It’s been a while since I let you know about some of the recent additions to the Recommendation List, so here’s a quick look at what my cabbies have been plugging recently.

• Algerian – Icosium Kafe - 5200 N Clark St – Andersonville
• Kyrgyz – Jibek Jolu - 5047 N Lincoln Ave – Lincoln Square
• Mexican – Mi Tierra - 2528 S Kedzie Ave – Little Village
• Indian – Pista House - 2501 W Devon – West Rogers Park
• Nepalese – Himalayan Restaurant - 8265 W Golf Rd – Niles

Out of these, I’m definitely most excited to try Jibek Jolu. I’ve never experienced Kyrgyz cuisine, and this spot is apparently pretty popular with natives and outsiders alike.

Beyond the new recommendations, I wanted to share this snapshot from my recent meal at one of the most highly praised Pakistani restaurants on Devon – Khan BBQ. That handsome gentleman I’m sitting with is Chicago’s most famous taxi driver, Rashid Temuri (better known to his 4,000 Twitter followers as @ChicagoCabbie). While my good friend Samantha was in town for a visit this weekend, I took advantage of her superior cinematography and directorial skills to film Chicago Cab Fare’s first video review, with Rashid serving as a special guest. Be on the lookout for that in the coming weeks.

Nigerian – Vee Vee African Restaurant – 6232 N Broadway Street – Edgewater

Ever been to a busy restaurant where the excellent service made you feel like you were the only table in the place? It’s great. What is less great is walking into a completely empty restaurant and feeling like the staff still can’t give you the time of day.

My date and I entered Vee Vee’s African Restaurant on a Saturday evening to find the dining room completely empty, except for one gentleman, who may or may not have been an employee, bringing in several cases of beer and setting up half the restaurant for what we gathered to be a dance party. He motioned that we could sit anywhere, so we grabbed a table, pulled up two of the restaurant’s impressive collection of completely mismatched chairs, and waited for a server. It’s worth noting that this guy didn’t actually make an effort to alert anyone that they had customers, but I’ve got to respect his commitment to preparing for the evening’s festivities.

Remember in college when your professor was running late and you started having debates with your classmates about how long you had to wait before it was OK to leave? That’s kind of how we felt after 10 minutes of being ignored at Vee Vee’s. We were a few minutes into Googling alternative dinner options in the neighborhood when, finally, a woman who I have to assume was Vee Vee herself approached.

Vee Vee’s menu is much more user friendly than many of the other authentic West African restaurants in the city. Rather than just a few random pictures, Vee Vee’s menu has full descriptions and prices (which is more rare than you would think). After talking it over with our hostess and debating some of the more interesting offerings like the Goat Head, Stewed Snails, or Nkwobi (cow foot), we opted for a bit more conventional approach, choosing the Yam Porridge with Chicken and Jollof Rice with Goat.

Jollof rice, if you’ve never had it, can be thought of as West Africa’s take on paella or jambalaya. It’s prepared by cooking steamed rice with tomatoes, peppers, onions and spices and topped with a protein (at Vee Vee you can pick goat, chicken, or fish). For an extra $2, we chose to add some delicious fried plantains.

Vee Vee’s rendition of this dish was easily the best I’ve had (not that it has an overwhelming amount of competition, but still). The rice was well cooked, the seasoning was spot on and complimented nicely by the sweetness of the plantains, and the goat was flavorful.

While we’re on the topic of goat, I would like to state for the record that I will no longer be docking points for restaurants serving tough goat meat. After my first attempt at cooking with goat recently, it has become apparent that “tender goat” may be an oxymoron. No matter how much you braise that S.O.B., it refuses to fall apart like beef.

The Yam Porridge with Chicken was also a success. The chicken was nice and tender, but the porridge (pictured above) really isn’t what you’re envisioning at all — it’s not a broth or any sort of stew. It actually had a somewhat similar texture to very thick mashed potatoes and is cooked with tomatoes, onions, and ground crayfish (yes, that was surprising to me, too). Even though the dish wasn’t what I was expecting, it was still pretty damn good. Next time I’m at Vee Vee (and I will be back), I’ll be tempted to order it again.

Overall, while the (lack of) service at Vee Vee’s certainly left something to be desired, the food was worth the hassle. For less than $30 with tip, we ate very well and had a decent amount of leftovers for lunch. If you’re going to make the trip, however, I’d probably recommend doing it on a weeknight, as the “Friday International Club” banner hanging above the cash register leads me to believe that dinner service isn’t exactly a priority on the weekends. On the other hand, maybe a Nigerian dance party is just the change of pace you’re looking for? In that case, check it out, and be sure to let me know what it’s like in the comments.

