Showing posts with label wasota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wasota. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Wonderful Wasota

Saturday afternoon, we headed down south to enjoy an outdoor lunch at the Wasota African Cuisine trailer.


I cooled off with a hibiscus iced tea.


The four of us shared two giant plates of food. The servings are so generous, we actually took home leftovers. We ordered the V1 platter which came with akara (bean patties which taste kind of like hush puppies), jollof rice, plantains, and spinach, all liberally covered in spicy tomato sauce.


We also had the V14, which included more spinach, jollof rice, black-eyed peas, and kelewele (caramelized plantains), again covered in the same tomato sauce. So the two plates were very similar, but with slightly different offerings.


We remembered enjoying these particular dishes before, so we ordered them again. But next time we'll branch out. There's a veggie burger that I want to try, as well as some intriguing-sounding soups. 

The trailer next door was selling fresh fruit and veggie juices. I had to ask the proprietor if the cricket powder was made with real crickets. He assured me that crickets are the food wave of the future and taste like chocolate. I will take his word for it!


After lunch, we tried to attend the Dia de los Muertos parade downtown, as we do every year. But we got stuck in traffic and missed it. We could see the parade going down 6th street as we were still driving around looking for parking! Fortunately, we had another fun activity to attend Saturday evening.

The Goblin Glow festival is held at a park out in Lakeway, about 45 minutes away. We were worried that the kids might fall asleep in the car and then be up all night, but that did not happen. 

We hit the kettle corn tent first thing.


Then we found a seat on the grass and watched as several hot air balloons lit up, each in turn, and sometimes all at once. There was a DJ playing 80's music, and it was a pretty big crowd. We wondered if the balloons would launch, before coming to the conclusion that it would probably be super dangerous to try to fly a hot air balloon at night. So we enjoyed the glow and the popcorn, and headed back home. 


It's pretty rare that we take the kids out at night, and we let them wear their Halloween costumes, a full two weeks before Halloween, which was a big deal. So it was a fairly exciting evening for our Hulk and Rapunzel.











Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Wasota African Cuisine

After spending the morning at the Renegade Craft Fair awhile back, I met up with Tony and the kids for lunch at Wasota African Cuisine. The Yelp reviews mentioned long-ish waits, totally understandable since it's one dude cooking food by himself in a trailer. So I thought there'd be a lot of this...


But actually, our food arrived quickly! The gentleman cooking our food explained that he is from Nigeria, so he offers some Nigerian dishes, but the menu includes foods from many west African countries. I am embarrassed to say I don't know my African geography, and the only African food I'd previously eaten was Ethiopian. After consulting a map, I learned that Ethiopia is on the other side of the continent. That probably explains why our lunch bore little resemblance to Ethiopian food. It is its own thing. And it's awesome!

Wasota offers a ton of vegan options. We tried three different platters. The first came with jollof rice, fritters (tasted like hush puppies), and sauteed plantains, topped with tomato sauce.


The second was black-eyed peas and plantains, again with the tomato sauce. The sauce isn't spicy, it's just very...tomatoe-y. And super good! 


The final dish we shared contained more jollof rice, mixed veggies in a garlic sauce, and caramelized plantains. The caramelized plantains were my favorite out of everything I tasted devoured. But really, it was all fantastic. Can't wait to return!


While we waited for the kids to finish eating, I showed off a couple of items I picked up at the fair. Magic Unicorn salt from Beautiful Briny Sea. How bad can that be, right? It's smoky, garlicky...I'll be using this on everything from potatoes to pizza.


Also, this happened. Yes folks, Guinness jelly, from Naked Goat Farm. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I couldn't pass up something this unique.