Mashallah Restaurant: A Delicious Food Trip to West Africa

I love quirky eateries and my recent find is one of the quirkiest places I've been to Louisville.  I came to Mashallah Restaurant, located inside Mor's International Grocery, on a rainy Sunday afternoon for lunch with a friend. From the outside, it's hard to tell whether there is a restaurant inside. Rest assured, it's there, and a little bit of food heaven is waiting for you.

Mashallah Restaurant from the outside

The "restaurant" is a small section of Mor's International Grocery, equipped with a few chairs and tables overlooking the parking lot and street outside.

If you are looking for the menu, there's only one and it's hanging on the wall behind the counters towards the back of the store, away from the cashier.

Here's a better version from their website.

Entrees from Mashallah

Appetizers from Mashallah

The chef/owner cooks 2 dishes a day.  The menu shows you what should be available each day, along with a few appetizers and specialty drinks.  But it's really just there for reference.  The menu is whatever she decides to cook for that day.  If you want to know what's available, hunt her down and ask or call ahead to see what's cooking that day.

I can't definitively tell you what we had that day. We asked, she answered, we nodded yes to both items and got our food a short while later.

Food from Mashallah

Referencing the menu, we figured one of our dishes is probably the chep garnar, red jollof rice with chicken.  A few clicks on the internet later, I learned that jollof rice is a pan West African dish cooked with tomatoes, tomato paste, and spices such as nutmeg, cumin and ginger.  The red color comes from the palm oil and tomato paste.  There are several regional versions, differing in the types of meats, vegetables and sides added.

I usually don't order rice in restaurants as often times the rice used is of cheaper low quality, a little bit dry and hard.  Higher quality rice is definitely used here, the texture is softer and and chewier and slowed cook to fully infused the savory flavor of the meat, vegetables and spices.  The chicken is equally well seasoned, tender and felt right off the bone delicious. I grew up eating plain white rice but jollof convinced me that there are definitely better ways to enjoy it.

The second dish is a little harder to figure out. From the menu description, the closest we can match it to is plasas (sahasahal), "spinach with palm oil and white rice, cooked with shrimp, meat and smoked turkey." We did not find the shrimp mentioned but found pieces of fish and other unidentifiable meat.  No complaints here though, because the creamy richness of the spinach, spices and meats paired perfectly with white rice.

The portions were big, the chef went ahead and packed it in to go boxes for us anticipating we won't finish.  She was right, there was a lot of food. We did make a good dent in it and happily brought the rest home for lunch the next day. It was $10 for each portion, you do have the option to get it small for $6.99.

We struck up a conversation with a regular and found out the owners are from Sierre Leon. Since the food are similar to other countries in West Africa, it's popular among other Africans missing a taste of home. By the time we checked out, there was a long line of men waiting for their to go orders.

Food is available from 12:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., or whenever the food runs out.  It's a small mom and pop business, the husband runs the grocery store in the front and the wife cooks in the back, so don't expect traditional restaurant service.  It's a very informal process of ordering at the counter, grabbing your own drink from fridge, seating yourself and paying at the front when finished.

Mashallah was  my first introduction to West African food and definitely will not be the last.  The dishes were delicious not only because of the deft combination of seasoning, ingredients and time but there was a lot of home and heart added to make them extra special.

Mashallah Restaurant
3927 Bardstown Rd
Louisville, KY 40218
Phone: (502) 491-3152
12:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.
(Grocery opens earlier)