At Charlotte’s Tima restaurant, there’s no taste like home — but home has many tastes
There’s no taste like home, but for a region as vast as West Africa, dishes can vary widely. Luckily Tima, a newcomer to Charlotte’s restaurant scene, has a bit of something for everyone.
Malian smoked lamb, called dibi; thieboudienne, Senegal’s famous fish meal; attieke, riced yucca from Burkina Faso; and Liberian potato greens are a few of the choices.
“My restaurant is West African,” owner Fousseini Sacko told CharlotteFive. “When people ask if my food is Senegalese, Ghanaian or Nigerian, I ask what they are in the mood to eat.”
West African cuisine in Charlotte
West African cuisine is an emerging jewel in the Queen City. East Meets West, the popular dinner series between chefs Awo Amenumey and Ammalu Saleh, showcases flavors of Ghana and Tanzania, respectively. Mama G’s just celebrated 11 years in business, and Lagz’s Nigerian brunch is packed the first Sunday of every month.
Charlotte has more than two dozen West African restaurants specializing in the flavors of their respective countries. Commonalities in the taste profiles include hearty foods cooked slow and low, with bold top notes of heat in complex, savory dishes that are easily shared.
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How Tima’s food is different
Tima sets itself apart by the sheer breadth of nations represented — most of them colonized by France: Mali, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Guinea. Though they share many of the same ingredients as other West African nations, food from the francophone countries has a somewhat more accessible Scoville rating.
“In English-speaking areas like Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria, food is more spicy,” explains Mariam Togola, who runs Tima with her husband, Sacko. “On the French side, we don’t eat with so much spice and oil.”
Both Sacko and Togola were born in Mali, but their family’s roots include Senegal and Guinea.
“When [Sacko’s] grandmother passed away, he felt like serving only Malian food would not do her justice. She wouldn’t be happy,” Togola shared.
The region’s food has a common foundation: the ancient empire of Mali. At its height, it encompassed 16 modern-day countries and was ruled by Mansa Musa, the richest man in the history of the world. When the kingdom dissolved in the late 17th century, people migrated, taking with them dishes that evolved in their new environments.
Jollof rice, the undisputed giant of West African cuisine, is one such dish. Every nation has its own version, and the growing popularity of playful “jollof wars” has circulated the flavor-packed dish across the world. It has a permanent place on Tima’s menu.
Due to those influences, “We couldn’t just cook the Malian way,” Togola said.
There are also mainstays like peanut butter soup and fufu, and the restaurant is introducing hot pepper soup for Thanksgiving. The food is very well cooked — some dishes must braise for 24 hours. Because of this, the ingredients have to be fresh.
“We don’t half cook it. We don’t cook the food in 10 minutes,” Sacko said. “It’s hard to get sick from African cuisine because of that. And we don’t use canned stuff. Everything is natural and fresh. Fresh okra — I don’t use frozen. I cut my own okra, my own potato green. When they kill it, I get a fresh lamb. All the meat is halal. The only can I use is tomato paste.”
From Senegal to Mali to the United States
Sacko comes from a cooking family. His family migrated from Senegal to Mali, then the United States, and his mother owned a restaurant in New York City for years. As a teen, he fell in love with the kitchen.
“However, she would never let me cook. I could peel the onions, but in my culture, men don’t cook,” he said. Instead, Sacko would buy the ingredients fresh each week and handle all of the food prep. In this way, he learned the recipes by heart.
While working at his mother’s cafe, he kept many other jobs: manager at McDonald’s, certified HVAC technician, janitor and social worker. He also pursued a formal education.
“I used to go to school at 7 in the morning until 2 p.m., go to work 3-8, then take ESL (English as a second language) classes and finish around 10 or 11 p.m. The commute was in Queens, an hour and 20 minutes away. I’d come home at 1 a.m., and do it all again the next day.”
Somehow during this busy schedule, he met Mariam and fell in love. The two hard workers shared a vision for the future and a penchant for education. Togola holds degrees in business, education and political science, and loves to cook, as well.
Moving to Charlotte
In 2015, the couple left the East Coast for Charlotte. They bought a house, and their family grew to four children, starting with Tima, their first-born. Their cooking became known in the community, and guests regularly dropped by for Sunday dinner.
“People would come to the house, and I would cook smoked meat, dibi Malian, jollof and stuff like that. People would say, ‘Why don’t you open up a restaurant? You cook well.’”
Then came the pandemic. Sacko lost his job but pivoted to catering, encouraged by enthusiastic family and friends. When requests reached 50 orders a day, Mariam pushed for a change.
“My husband is crazy about cooking! And when Covid hit and he lost his job, I said why not go back to school? We enrolled in culinary school and both got our degree. We love food,” she said.
Today, she runs Tima’s back office and handles the paperwork, while he steers the restaurant side of things — though they’re both fixtures in the kitchen.
“To me, she’s the owner,” Sacko said. “If I suffer, she suffers with me. We’re like twins — she’s half of my body.”
The two encourage enthusiasts and people new to West African food to sample everything. They’ll happily build combination plates to be shared by a table. And meals must end on a high note. In this case, that’s the delicately sweet, crispy pastry known as puff-puff, paired with the most incredible cup of tea in the city, a variety imported from Ivory Coast that has no English equivalent or peer.
“When you love doing what you’re doing, it’s easy for you,” he responded to lavish praise. “I can cook all day.”
Tima African Restaurant
Location: 4438 The Plaza, Charlotte, NC 28215
Cuisine: West African
Instagram: @timaafricanrestaurant, @tima__african___restaurant
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