#Senegalese Restaurant College Park

[lampcuisine1]

Senegalese Restaurant College Park

Lamp Cuisine: Experience the Essence of Senegal in College Park

Introduction: Welcome to Lamp Cuisine, a culinary haven nestled in the heart of College Park, where we invite you to embark on a gastronomic journey through the vibrant flavors of Senegal. Senegalese Restaurant College Park restaurant is a celebration of Senegalese cuisine, offering an authentic dining experience that transports you to the bustling markets and sun-drenched beaches of this West African nation. From hearty stews to fragrant rice dishes, each bite at Lamp Cuisine is a tribute to the rich culinary heritage of Senegal, where flavors are bold, ingredients are fresh, and hospitality is second to none.

Embracing Senegalese Tradition: Senegalese cuisine is a reflection of the country's rich cultural tapestry, blending influences from West Africa, France, and beyond. At Lamp Cuisine, we embrace this diversity by curating a menu that showcases the best of Senegalese cooking, from traditional favorites to modern interpretations. Each dish is crafted with care and attention to detail, using authentic recipes and the finest locally sourced ingredients to ensure an unforgettable dining experience for our guests.

Signature Dishes: Prepare to tantalize your taste buds with lamp Cuisine selection of signature dishes, each a culinary masterpiece that captures the essence of Senegalese cuisine. Begin your culinary journey with a taste of Senegal's national dish, thieboudienne, a hearty seafood stew featuring tender fish, aromatic vegetables, and fragrant rice, all simmered together in a savory tomato broth that will transport you to the shores of Dakar.

For those craving something a bit more exotic, don't miss our yassa chicken, marinated in a tangy blend of lemon, mustard, and onions, then grilled to perfection and served with fluffy jasmine rice. Or indulge in a bowl of mafe, a rich and creamy peanut stew made with tender lamb or beef, potatoes, and carrots, creating a dish that is both comforting and satisfying.

Vegetarian Delights: Vegetarians and vegans will find plenty to love on our menu, with options like ceebu jen, a flavorful vegetable stew served with broken rice, or mbourou fass, a hearty bean and pumpkin stew simmered in a fragrant tomato sauce. These meatless options are bursting with flavor and provide a delicious alternative for those seeking a plant-based meal without compromising on taste or authenticity.

Savor the Sides: No Senegalese meal is complete without a selection of mouthwatering sides and accompaniments to complement the main course. Indulge in a plate of crispy accara fritters, made with ground black-eyed peas and spices, or savor the delicate sweetness of fried plantains served with a side of spicy dipping sauce. These sides add an extra layer of flavor and texture to your meal, ensuring a dining experience that is as satisfying as it is delicious.

Sweet Endings: Finish your meal on a sweet note with our selection of delectable desserts, inspired by the rich culinary traditions of Senegal. Indulge in the creamy decadence of bissap cheesecake, infused with the tangy flavor of hibiscus flowers, or savor the delicate sweetness of mango sorbet, made with ripe, juicy mangoes sourced from local markets. Whatever you choose, our desserts are sure to satisfy your sweet tooth and leave you craving more.

Ambiance and Hospitality: At Lamp Cuisine, we believe that dining is more than just eating – it's an experience to be savored and enjoyed. Our restaurant is adorned with vibrant colors, traditional Senegalese artwork, and the soothing sounds of West African music, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere that transports you to the heart of Senegal. Whether you're dining with family, friends, or colleagues, our attentive staff is dedicated to providing you with a memorable experience, ensuring that every visit to Lamp Cuisine is filled with joy, laughter, and exceptional food.

Conclusion: Join us at Senegalese Restaurant College Park and experience the rich flavors and warm hospitality of Senegal. Whether you're a seasoned food enthusiast or a curious newcomer, our restaurant offers a culinary journey unlike any other, where every dish is a celebration of Senegal's rich culinary heritage. Come dine with us and discover the magic of Senegalese cuisine today. Jërëjëf! (Thank you!)

[nooradeservedbetter]

Not to put too fine a point on it, Daniel Swift’s piece, Hanging Out With the Italian Neo-Fascists Who Idolise Ezra Pound, is appalling. It is the careless journalism of someone who, knowing little Italian and even less about Italian politics, has conversed with fascists and regurgitated whatever they told him. The result is a completely distorted representation of what the group is about and how they operate.

