You don’t have to leave Charlotte for a taste of spicy Nigerian street food
What If I told you that my favorite barbecue in all of Charlotte is beef suya?
Hold up. Wait!
Before all you barbecue elitists began to circle my wagon with vitriol, pitchforks and torches: by definition, “barbecue” means to roast or broil (food such as meat) on a rack or revolving spit on or before a heat source (such as hot coals or gas flame).
Don’t blame me. Blame both the Merriam Brothers and Noah Webster.
Yes, the Cheshire pork ribs from Noble Smoke are heaven on a bone. Yes, I could devour two dozen of Sweet Lew’s “smo-fried” chicken wings without hesitation. Yes, I think Midwood Smokehouse’s jalapeño cheddar smoked sausages could hold their own anywhere, at any barbecue joint in Texas from up in Amarillo all the way down to Beaumont.
This is just my truth.
Also, if it helps to call off the hounds, chef Kwame Onwauchi of “Top Chef” fame proclaimed that suya was the “grandfather of American barbecue,” and I know I have too much knowledge of American history to whole-heartedly disagree with him. Onawauchi might be right.
This isn’t the first time that food from the motherland has had me in a chokehold.
Back in 2006, when I first moved into my Aunt Diddy and Uncle Butch’s brownstone on 146th and St. Nicholas in Harlem, their son, Asar, let me get a taste of what he referred to as “peanut butter goat” — which happened to be lamb mafé, a signature dish from a nearby Senegalese restaurant called Africa Kine. That was one of those transformative bites of food that made its way into the zeitgeist of my dining experiences.
Like the lamb mafé, suya reinvigorated my on-again-off-again yearning to dig deeper into my Pan-Africanism bag.
I’m serious. After the first plastic forkful of beef suya, I was ready to trade in my Ralph Lauren polo shirt and cargo pants for a long, flowing royal blue and gold agbada, listen to more Fela Kuti, read more Frantz Fanon and maybe even dump my European name from something like Ajala Babayaro like when rapper Mos Def changed his name to Yasiin Bey.
To tie this back to the beginning, my favorite barbecue in Charlotte is located on the edge of a vacant parking lot on West Carson Boulevard in an itty bitty food trailer hidden from street view behind another food trailer on the side of a hookah lounge. And it’s called Suya King.
(To any of y’all who think this might be “sketchy,” trust me: I’ve had just as many phenomenal meals in “sketchy” vacant parking lots as I’ve had in lavish dining rooms.)
To be clear, there are a handful of other African restaurants around Charlotte that offer beef suya. There’s Tima on The Plaza, Mama Gee’s on Beatties Ford and Samoha on West Sugar Creek. Plus a few more.
However, those aforementioned restaurants seem to hang their hats on other dishes like yassa poulet, banku with grilled tilapia and efo riro. Suya seems to be the main attraction at Suya King. The same way Burger King sells Oreo sundaes, chicken fries and even a fish sandwich, but we all know they rode their “flame-broiled” burgers to global fame and fortune.
What seems to be the top sirloin cut of beef is thinly sliced into strips, piled high and impeccably charred. The beef is tender with bits of fat — the kind of fat that renders and drips on the glowing coals causing the grill to hiss like an agitated cobra.
What sets truly beef suya apart from every other “barbecue” you’re likely to ever eat is its distinctive flavor, imparted by Yaji. A spice blend of Hausa origins, Yaji is a blend of chili powder, ginger, garlic, pulverized peanuts and a host of other ingredients that I’m admittedly not African enough to exactly emphasize.
Scattered over the beef suya is about a quarter of white onion, roughly chopped and pickled, which adds a crunchy, astringent jolt, and then off to the side, a dollop of a thick pepper sauce that’s perfectly piquant and even better for dipping and/or slathering.
As my daughter and I stood on the edge of that vacant parking lot eating beef suya from a styrofoam clamshell container in the shadows of Bank of America Stadium, I thought how extraordinarily far we were from any suya shop in the bustling mega-metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria. But at the same time, it still felt so close.
Suya King
Location: 320 W Carson Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28203
Cuisine: Nigerian street food
Instagram: @1suya.king
