Village Voice food critic Robert Sietsema generalizes about African food

Africans vastly prefer tough, tough meat,” said Robert Sietsema, longtime restaurant critic for The Village Voice. “They will eat tree snails that are so tough you would have difficulty distinguishing it from a section of rubber tire. “For them, eating something for dinner is not an appreciation of tenderness. It is an appreciation of toughness, and they want to really chew on the meat and enjoy it because meat is so rare.”

I am not making this up. Yes. This was published in a story about African food in New York City in this weekend The New York Times which went about “What is African food.” See here. This comes a few weeks after two prominent New York food bloggers felt compelled to “debate” whether the city’s people are ready for a “high-end African restaurant” since “high-end” and “African” don’t apparently go together. Like we care anyway. For a better treatment of African food culture, though, you’d have to turn to Al Jazeera. Like this program on Kenyan “street food” (in two parts) here and here.