The building in which Swift's interview takes place, which CasaPound militant Adriano Scianca's claims they are 'occupying', was in fact bought for them in 2012 by none other than the Mayor of Rome, using €11.8 million of local government money. The Mayor at the time was Gianni Alemanno, a man steeped in the history of Italian fascism: a leading member of the Italian Social Movement (MSI - the postwar reformation of Mussolini’s Fascist Party) and later the far-right National Alliance; even his wife, Isabella Rauti, was the daughter Pino Rauti, ex-leader of the MSI whose name crops up in relation to numerous cases of far-right terrorism, including the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing.

Gianni Alemanno’s son, Manfredi, would follow in his father’s far-right footsteps: in 2011, he put himself forward as a candidate for student elections at his college for Blocco Studentesco, the youth wing of CasaPound. Two years previously, after throwing Roman salutes and getting into a fight at a party, Manfredi was protected from prosecution by police with connections to his dad.

So the idea of these guys as a plucky, if rough-round-the-edges, group of rebels doing their bit for the community against all odds is laughable. They’re a far-right gang with links to both fascist terrorists and the highest echelons of Italian politics.

More interestingly, however, is how Swift depicts the group’s activity: they “arrange conferences” on Ezra Pound, the modernist poet they are named after; they house “20 homeless families”; “they collect used syringes from parks in poor neighborhoods”; “they clean bike paths”. The only mention of violence comes from a “CasaPound supporter” who, in 2011, killed two Senegalese traders in Florence. From this description, the impression is of a group engaged in cultural activities and local volunteering albeit with the odd wayward sympathiser.

And yet, the reality could not be further from the truth. To cite some examples from this year alone: in February, a group of at least 15 CasaPound militants attacked one young man after he posted a meme mocking the group on Facebook. Over the summer, uniformed CasaPound members prowled the Central Italian seaside, harassing migrant beach vendors and forcing them to leave. And even last Tuesday, the very day Swift’s article went on the Lit Hub website, Roberto Spada, related to the Spada crime family thought to control Ostia, on the outskirts of Rome, brutally assaulted a journalist who had been asking him about his support for CasaPound.

So it’s curious that for an organisation for which racism and violence are such frequent features of their activity, that so little mention would be made of that racism and violence. When Swift mentions CasaPound are housing “20 homeless families who have nowhere else to go,” he neglects to mention the proviso on which that charity is based: whites only. The ethno-nationalist underpinnings don’t get a mention and it is (to be charitable) frankly bizarre why this is so.

Even more bizarrely, Swift spends less time talking about the violence and racism of a notoriously violent racist group than he does talking about how much he enjoyed their restaurant.

Quote:

At a corner we meet a couple of other men—beards, clipped hair, grins—and we duck into the shade of an open-fronted restaurant. It looks like any other in Rome—white tablecloths, photos of minor celebrities who have eaten here—except all the waiters have tattoos up their forearms, and except that at the end, after cold antipasti, a heavy tagliatelle all’Amatriciana with fat nuggets of bacon swimming in the sauce, red wine from a carafe, bitter brown digestivo, and coffee, no bill ever came. What we are doing, Seb tells me as we eat, is not connected to money.

Waiters with tattoos, fabulous food, fine wine. And what’s this? No bill? These fascists are generous as well as cultured! Il Duce, you're really spoiling us!

Reading the article, it seems Swift is bending over backwards to sanitise the reputations of as many fascists as he can. Swift discusses Pound's Canto 72, written as the Nazi-backed Republic of Salò was in a state of collapse and where a dead fascist general says "I don't want to go to paradise, I want to continue to fight. I want your body, with which I could still make war". While noting Canto 72 has often been seen as the "smoking gun" of Pound's fascism (with good reason, in my opinion), Swift is "not sure", claiming to see "odd hesitations" in the poem. What these are, he doesn't say. But it's worth highlighting Mark Ford's point that as late as 1956 Pound was still spewing fascist bile, writing that “the fuss about ‘de‑segregation’ in the United States has been started by Jews”. Of course, Swift knows this. What's utterly baffling is why he doesn't point this out in his article.

And yet, you can’t help but feel Swift's article is based around what he feels is the ‘novelty’ of the situation; but that novelty is actually based on two entirely false premises. First, the idea that fascists are the working class, the downtrodden masses. And second, that the working class lack the culture to read (let alone write) literature.

