Les Delices De Awa serves stews and grilled platters, but a baguette sandwich steals the show – Isthmus

Awa Sibi opened her catering business, Les Delices De Awa, in 2018, serving food from West Africa — at the time she told me why she was not focusing solely on dishes from her native Côte d’Ivoire. “We say that Côte d’Ivoire is a hub for diversity,” Sibi told me. “We have a little bit of everything, so that’s why I make dishes from Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Ghana, and not just Ivorian food.”

Now Sibi has opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant on Atwood Avenue. The space, formerly home to Monsoon Siam (which moved down the street to 2326 Atwood) has more seating now; the bar has been removed. The kitchen is still open to the dining room, so visitors can see what they’re getting is a real home-cooked meal from Sibi herself.

A meal at Les Delices de Awa might start (or end) with ripe fried plantains, which arrive hot and sweet. No notes — these showcase the best of what a simple plantain can be. 

Fried meat pies, called pastel, are dough pockets akin to empanadas, made with homemade pastry. Fillings are ground beef, or fish (a mix of salmon and tuna), or shredded chicken. They come three to an order and are quite substantial. These come with a bright tomato sauce that accompanies many dishes here, and if your dish doesn’t come with it, ask for it. It looks like a tomato puree; it comes mild (fairly spicy) or hot (a lot spicier). The pastel can be pretty dry — though my order had been fried a bit too long, which contributed to the dryness. The mild sauce helps, and pulls the flavors together nicely. I find the hot version of the sauce so hot that it obliterates any other flavors (and honestly, I like food spicy). I wish the pastel were available singly; an order of three is too much for a table of two or even three to split as an appetizer. If there were a green salad on the menu, one pastel and a salad would make a nice lunch.

Pain-brochettes reflect the Côte d’Ivoire’s past as a French colony. These sandwiches come in a hefty, delectable baguette, filled with a choice of grilled chicken, beef, or a spicy suya beef, along with a generous slather of mayonnaise and a relish of raw diced onions, tomatoes and cucumber. The suya beef pain-brochette is an amazing sandwich, with the spicy beef chunks, mayo and baguette combining for a flavor trifecta that might bring to mind gyros, Italian beef or banh-mi, but pain-brochette has a character all its own. I would suggest backing off on the amount of chopped onions and increasing the cucumber and tomato in the relish, but otherwise, this is a classic sandwich.

The peanut butter stew features a thick, nutty sauce made from onions, tomatoes and peanut butter with strands of a kale-like green; it’s a deeper, less bright version of this dish than is sometimes found on American menus. It’s also available with chicken or beef as an add on; according to the kitchen, the base stew is vegetarian.

You might order a side dish of attiéké, a dish of fermented cassava that’s been grated and cooked. It looks like couscous, though it has a little more tooth and a tart taste. But it’s grain- and gluten-free, which makes it an attractive option for those reasons even though there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the flavor on its own. 

Thiébou guinar is a Senegalese dish, with grilled chicken over jollof rice cooked in tomatoes and spices, with peas, onions and green olives. The rice was very salty, and the chicken, while well grilled, was a fairly tiny leg and thigh combo. This arrived with a dollop of the hot tomato sauce, which the already over-seasoned rice didn’t need.

More grilled proteins are available as dinners; in addition to chicken and beef, there’s lamb, fish and goat. All come with a choice of side — jollof rice, fried plantains, fried yucca, attiéké, or french fries. Combo platters of more than one meat are also available for groups of diners.

Vegans have a couple of options: an okra stew, or jollof rice topped with the fried plantains and black beans.

There are more nooks and crannies to the menu to explore: kinkeliba tea, an African herbal tea; juices made in-house (ginger, sorrel, tamarind), and bofloto, spherical West African doughnuts. Les Delices De Awa is a welcome addition to Madison’s West African eateries and the Schenk’s Corners restaurant row. 

Les Delices De Awa

2045 Atwood Ave.

608-286-1910; lesdelicesdeawa.com

Wed.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 4:30-8 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. and 4:30-9 p.m.,

Sat. noon-9 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.

$6-$30