Written by Cassell Ferere

For many Africans moving to and living in the US, food, and culture are major attributes to their way of living. African Restaurant Week in New York City is a food festival held on the streets of New York and the surrounding boroughs bringing that culture to the public. Vendors and restaurants from all over the city gather on avenues to serve their adored African cuisine to curious foodies, as well as enjoying cultural items, art, clothing, music, and people.

This year, the food festival takes place, for the most part, in Brooklyn on Tompkins Avenue and Putnam avenue this weekend. African restaurants from all over Brooklyn and the nearby boroughs will be cooking up African dishes and snacks from all over the continent. 

Food from Ghana, like Wachee and Eba, Nigeria, like Dodo and Egusi, and Cameroon, like Eru and Achu soup will be served by local restaurants in efforts to grow awareness around local small business and especially African-owned restaurants.

Jollof Rice with Plantain and Chicken

One participant in the festival will be AfricanDishout the only app in New York City to deliver specifically African food to your front door. Dishout has been doing this for almost 3 years and has made over 60,000 deliveries. They are helping spread the word about the festival this Saturday and Sunday, October 10 to 11. 

Helping African businesses deliver authentic African cuisine to food lovers around the Big Apple was seemingly a problem at first for founder Jamila Zomah. Zomah uniquely identified a problem in getting food, like Jollof rice which Jamila recommends, as authentic as in her home country of Ghana.

Jamila claims,

“I experienced the challenge of finding an exclusive platform that had a variety of authentic African restaurants to choose from for delivery. The existing food delivery apps that offer a few African restaurants had confusing menus and do not provide a rich variety of African cuisine.”

Restaurant week is an opportunity to explore different parts of African cuisine while getting a taste for what kind of food you like the most. Vegan options are available, and juice bars will also be available for those who can resist the delicious African food that will be brewing on the avenue.

Dishout wants to bring African food to everyone, not just the most populated African community in the U.S. here in New York City. As an underserved group, African people previously had no way to order the many varieties of food to their door. Zomah found this to be an issue socially and economically and works to resolve it each day. 

Jamila is aiming to “grow into other cities of a similar demographic and eventually capture the entire broader population of lovers of diversity and all things African.” 

She continues,

“The goal of our company is not only to solve this problem but to provide a platform that promotes small businesses, particularly our local African restaurants and black-owned businesses. These businesses are truly the flavor of what makes our communities unique and keeping us all connected.”

Ultimately, the AfricanDishout app is an evolving platform that conveniently connects people to the food they love.

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