We Are All Home in Senegal | Listen

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Chef Cherif Mbodji of Bludorn in Houston travels to his hometown of Dakar to reexperience the meals he grew up on

I remember the first time I had a bowl of gumbo, and I remember taking a bite of it and saying to myself, I know this dish. I grew up eating this dish. It’s the same dish, tastes the same, smells the same, looks the same, but it’s called soupou kandja (okra stew) in our culture. You start to see food and understand how food has traveled across the world to end up here. People always ask me, “Cherif, why don’t you open a Senegalese restaurant?” What I’m passionate about is not Senegalese food, per se. My passion is really rooted in how Senegalese food as we know it today has evolved.

When I first moved to New York and got a job in a restaurant, I remember the vibrancy of people coming in with their families. I grew up in a family of nine, so when my mom would make food, it was always a lot of food—you have cousins, uncles, aunts, and all these people in the house. The house always felt bubbly. I think a restaurant was the closest to that that I could find after I left Senegal. I immediately felt that this was a place where I felt at home, where I felt whole and safe, and I just latched on and never let go.

While we were still in New York, chef Aaron [Bludorn] and I had been talking about a trip to Senegal for a couple of years. One time, as we were eating the dish thieboudienne (jollof rice and fish), he said to me, “I think we should try doing Senegalese food at Café Boulud.” Senegalese food being what I’ve always looked at as “ugly delicious,” I didn’t see how that could fit the Michelin-star plating. But within a few months, we were featuring Senegalese food. It was a big deal—it made the front page of The Wall Street Journal. And that pushed the envelope to really finding ways to travel to Senegal.

Leading up to 2020, we ended up moving to Houston to open Bludorn, and that took all of our focus for about a year and a half. While we were planning the trip, a couple of our friends, the Bennett brothers [NFL alum Marty and Michael Bennett], whose ancestry traces back to Senegal, joined in. It became more than just going to try to the food and understand the culture; it felt like it was taking us back to a point where a lot of things had started.

I put together a simple itinerary. Part of it was just going back to what I call my happy places. When we arrived on day one, my mom welcomed us with a spread of a few of my favorite dishes: nambe, a flavorful bean stew; lamb yassa over vermicelli; and tiere, a traditional millet couscous. We all huddled around big plates and ate together using our hands. As we ate, it occurred to me to ask them all, “What does home mean to you?” It was a question that I had given years of thought to. Living in the US now with my wife and children, who were born here, it took me a long time to realize that Senegal is no longer my home, per se—but rather, home is an idea. It’s a place that’s in your heart. We had this really awesome conversation that answered the question for all of us: We were all at home. Aaron was at home in Senegal. Marty and Michael were at home in Senegal. I was at home in Senegal, as much as I am at home in the US.

The next day we went to Gorée Island, where slaves were usually kept before being shipped to America. So those were very intense moments for everybody.

Several times, we went to eat at random places in the street. One night we walked by this shack of fresh fish right there by the ocean. The woman who owned it told us a story about a white man from America who visited with a journalist, and I realized she was talking about Anthony Bourdain. [She appears in the Senegal episode of Parts Unknown.] She cooked us some fish and served them with a bit of white rice and sauce, and we all sat at a makeshift table by the beach, using our phones as flashlights so we could see the food we were eating. It was one of the best meals we had there.

We had dibi on the final night. Dibi is probably the most famous Senegalese street food. If you think about barbecue in America, that’s what it is for us. The lamb is hung for 48 hours in a natural dry-aging process. Then they season the meat with onion and mustard, wrap parchment paper around it as it’s grilled, and leave it by the fire to let it simmer. The meat just falls off the bone, while everyone hangs out and drinks and has fun.

The whole process becomes a social experience. When you order food and sit and wait, you’re talking to people you don’t know, and after the meal, you have tea together. That’s the strongest part of the food culture in Africa, and in Senegal.

By the time we were flying back to the US, the bond we had, the four of us, had become something a lot bigger. We were all just hanging out as friends, but we came back together as brothers.