Riziki Swahili Grill Brings Spice Island Street Food to Columbus

Riziki Yussuf at her Riziki Swahili Grill on Tamarack Circle.

Most 8-year-olds desire of a career piloting rocket ships or caring for animals. Not Riziki Yussuf. Developing up in Zanzibar, proudly owning a cafe was her one particular and only ambition. “When I was a kid, I just wanted a cafe,” she suggests. “I loved cooking, cherished people, cherished entertaining. I just obtain pleasure that way.”

But it was her own little ones (giving up piggy bank personal savings as money) who gave her the remaining thrust to open up Riziki Swahili Grill, the city’s only cafe serving food stuff influenced by the street foods of the spice islands off Tanzania, in early 2018.

Like me, you’ll probable want to ship her young children a thank-you observe. Specially soon after experiencing a food of fragrant rice and curries, coconut-laden sides and smoky, yogurt-marinated kebabs (many available as a food or facet) in the very small Northland restaurant with citrus yellow and ocean blue partitions.

“Very flavorful” is how Yussuf describes her meals, but that doesn’t do it justice. Dishes are so fragrant they basically float on air. Basmati rice in the chicken pilau ($12.99) is heady with cinnamon and cardamom. And the rooster is succulent with tomato, ginger and a extended, lingering cumin end. Even a dish as seemingly humble as the zege platter ($12.99)—a pancake-sizing egg omelet crammed with french fries—springs to daily life with a topping of kachumbari, a refreshing brief-pickled cabbage.

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The star of the ugali food ($12.99) is its namesake, a mound of savory and hearty masa porridge that soaks up all the things in its wake like a sponge. I propose pairing it with the garlic-and-ginger hearty beef curry and correctly bitter and bright sukuma wiki (braised kale) with tomatoes and onions.

It’s truly worth earning a exclusive excursion listed here on Sundays for the Sunday Exciting Day ($12.99). More commonly acknowledged as Zanzibar combine or urojo soup, this feeds-two supplying is based mostly on a road vendor preferred of floury potato soup and toppings. Riziki’s edition is turmeric-scented, lemony, somewhat bitter with tamarind and silky clean. It is the perfect carrier for garnishes intended to be tossed in at will—katlesi bhajia (potato dumplings I could eat like popcorn), flaky and herbaceous sambusa (also accessible as an appetizer, $2.50), crispy potato shavings, tender beef kebabs (mishkaki) and obvious-your-sinuses warm sauce.

If there is just one non-negotiable buy, it’s the chapati platter ($12.99). Yussuf spends hours each working day working and shaping the chapati dough. And the energy shines: Her flatbread is flaky, leopard-spotted and decadent from a frying in ghee. Use it to scoop up pink-scorching rooster curry (with an undercurrent of cardamom) and creamy, coconut milk-stewed pinto beans.

Yussuf’s professional suggestion: Purchase more chapati ($2.25 as a facet) and appreciate at household with a very little honey and sugar.

Riziki Swahili Grill

1872 Tamarack Circle S, North Facet, 614-547-7440