nephew of Dr. Gen. Col. Robin Mkborumi Bmaka Grrrr, the infamous Bean Factotum and former Royal Food Evaluator of Krakatoa. I am contacting you for your consideration in liberating a Treasure of Delicious, Memorable Good Things To Eat. Have you ever eaten the rare and delicious food of Nigeria? It is very rare and difficult to find, but I am prepared to part with 20 percent of the proceeds to be gained from your help and assistance in liberating this great African cuisine for the people of Louisville."
Wait! Don't touch that DELETE key! This is no scam.
Sadly, if you say "Nigeria," many people will think first of ubiquitous email scam letters like this, so many of which emanate from West Africa that Internet geeks call the genre "419 scam" because that's the Nigerian police category for the offense reports.
But that's sort of like judging the entire United States by the crowd at a Nickelback concert, or maybe the early pack of candidates in the Republican presidential primaries: Most of us aren't like that. And Nigeria is a proud African nation with its roots in the Yoruba, a people who boasted substantial arts and culture while most of our European ancestors were living in thatched huts and gumming gruel through the long cold winters of the Dark Ages.
We don't get much opportunity to meet African culture or cuisine in Louisville, although a few outposts like Queen of Sheba (Ethiopian/East African) and Chez Seneba (Senegalese/West African) give it a worthy effort. And now Nigerian-born chef Funmi Aderinokun and her family have brought the bold, bright flavors of Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, back to Bardstown Road for another try.
Funmi's Cafe, you may recall, popped up in the midst of the Bardstown-Baxter nightlife zone a couple of years ago, where it gained a lot of fans for its Nigerian flavors, friendly service and amiable mix of carnivorous and vegan dishes.
Unfortunately, the hard realities of the restaurant business soon intervened, and Funmi's had to close when the monthly lease payment for the tiny but well situated storefront (on the same block as Jack Fry's) jumped from $2,500 to $3,000 a month. Even with a loyal following, it's hard to make the numbers work with a small eatery when you're paying that much for rent. Now she's trying it again in more spacious, lower-budget quarters in the Gardiner Lane shopping center, tucked into a strip-mall box canyon behind Rocky's and Buckhead Mountain Grill.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/funmi ... -of-africa
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/funmi%E2%80 ... ors-africa
Funmi's Cafe
3028 Bardstown Road
454-5009
http://funmiscafe.com
Rating: 88