Pakistani – Tabaq – 1245 N Clybourn St – Near North Side

I’m no stranger to restaurants with dirty floors and mismatched furniture, and I don’t typically dine with people who have even a hint of snobbishness about dining room decor. Despite this, I must really give off the vibe that I have no idea what I’m getting myself into when I take a cab to some of the restaurants on my list.

The ride to my recent meal at Tabaq drove this point home when my Pakistani cabbie disapprovingly looked at my friend and I in the back seat and told me it was no place to take a lady. No offense, my friend, but I don’t think the hole in the wall with a row of taxis parked outside, no website, and 12 mediocre Yelp reviews is somewhere that many people purposefully travel to without knowing what to expect.

Like many cab driver hangouts, Tabaq doesn’t have a menu, and it’s a safe bet that the offerings will be different on the night of your visit than it was for me. Regardless of what they’re serving that evening, the value is tough to dispute. For $20 flat we received two large entrees, a side dish, two enormous pieces of naan, salads and a plate of rice. Our entire four-top table was covered by food.

After discussing the options with the friendly gentleman manning the counter, we decided on two reliable staples of Pakistani cuisine. The Frontier Chicken is a spicy fan favorite at most of the Pakistani restaurants in the city and consists of small bites of chicken marinated in yogurt and spices and cooked with peppers, onions, and cilantro. Tabaq did a nice job with this dish. The seasonings were well balanced, and the heat from the jalapenos wasn’t overwhelming. I would say it’s definitely a step below Sabri Nihari’s rendition, but on par with what I’ve had at other, more casual Pakistani restaurants.

Our lamb curry was satisfactory, but I felt the seasonings in the gravy should have been more pronounced. The cook was heavy handed with the ghee, and its richness muffled the other flavors more than it should. Additionally, the lamb itself was a bit more gristly than I would have liked. Even with these issues, I still spent a good 10 minutes sopping it up with naan after we finished all the meat.

The free side dish we were given (never caught a real name for it) was a savory lentil and spinach offering, which was enjoyable, if not a little too salty.

In total, Tabaq is a solid but unspectacular option if you’re looking for an affordable change of pace on the Near North Side. As an added benefit, the front of the restaurant serves as a small convenient store for the cabbies that frequent it, so if you’re in the market for air fresheners or pre-paid calling cards with your dinner, you’re in luck!

High expectations can be a killer. This is especially true if those expectations have an extended period to marinate in your imagination. Tiffin was first recommended to me several months ago, and since that initial recommendation it has become my drivers’ most frequently recommended Indian restaurant on Devon. Needless to say, I was excited to experience it for myself.

When I arrived at Tiffin, there were three immediate signs of trouble. First, it was 8 p.m. on a Friday evening (high tide in most restaurants), and there were only two other tables seated. Second, none of the other diners looked to be Indian. Lastly, only one of the front of the house staff looked to be Indian either. From my experience, none of these things boded well for our meal. The warning signs acknowledged, we soldiered on.

To start, we opted for some classic samosas, stuffed with spiced potatoes and green peas. I’m not normally one to order samosas, because there’s typically something a little more unique that jumps out at me, but I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Tiffin’s samosas were crispy, golden brown and delicious. The filling was well seasoned and the peas weren’t overly mushy, which is common at mediocre Indian restaurants. Unfortunately for us, the first course was the highlight of the evening.

For our first entree, we picked Tiffin’s take on one of my favorite Indian dishes, Kashmiri Rogan Josh. Unlike most times I’ve had this dish, there was a generous amount of yogurt in the sauce. This diluted the flavor of the masala significantly and eliminated almost all of the heat (I like some kick!). The pieces of lamb in the sauce were tender, but I also felt like they were a little stingy with the protein. Tiffin’s menu states that this is a dish from the north west portion of India. I’m not sure if the versions I’ve had previously were from a different region, but this interpretation left me saying “meh”.

Our second main course was Tiffin’s Special Biryani, which — again — was really anything but. What makes this dish worthy of the “special” moniker on the menu is the presence of three proteins: shrimp, lamb and chicken. Unlike the Rogan Josh, there was plenty of meat in our serving of biryani, but what it was lacking, though, was flavor. The rice and the meat were simply bland. I could taste a hint of saffron in the rice, but if the meat was cooked in curry (as is typical) it somehow lost all its umph before it arrived at our table. For $15 in West Rogers Park, I expect better. Usmania’s biriyani is a few dollars cheaper and blows Tiffin’s completely off the map.