Both premises are obviously and demonstrably false. Swift says he wasn’t expecting CasaPound’s “high-mindedness”; yet, fascists have always found support among artists and intellectuals. Gabriele D’Annunzio and Luigi Pirandello, two of the most famous Italian writers of the twentieth century, were both fascists from wealthy backgrounds.

Equally, the idea of the working class as some uncultured blob is also false. Working-class people not only appreciate literature but have produced a wealth of it; whether Elio Vittorini, anti-fascist resistance fighter and son of a rail worker, or the Proletarian Literature movement in Britain which produced writers like James Barke, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, James Hanley and George Garrett.

So what we have with Swift’s article is an academic who was pleasantly surprised by the "high-mindedness" of some fascists when he should know that the 'high-minded' (or at least a section of them) have always been drawn to fascism.

And when he imagined their 'low-mindedness', who do you think he was expecting? Not posh students with links to Rome's political elite (a very real element of CasaPound’s demographic). No, he was expecting working-class men with sloping brows and dragging knuckles who could hardly string a sentence together let alone have opinions about poetry.

Ultimately, Swift seems to have really taken to CasaPound. He “warmly” shakes hands with Scianca after their interview and they agree to exchange copies of their books. Later, describing the farewells at end of his meal, he says,

Quote:

As we stand to leave I offer to shake hands with the waiter and he reaches out his right hand, with the tortoise on the forearm, and he grasps my arm just above the wrist, and smiles. We are close, this waiter and I; and for that instant bound in a frozen gesture, and even as it was strange and abrupt, it was also familiar. This is the Roman handshake I had read about.

It’s clear from these quotes that CasaPound’s activists are supposed to be sympathetic characters in Swift’s story; their benevolence has been amplified, their vices turned all the way down. The absolute wanton irresponsibility of an article like this when far-right nationalism is seeing a surge in popularity across Europe and North America is abundantly clear but perhaps some people need it spelt out for them: fascists are in a coalition government in Austria; they have entered German parliament for the first time since the war; they are killing people on trains and at demonstrations and have set up militias in America; their extremism is increasingly turning into the talking points and policies of mainstream politics. Now is not the time to be writing puff pieces about how charming they are and how interesting their take on Ezra Pound is.

At one point Swift declares, “I wanted them to like me.” After his glowing write up, I have absolutely no doubt they will.

[halsteadproperty]

Harlem Week Highlights

By Sandy Wilson, Executive Director of Sales, Harlem

Harlem Week 2019 is happening now! The theme is “Our Local History Creates A Global Impact” and there are plenty of exciting events to take part in. You can find the full schedule here.

Harlem Week originated 45 years ago as a one-day event celebrating the culturally rich and vibrant community of Harlem. It has since become a one-month-long celebration encompassing Harlem history, art, music, and community. 

This year’s Harlem Week started on July 28 and will continue until August 31. Among the notables that will be honored during the month are champion tennis player Althea Gibson; jazz artist extraordinaire Billie Holiday; singer, actor, and civil rights activist and icon Harry Belafonte; political leader and revolutionary Nelson Mandela; and world famous bandleader and musician Tito Puente.

Among the highlights of Harlem Week are:

From Memphis to Harlem: Celebrating a New Century of Soul

Musicians from both Memphis and Harlem will pay tribute to their hometowns and the soulful music produced there.

Jazzmobile SummerFest, Wednesday, August 14 at U.S. Grant National Memorial Park

Uptown Hall: Harlem’s Culture—Past. Present Future., Thursday, August 15 at the Apollo Theater

Summer in the City, Saturday, August 17 at St. Nicholas Stage

Harlem Restaurant Week

Celebrate the many cuisines of Harlem during Harlem Restaurant Week, organized by Harlem Park to Park, the Frederick Douglass Blvd Alliance, Uptown Grand Central, Union Settlement, and the Bradhurst Merchant’s Association. Some of the participating restaurants are:

Corner Social, a bustling restaurant and bar offering contemporary American cuisine

Harlem Shake, a nod to old-school diners that offers burgers, shakes, and more

Melba’s, the no-frills destination for delicious comfort food  

Ponty Bistro, with a French-African fusion menu that draws from traditional Senegalese dishes

Red Rooster, the Harlem staple serving up comfort food and great music

Sylvia’s, the longstanding home for soul food in Harlem

Harlem Jazz & Music Festival

Enjoy eight wonderful days and nights of great music including jazz, Latin, R&B, blues, reggae, and Afro-Cuban!

