SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A city taxi driver has quit his day job to bring East African food to Yellowknife's masses.
East African restaurant Blue Star is scheduled to open at the corner of 50 Street and 51 Avenue this month. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo
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Blue Star restaurant is scheduled to open later this month at the corner of 50 Street and 51 Avenue, featuring East African, Mediterranean, and western dishes.
"Of course, African food is a good food," restaurateur Abdule Adle told Yellowknifer. "The favourite mostly is goat meat and rice, what you call fufu, injura. That's East African, mostly Ethiopian food, Eritrean, and Somali."
Adle, who quit his job driving for a local cab company last month, was in Edmonton on Monday, picking out African posters and artifacts to decorate the interior of the downtown entrant.
Blue Star will also offer more familiar dishes, such as donair, in addition to traditional African cuisine.
Many Yellowknifers and visitors to the city will welcome the ethnic addition to its restaurant offerings, said Colin Dempsey, president of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre.
"More diversity is always better. I know a lot of people coming from different places are used to having a variety of ethnic cuisine and different things to try so I think the more we can offer our visitors the better, and for locals as well. I know for us we've got some good restaurants in town but it's nice to have somewhere different to go," Dempsey said, adding he will be checking out the new restaurant when it opens. "I'll be there opening night."
The sit-down dining and fast-food restaurant will be open late into the night, Adle said, to cater to after-bar diners.
The location, next door to the Raven Pub, has previously seen a string of businesses, including the defunct Filipino restaurant Booyah! of a few years ago, but the past ventures' failures did not deter Adle.
"I'm not worried because this is African food, something different that people never had," he said about the location. "It's 50 Street. One of the busiest streets in Yellowknife I would say."
The restaurant could face some apprehension from residents to try the unfamiliar cuisine, Dempsey said.
"Like any community, we've got a diverse range of people from different backgrounds that are used to different tastes but I grew up in the Toronto area, I'm used to eating a lot of diverse kinds of foods and having Indian food and Thai food and things like that so for me I see it as a big plus," he said. "There's probably people who will never try it and have no interest in trying it but that's going to be the reality of any kind of speciality cuisine. I think for the most part it will be good and I think certainly for a lot of our visitors it will add to the options available to them."
Adle, who said he previously ran a family restaurant in his native Somalia and a sports cafe serving African food in Edmonton, also reflects the diversity of the city's residents, Dempsey added.
"One thing about Yellowknife and the North is that we have so much diversity and people from all over the world who come here so I think the more we can reflect that in our dining options and cultural options, the better," he said.
Blue Star will not serve alcohol, Adle said.
The restaurant is scheduled to open in mid April.