A summary probably isn’t necessary at this point, but let’s just go ahead and confirm that I was entirely underwhelmed by my meal at Tiffin. I was expecting some of the best Indian food in the city, but what I got was on par with Lakeview’s appropriately named Standard India Restaurant. For nearly $50 for two people, there are LOTS of better options for Indian food on Devon and beyond. I don’t see myself returning in the near future.

The most interesting of these is our first Mongolian restaurant (no it’s not a Mongolian BBQ), Bai Cafe. The place isn’t listed on Yelp, and the owner may actually be Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek or Kyrgyz, but I’ll take my driver’s word for it. He also said that there’s another Mongolian restaurant near the corner of Belmont and Sacramento, but he claimed that it doesn’t have a name. I’m afraid he may have just been referring to a friend’s house. Even though Mongolia is more of a Central Asian country than an Eastern European one, I’m going to add it to the Eastern European category, because I’m out of space in the navigation bar. I think that’s probably the closest fit.

Anyhow, check out the new stops listed below and let me know if you’ve already experienced them.

• Mongolian - Bai Cafe - 3406 N Ashland Ave – Lakeview
• Ecuadorian - La Humita - 3466 N Pulaski Rd – Irving Park
• Ecuadorian - La Pena Restaurant - 4212 N Milwaukee Ave – Humboldt Park
• Indian - Naan on Devon - 2305 W Devon Ave – West Rogers Park
• Indian - Viceroy of India - 2520 W Devon Ave – West Rogers Park
• Indian - Sukhadia’s - 2559 W Devon Ave – West Rogers Park
• Somali - Daavat Restaurant - 211 W Walton St – Near North Side
• Nigerian - Iyanze Restaurant - 4623 N Broadway – Uptown

Ethiopian – Ras Dashen Ethiopian Restaurant – 5846 N Broadway St – Edgewater

One of the most common questions I get when people find out that I write this blog is, “What kind of ethnic food is your favorite?” I think most people expect me to say Indian, Thai, or some variety of Middle Eastern cuisine. Pretty much everyone is surprised when I tell them it’s Ethiopian. A main reason that Ethiopian tops my list is because I’m yet to have anything less than a good meal at any of the Ethiopian restaurants I’ve been to. Continuing that trend was my recent trip to Edgewater’s Ras Dashen.

Now, I’ve been to Ras Dashen before, and it is admittedly my least favorite of the Ethiopian restaurants I frequent (although that’s hardly much of a criticism). The minor issues that I’ve had with Ras Dashen in the past remained during this visit. Namely, the service can be almost painfully slow at times. During this meal, we asked our server for another minute to look over the menu when she first approached to take our order, and that was the last we saw of her for more than 20 minutes. If she hadn’t showed up when she did, I likely would’ve written down what we wanted it and delivered it to the kitchen myself.

Another small thing that rubs me the wrong way about Ras Dashen has to do with its sharing policy. At other Ethiopian restaurants (like Demera or Ethiopian Diamond), you have the option to order a dinner and sides for yourself or share a messob platter with the table. At Ras Dashen, your only choice is the communal messob style, whether you want it or not. Everyone picks their own entree, and you choose three sides to split. If you’re on a date or at a big table, this really isn’t much of an issue, but with the strange way our party was seated (two tables of varying height with three people each), the couple who I was sharing my table with and I had to come to a consensus. They wanted to try a few things, I had three different items in mind. Eventually we figured it out, but it seems like a silly rule.

Beyond those quibbles, Ras Dashen’s food is consistently solid. Their spicy berbere sauce is delicious, whether you order it with chicken (doro wat), beef (sega wat) or lamb (yebeg wat - as I did on this night). Despite my waitress’s apparent disbelief that someone who looks like me would willingly choose uncooked beef, I did have to order my favorite Ethiopian dish of all, Kitfo tere. Kitfo is essentially Ethiopian-style steak tartare served with a red pepper seasoning blend (mitmita), spiced butter (kibe), and/or onion, jalapeño, and homemade cottage cheese (as they prepare it at Demera). I thought Ras Dashen did a nice job with the flavors in this dish, and the meat tasted very fresh, but I would have preferred a bit more of a kick.

Of the handful sides we selected between our two tables, I most enjoyed the flavorful cold lentil salad with onions and peppers (misser salata),  yellow split peas cooked with onions, garlic, ginger and green pepper (kik alicha), and pureed lentils in berbere (misser wat).