Outdoor jazz performances and a screening of Stormy Weather with Lena Horne, at St. Nicholas Park’s Great Lawn on August 24

Jazz & Gospel Vespers Concert at Convent Avenue Baptist Church on August 25

Harlem on the Hudson: Jazzmobile Saluting Tito Puente and Dionne Warwick at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park on August 30

International Jazz Concert Saluting Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba at the South Lawn Amphitheatre at The City College of New York, on August 31

For more information and details about Harlem Week’s many events, visit the Harlem Week website.

[kidsviral-blog]

What Love Taught Me About Blackness

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/what-love-taught-me-about-blackness/

What Love Taught Me About Blackness

A year in Paris and a complicated relationship — with a man and with my hair.

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Jenny Chang/BuzzFeed

It was spring of 2010, the end of my freshman year of college abroad in Paris, and I let a man convince me to leave my hair behind. It wasn’t the fact that Omar claimed he was not French but actually Senegalese, even though he had a French passport, French driver’s license, and French minor crime record. It wasn’t because he had lived in banlieues, complicated neighborhoods on the outskirts of Paris, all his life and had a sort of streetwise charm to him.

Or that I often found myself mesmerized when he pursed his lips around a joint, with an amused look in his eyes when I always said no. Stop. It was not that he towered six inches above my 5-foot-5-inch frame as he spoke a little too enthusiastically about Allah, God’s mercies, the importance of Ramadan, and the beauty of Islam, with tiny bits of spit flying from his mouth to the tip of my nose. It definitely wasn’t when he giggled like a small girl, shoulders shaking, and nestled my mane of hair into his chest when I pointed out that he barely visited the mosque and drank too much Hennessey to be a good Muslim.

Maybe it started with the brief bout of college-age rebellion I felt that night when my mother called and shot horrified questions at me, after I told her I had been on a few dates with a 24-year-old man. I imagined her pacing up and down her office in the dusty, small town of Arusha, Tanzania, phone in hand, eyes hard behind her rimless glasses and immaculately braided hair, treading the line between the mother she was at home and the lawyer she was in the courtroom.

She just wanted to care, the right way, even though she was on another continent, trying to lasso a leash onto a lost child, heaving her voice all the way from Tanzania to my small studio in the heart of Paris. “Did you have sex with him?” After all, I needed to remember that I was Christian. We could not be together. If we were, there would be a price to pay. I kept silent. “You know he’s too old for you, and you never know, people might have AIDS. You just don’t know.” After all, we weren’t the same type of “black” or “African” that went together, and she wasn’t the type of mother who believed in romantic bullshit. He was muscular, dark, scraping lower middle class with a low-paying administrative job, and francophone; I was short, baby-faced, and fresh from a Long Island Christian boarding school, with an upper-middle-class family, a Zimbabwean passport, and British tendencies. “Are you there doing work? You know we sent you there to do well.”

I didn’t know what I was doing. But I pretended I did. That year, I refused to be naked for anyone. I wanted to be a serious writer, the kind who went to war zones, Marie Colvin-style, with an African twist. Not the kind who wrote about not knowing what to do with boys, or what to do with their own hair. I wanted to be my mother with a pen – the woman who held her faith close enough to her heart for it to mean something, but the same woman with an incisive brain and logic that carried her from the rural farm life in Buhera District, Zimbabwe, to a trial room at the U.N. I wanted to end the phone call, but she did first, with a prayer that left me with guilt that sat at the bottom of my conscience like dregs of bad wine.

But it was never about sex. It was about the divided soul I didn’t know I had, the one that struggled to let Omar touch my hair. For years, I had pretended that it was “just hair” and shrugged when boys asked why I didn’t get my “hair did” well enough. At boarding school, I hid it under dozens of weaves that made my skin itch, heavy extensions that would latch onto my fragile front strands, and hair relaxers that burned and left scabs on my sensitive scalp. In my hair’s natural state, I was almost as ashamed of it as I was of my chubby feet, which swelled out of my shoes during hot weather because of my mild lymphedema. When Omar would wait a little too long after walking me to a hair salon, I would squirm in my seat, hoping he would leave before the stylist started complaining about my crazy hair. He never did.

But as my hair shed when he gingerly unknotted it with his long fingers and combed it out in my apartment, my guard went down as well. My awkward problems, the ones I didn’t want to say out loud — being the only black student in my classes, feeling like the only one lost for words and conjugations on the streets of Paris — disappeared for hours at a time as he tried to sing along to pop songs in English blaring from my laptop, occasionally lifting the comb from my hair to his lips.

