The only Toronto resto offering Tanzanian cuisine, the Simba Grill is wonderful. Wonderful, that is, if you don’t mind eating under the watchful eyes of spiritual leader Aga Khan and a safari of life size lions.

Though it’s awkwardly located at 375 Donlands Ave, on a bus that leaves infrequently from Donlands station, it’s worth the trip for vegetarians, teetotalers, spice lovers, Halal diners, and East African food enthusiasts ready for something new.

Sultan Jessani, the Simba Grill’s owner, came to Canada three decades ago and found the new world was hungry for spices from back home. He went into the food supply industry, importing spices and other products from India and Africa. It seemed natural to bring his expertise into a restaurant. “I found no choices for Africans to eat, except Ethiopian restaurants,” he says. “So I introduced my country’s ugali, African style samosas…and my servings are big.” He named his restaurant after another at a five star hotel back home. “Simba” means lion.

Tanzania is a country southeast of Rwanda, bordered by Uganda, Congo, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. The official languages are Swahili and English, and the religions of the nation are Christian, Muslim, and traditional. The country contrasts poverty with paradise. Limited access to clean water and education have meant epidemics in AIDS and malaria, but it is also the home of Paradise Island, or Spice Island: the Zanzibar. This is home to the world’s best clove plantations, a spice for which explorers risked their lives throughout history. Tanzania is also the home of Kilimanjaro, an inactive volcano and the highest peak in Africa.

Jessani is quick to greet me at the door and gallantly ushers me to a chair. But I’m left alone with a menu for a very long time, resorting at long last to the “cough and shift” maneuver that usually brings staff flying when they’ve forgotten about you. I definitely need help deciphering the menu- sekele, mishkaki, pili pili, nylon bhajia, mogo, ugali, cassata.

Jessani graciously recommends a mixed platter, but BBQ chicken wings and “one can of Coke or Pepsi product” doesn’t sound very exotic. I opt instead at random for “mishkaki” and daal curry. Lovers of Indian food may agree that the bright orange lentil mush rivals the best of Indian vegetarian. The beef mishkaki turns out to be cubes of dry spiced beef, on a big bed of rice.

Every meal is served with four condiments- a deep red lemon chile sauce sure to sear the tastebuds from the tongue of lightweights, a tamarind salad dressing for the chopped cabbage, a milky coconut mixture to assuage a scorched palate, and my own favourite, a slow building green chile sauce with a cilantro base.

Next time, for a more authentic experience, I’ll order the ugali to sop up my stew. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, ugali is a starchy staple made from fine cornmeal. It’s a doughy substance eaten by rolling into a ball and dipping into the juicier bits of the meal. The two nice ladies who sat at the adjacent table told me about it after I’d already filled to overflowing. I did help myself to Tanzanian fries that they offered me, made from the cassava root. Many Africans find these go great with ketchup.

For all those new flavours, the lack of atmosphere was something of a deterrent, frankly. Although one table was heaped with African music CDs, there was dead silence to accompany the fluorescent lighting, and nary a drop for a lush like me. I’ll head back to Simba Grill to try the ugali with spinach beef coconut curry, though, and maybe I’ll ask Mr. Jessani to rock the house by spinning some Tanzanian rhythms.

It’s also been recommended by the locals that Sunday’s afternoon brunch is a vegetarian extravaganza where I’ll get to sample a number of menu options, and that I will do, because the food was delicious.

www.simbagrill.ca, 416 429 6057, 375 Donlands Avenue (just southeast of O’Connor Drive).

Author, Artist, Poet Lorette C. Luzajic website is www.thegirlcanwrite.net. Browse her books at Amazon.ca

The Real Dish...

You may have seen her at the last wine tasting- it was hard to miss her. She was the only one in sneakers and jeans, jeans she was busting out of, bangles jangling as she scarfed back corned beef and pickles, toasting everyone who walked by: “Praise the Lord and pass the Chardonnay!”

Yeah, that was me. I confess I’m a little unrefined. I hardly know my pate or canapés from canopies (but I can spell hors d’oeuvres without looking it up.) I speak locavore, but that’s only because I was born and bred in Niagara, and the celebrated vino runs through my veins. I’m not remotely comfortable in restaurants with truffle glace and white linen napkins and and white jazz. Oh, I don’t mind the odd balsamic reduction, don’t get me wrong- but I’m more likely to order jalapeño mayo and eat the yam frites with my fingers. I can’t dine without spilling Dijon on my knock-off Pucci scarf and knocking over the Perrier. And my editor would be shocked to see that most of the essential utensils are missing from my pauper’s kitchen, where I can barely fit the dish rack.

But I’m passionate about food. Like most of my habits, good and bad, I do it to excess. That’s just the kind of girl I am. Over the top, with zany, unapologetic appetites. I’m voracious to learn about food. I write regularly about eating, and I resurrected my body from lifelong illness by learning all I could about nutrition. I’m an enthusiastic advocate of eat to live, live to eat. And I’m fun!

I’ve got seventy spices in my crammed cupboard and create soul food from all over the world. I make food that nourishes the body and proclaims my love for life. And I’ll bet my sole ladle that I’m not the only foodie or reader who feels most at home in dingy hole in the wall diners. And I’ll bet my prize wooden salad bowl that the rest of you would love to try some of Toronto’s ethnic adventures, but just aren’t sure how to get past the unfamiliar menu or customs, or your fear of grime. So, I’ll take you there.

Once in a while I pull out my French cooking school manual, to pay homage to the gourmet universe. But then I thaw out a rack of chicken thighs- forget the boneless, skinless crock we’ve been force-fed- I cook with skin! And I pour on sweet paprika from Croatia, bought at the Eastern European deli on Pape, with salt and yogurt. And I chop up a few red onions and toss them in red wine and the dried up piece of Genoa salami in the far corner of the fridge.

Oh, yes, I can drop six dollars on one bite of truffle hazelnut crème chocolat - generally, I have to, because I’m celiac and avoid soy like the plague, so most cheap chocolate bars are off limits. But I can stretch that six bucks into a spectacular symphony of flavour for two, or spend ten discovering the joys of Kenyan corn bread or raw meat from Ethiopia. In Toronto, there’s a whole underworld of unsung gourmet, diners with menus in Swahili and faded Formica tableaus that translate into mind-bending flavour. Let me show you the real dish.