While I didn’t notice it in time to order it on this visit, during my next trip to Ras Dashen I really need to try the Gored Gored. The menu describes it as tender beef brisket lightly cooked with shallots, spiced butter, garlic, awaze (a marinade of berbere sauce and honey wine) and a splash of cognac, served medium rare. How could that not be delicious?! If you’ve tried it, be sure to let me know what you thought.

One final point to consider with Ras Dashen is that it is easily the most expensive of the Ethiopian restaurants I’ve experienced. My “Meat Combo” resulted in a total bill of nearly $30, without any drinks or dessert. This is significantly higher than the $20-ish per person you can expect to pay at either Ethiopian Diamond or Demera for similar portion sizes and atmosphere (and a little better food). Overall, however, the food IS still good at Ras Dashen, and that’s what matters most. So, if you’re invited to join a group of friends who already have their hearts set on Ras Dashen, don’t fret. Just be sure to bring a snack in case you get the same waitress we had.

Indian – India House Restaurant - 59 W Grand Ave – Near North Side

For most of you reading this site, I know that heading to a new restaurant where you know you’ll be the only one whose first language is English is part of the fun. A little culture shock is a good sign when you’re looking for a culinary adventure. That being said, most of us also probably have plenty of friends or family members who wouldn’t find that same experience so enjoyable. In those situations, when you want to introduce someone to a new type of cuisine without freaking them out before they’re even seated, it’s good to know of a handful of options where the food is authentic, but the atmosphere is decidedly not intimidating. For this purpose, India House is a perfect pick.

I’ve been to India House many times. Before I started Chicago Cab Fare and made a long overdue trip up to Devon, it was my favorite South Asian restaurant in the city. Now that I have seen a little more of what the rest of the city has to offer, it has been dethroned from the top slot, but it’s still in the conversation. Unlike a lot of the places on The List, India House is somewhere you could feel comfortable taking a first date. The atmosphere is dark and romantic. The staff is polite and prompt. It’s just pleasant.

Before you even get started looking at the menu, be sure to dig into the complimentary naan and creamy tomato-butter sauce. I’ll take this over the mediocre bread and oil you get at all but the best American/European restaurants any day of the week. Once you do start perusing the menu, you’ll notice that, like most Indian restaurants, it’s absolutely enormous. It can be kind of overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for. To get you started, some of my favorites are the Lamb Rogan Josh, which is noteworthy for the fantastic spicy tomato and cardamom flavored sauce; Chicken Madras, a South Indian dish with coconut milk; Lamb Ulta Pulta, a house specialty cooked using a kadhai (an iron wok which the India House menu claims improves flavors by releasing its magic qualities); and lastly, any of the biriyani dishes on the final page of the menu dedicated to Hyderabadi specialties.

There haven’t really been many disappointments at India House, but there are a couple items I wouldn’t order again. First of all, the crab curry, which sounds really interesting in theory, but to me the flavors just didn’t mesh together very well. Also, the Dahi Aloo Poori, which is a cold appetizer of chickpeas and potatoes in a yogurt and tamarind sauce, didn’t do much for either my date or I.

The only minor downside to India House is the price, compared to other restaurants with similar menus. You’re paying for the location and an atmosphere that isn’t approached by almost any other Indian restaurant in the city (except maybe Gaylord India Restuarant, but they’ve got bugs in their produce, which kind of negates all the other good things that place has going for it). Entrees will run you anywhere from $14 – $25, and your total bill is likely to settle in between $40-60 for a couple (assuming no drinks). Overall, India House gets my seal of approval.

The past seven months I’ve spent writing this blog, along with my near obsessive compulsion to try any ethnic food I haven’t come across before, have left me feeling like I’ve got a pretty good idea what to expect anytime I walk into a new restaurant. One exception to that rule was my recent trip to Mogadishu Restaurant, a cabbies-only, hole in the wall that occupies the first floor of an isolated walk-up on the Near North Side. It was my first experience with Somali food, a cuisine I’ve heard passing descriptions of, but never even seen written about.

Shortly after walking in to Mogadishu, I realized that this is an establishment designed for patrons who already know what to ask for. There are no waiters, no menus (I asked, they laughed), no prices, and no furniture that looks like it was designed to be paired together. We approached the hot tray-laden counter and asked the gentleman manning the register if he could walk us through the options. After doing my best to interpret the descriptions through his heavy accent, I just told him to give us enough food for the four people in our party; whatever he recommends.