Beyond the hair, our problems with blackness were still embarrassing — like the times taxis wouldn’t stop for him but would stop for me if I stood a few feet away from him and pretended not to know him. The complications of blackness in Paris came in layers and genders and classes and accents. We laughed about it, but it stung. We laughed almost as hard as we did at my bad French between yassa and fish at his favorite Senegalese restaurant. Almost as hard as the time purple bissap juice oozed out of my nostrils in front of everyone.

On many weekends, we tried to do some of the iconic “Parisian” things I’d read about in high school textbooks. We planned to go to Père Lachaise cemetery, where people like Oscar Wilde were buried, and where couples supposedly left letters at the foot the tomb of Abelard and Heloise — two doomed lovers from the Middle Ages. Omar met me at the Gambetta Metro station near my apartment and declared last minute that we needed to go to a happier place. We took the train to the Latin Quarter instead and ate too much bread in a small bistro. We planned to go up the Eiffel Tower hand-in-hand but never made it there. We attempted to visit the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay but it rained before we even got to the train, and we ended up in my apartment eating soggy falafel. There was never a candle-lit dinner with very old wine at a very expensive restaurant. We were never that kind of pair.

As my French got better, he listened as I recalled the day I left Zimbabwe when I was 10, not knowing that the home as I knew it was gone forever. I listened to his stories about the women he had dated, the police chase he had escaped in Spain, and the time when he was 17 and got caught with a bag of cocaine at the airport. He said all this slowly, unraveling, sometimes lowering his eyes in shame, as if I would be there forever. He detangled my hair and swept the floor and unclogged the shower drain too many times, with too much patience, as if I would not be leaving, as if our souls were not divided, as if this was that story about that deep black love I’d always heard about.

And I thought leaving would be much easier than staying. At the end of spring, I had promised Omar there would be no grand speeches of deep friendship the night before my departure, no talk about what could have been or never was. No long, lingering hugs after loading my luggage into the taxi and no crying in public when I got my boarding passes. He was not to see me off at the airport. The day before, I walked two of my favorite footbridges across the River Seine alone, as if I had shown them to myself. I gazed forward as I checked in my bags at Charles de Gaulle, spoke fast and casually as if I were ordering a meal from a fast-food joint. When the plane left the runway and took off, I went to sleep as if my heart didn’t hurt.

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Fall moved slower in New York than it did in Paris, as I sat in parks, phone card in hand, watching yellow leaves lick the pavement, and wondering how much longer the calls would last. The calls got rationed: once a week, then once a month. Soon I ignored the foreign number. When I did summon the courage to answer, often after another bad fling with a college boy, too often after said boy had asked why I didn’t get my rowdy “hair did” for the date, Omar would shoot questions at me in frustrated, fast French. “You don’t want to talk anymore?” Silence. “Could you please make sure to find someone good?” Silence. “Someone who really knows you and wouldn’t want sex from you?” Silence. “Someone who knows the difference?”

The calls broke me. He was there, I was here. Even if I were there, same language, same god, no hair, we would always be in a state of away-ness, where I overthought everything and knew how to express nothing. I was the writer who didn’t know how to talk about feelings. Even at 19, I knew my feigned aloofness was crippling. I couldn’t help it. We would fail. As usual, I stopped answering — somehow thinking my silence would postpone the hurt.

I knew it was the end when I started thinking about the beginning. Since Paris, I had been more at peace with my hair, letting it be and grow out the way Omar had encouraged me to. I stopped straightening and frying it until it lay limply to the side. I cut all the lifeless ends off. I shot back confidently when, on a date, a boy asked me to get a hair relaxer. And when I washed my hair — which I had grown to love for the first time since elementary school — I stupidly played the first scene of that journey over and over again, as if it were the only song I had left.

It was the time I first met Omar in the Metro station during my first few weeks in France. My hair was a mess, as usual, even with tiny braids at the roots, there to fight the power of late-summer sweat and heat until I got it together. My bra strap hung to the side under my sleeve and my sneakers were slightly torn at the right toe, but I didn’t care. I had only a two-euro coin in my pocket, a stupid ploy to stop me from spending money on pastries between school and my apartment, but just enough for a train ride home. Omar, seeing the foreign mess that I was, offered, in a broken mixture of French and English, to take me out for dinner. He said he liked my hair.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/florencemadenga/what-love-taught-me-about-blackness