A drape of waxy leaves, a drip of vines: You have arrived at another latitude. Palms lean protectively, ready to offer shade, but none is needed here indoors at Teranga in East Harlem, one of the city’s loveliest spaces in which to graze, lounge and resist the levies of life.
There is no formality. You place an order at the counter, where shelves are lined with bottles of Lady Divine palm oil and boxes of Tropiway fufu flour. Food is scooped out of brightly hued cast-iron pots and handed over on aluminum trays, and seats are up for grabs at a motley of tables — communal or intimate, wooden or gleaming with the metal of recycled refrigerators.
You may build your own meal, but better to follow the wisdom of the chef, Pierre Thiam, who was born in Dakar, Senegal. His three composed “seasonal bowls” range from $10 to $14 and crowd their plates, as bountiful as if twice the price.
In one corner, there’s steamed Liberian ruby rice, milled so that the nutrition-rich red bran layer is left intact, nutty and chewy. In another, attieke, imported from Ivory Coast and made from cassava root mashed, fermented and rubbed through a sieve until it yields grains as small as couscous.
CreditJohn Kernick for The New York Times
At other West African restaurants in town, attieke may be presented with a cube of Maggi seasoning still in foil. Not here: Mr. Thiam is hoping to bring back the kind of cooking that predates colonization and the intrusion of the West.
Anchoring the menu is jollof, a dish fought over by West African nations, each one claiming it as its own. The Nigerians prefer it smoky, the Ghanaians hot, Mr. Thiam explained. His version sidesteps controversy — or invites it — by replacing the traditional rice with fonio, an ancient grain as fluffy as quinoa.
Fonio is less dense than rice, the better to soak up the base of tomatoes long simmered with bay leaves and Scotch bonnets kept whole, “to bring aroma but not overpower,” Mr. Thiam said. Crushed baobab leaves are stirred in, for a hint of velvet.
Centerpieces include grilled chicken steeped in lime, garlic and thyme and lapped by onions upon onions, left to brood in the pan until they run sweet. Roasted salmon evokes Morocco with a flare of harissa.
Ndambe, a stew of sweet potatoes and black-eyed peas — “country people’s food” in Senegal, Mr. Thiam said — is rich and fortifying, with okra added just at the end, so it emerges with a bit of crunch.
Fufu is theoretically a supporting act, with a function akin to bread, but it dominates any plate, as big as a Shanghainese lion’s head meatball. A paste with the heft of dough and equally moldable, it’s made here with plantains both ripe and green, pounded with a great wooden spoon as they cook, under a stream of palm oil that turns everything red.
Elsewhere, I’ve had fufu of abiding sourness. At Teranga, it’s mellower and almost buttery. You tear off pieces and wield them like spoons, bringing earthiness to every bite.
Mr. Thiam came to the United States in the late 1980s to study physics. He wound up working at restaurants instead, and eventually ran two of his own (now shuttered) in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. In recent years, his focus has shifted: He founded a company that imports fonio, and oversees high-end restaurants in Lagos, Nigeria and Dakar.
Here, on the lobby level of the Africa Center, where Museum Mile ends, he offers a gentle welcome to West African food for those new to it. (In Wolof, a West African language, teranga means hospitality, with an emphasis on generosity and sharing.)
If you’re seeking flavors at full throttle, you may find yourself reaching for his collection of housemade hot sauces. Among them are kani and rof, variations on the thrilling theme of Scotch bonnet, and shito, a meld of dried stockfish, crayfish and shrimp, cooked down with onions until black — more devastating and life-affirming than Maggi, and essential.
A fishing boat from Dakar, cut in half and set on end, stands near the entrance, the kind of low-slung pirogue often used, Mr. Thiam notes, to take those seeking asylum on the dangerous voyage from Senegal to Spain. Past it, windows frame views of the northeastern corner of Central Park, just across the street and almost another land.
