Safari.

A month ago, I had the pleasure of being the photographer for a couple who got married at Midtown Global Market. Their caterer was from one of the restaurants on the ground level of the building and I was so blown away by how yummy the food was. The restaurant is called Safari Express. The caterer, turns out, is the owner of the restaurant, named Jamal Hashi. We had a great time that night chatting while we both worked at this wedding and I thought he was a great guy.

Fast forward to Wednesday night – we picked Jace up from school and I decided I needed a repeat of that awesome food, and to introduce my family to it. So that’s where we went for dinner. I had the Chicken Fantastik, a dish I had eaten at the wedding and it was so so good! Mike had a spicy chicken dish (I can’t remember the name!), but he loved his too. Jace is a little harder to please. I was determined to get him to eat this food, even though his menu pretty much consists of mac-n-cheese and chicken nuggets. But it didn’t happen. He pouted and had a fit until Jamal, the sweet man he is, asked Jace what he wanted for dinner and when Jace replied (big shocker here) “Chicken Nuggets”, Jamal went to the restaurant across the aisle and bought Jace a chicken tenders + french fries dinner. What a great guy!

So, what inspires this blog post? I saw Jamal on KARE 11 this morning! I had just finished up a DVD I had started last night and gotten too tired to complete, when I clicked the input back to TV. And lo and behold, Jamal was cooking on a segment of the morning show and Mike and I had to watch. In fact, Jamal was making a Nomad chili, that even I, the I-only-eat-breakfast-food-in-the-morning girl, drooled over at 10am. And I can only assume that the chili will be making an appearance at tomorrow’s Midtown Global Market Chili cook-off. I don’t think we’ll be able to make it there for the event, but we’ll be rooting for Jamal from afar!

Go try this wonderful food! Safari Express