He piled up two takeout boxes (six of the restaurant’s eight seats were occupied) and told us it would be $20. Not bad for four people! After returning home, we opened the boxes and divided the food as best we could. I think my request to give us a bit of everything flustered him, because our portion sizes were more than a little erratic, and the dishes were tossed together in a way that would have made anyone even slightly concerned with presentation cry.

Not being able to distinguish where one dish ended and the next began, it’s difficult to provide a particularly helpful description of the cuisine. There was a bland mixed vegetable dish, and a pretty generic helping of rice, but a dish that combined small bites of chicken with peppers and onion was very well seasoned. The flavor of a heap of cabbage was fine, but again nothing to write home about. One of the more interesting items was the Somali pancake, or injera. This thin pancake meant to be used to scoop your food was more sweet and less spongy than the Ethiopian variety, and received mixed reviews from our group. I wasn’t particularly feeling it, but my date enjoyed it.

For those that haven’t spent much time talking to East African cab drivers, one factor that differentiates Somalia from some of its neighbors is that the country was colonized by Italy for more than 50 years. At the peak of the occupation, there were more than 20,000 Italians living in Somalia. This led to a unique fusion of culinary styles that can still be seen in some dishes today. While we were waiting for our food, I noticed another patron eating a large plate of spaghetti with vegetables, but it didn’t really seem like that was an option for us to order. The next time I visit a Somali restaurant, it’s a goal of mine to see what culinary offspring these two cultures produced.

In total, my trip to Mogadishu Restaurant didn’t completely turn me off to all Somali cuisine, but I don’t think I’ll be making a second trip. I’ve heard better things about Edgewater’s Somali outpost, Banadir, so that’s next on my list.

If you’ve heard of other Somali options in Chicago, or had a significantly different experience than I did, let me know in the comments.

News flash for new restaurants: If you want to build positive word of mouth for your business, don’t sign up for a Groupon deal until you’re sure your kitchen staff can handle the spike in customers. All those extra bodies in your seats won’t do you any good if they don’t plan on coming back and don’t recommend you to their friends.

My recent trip to Bolat was my second, and it was one I hadn’t planned on making until several months into collecting recommendations for this site. My first visit came shortly after it opened and misguidedly signed on for a Groupon in early 2010. On that day, the new operation was clearly still working out the kinks. They ran out of several items on the menu, the food took forever to arrive, and I felt like I’d mistakenly ordered Goodyear with my soup instead of goat.

I was hesitant to return until I was told by several Nigerian cabbies that it was their favorite spot in the city. So, we made the brief walk from my apartment to give Bolat another shot. Thankfully it was a slow weeknight, so we ran into none of the customer volume related issues from our previous visit.

On this evening, our server was very attentive and walked us through several of her favorite dishes on the menu. Bolat features items from all across Africa, so even though it was recommended to me as a Nigerian restaurant we opted to cast a wide net with our selections. We started with the Piri Piri Shrimp, which – as a part of the $25 three-course combo we ordered – came with a measly three shrimp. That being said, the few bites we did have were excellent. The shrimp were seasoned well, with just a bit of smoky heat, and very tender. The rich, creamy avocado sauce that accompanied it was balanced out by a welcome hint of acidity.

Yamashoma, a Kenyan dish, is a flavorful tomato based stew with tender beef, onions and other spices. This was the high point of the meal for both of us. We also thought the cornmeal that it was served with was a welcome addition.

If you’ve been to any West African restaurant, you’re likely familiar with Jollof Rice. The dish consists of rice cooked with tomato paste, onions, peppers and other spices. It’s then topped with either goat or fish (I chose goat), as well as plantains. While the portion of the goat was a bit small and still more tough than I prefer, I did think the unique flavor combination of sweet plantain and meat worked surprisingly well.

Beyond the items covered above, we shared a tasty martini made with sweet palm wine. It’s one of a number of interesting cocktails on Bolat’s drink menu, which also includes a few African beers. Our dessert, the Bissap Sorbet, was light, fruity and refreshing, but didn’t blow me away. Overall, Bolat is an interesting change of pace from the normal Wrigleyville bar fare, and it’s trendy interior decor is a departure from many of the hole-in-the-wall West African restaurants on the North Side. My one qualm with Bolat is that a meal there is significantly more expensive than you’d expect. I know it’s in a higher-rent district than most of the other Nigerian restaurants, but (not counting the $25 Restaurant.com gift certificate we used) our bill came to nearly $75 – which is pretty steep for a West African weeknight dinner. All in all, though, we really enjoyed our meal, and we’re happy to have the added diversity in the neighborhood.