Panama City's African dining option by Eric Jackson
Last year while walking from the office in Perejil to an event at the Hotel Miramar, I passed by the Restaurante Tchissola on Calle 42, not far from the BBVA bank. The place specializes in Angolan cuisine, and I made a note to come back and check it out. Some weeks later I passed by and found it out of business, but then more recently, their sign went back up and their doors opened again. I have not missed my second opportunity.
Due to Panamanian immigration laws that discriminate against Africans, we have no significant Angolan community here. We do, however, have a number of people who have been exposed to the Angolan cuisine in New York or in Havana, both places to which many Angolans have fled their country's prolonged warfare, some of them to set up restaurants.
Angola is a big country with its regional flavors and ethnic cultures. It would be as generally true to say that Angolans like their food spicy as it is to say that Panamanian palates have milder preferences. In either case there would be plenty of exceptions to prove the rule, and if one is running an Angolan restaurant in Panama, that means toning down the spices but providing the hot sauce on the side for those of us with more Atlantic side tastes.
I ordered the sopa de mariscos and the muamba de gallina, and they brought me a little dish of thick yellow pepper sauce on the side.
The seafood soup was heavy on the octopus, shrimp and clams, in a thick yellow broth with flecks of green vegetables and onions. Had the flecks of green been culantro, this would have been fairly similar to some of the better traditional Panamanian renditions of sopa de mariscos. Within easy walking distance you will find several restaurants that serve Spanish regional cuisines, and Tchissola's soup would have its likenesses to what you find at those places. It's almost familiar, but just a bit different, a perfect change if you're taking someone who likes typical Panamanian fare but hesitates to try anything too different out to dinner.
The main course was an Angolan classic, the muamba. This is chicken, stuffed with bacon and vegetables and covered in a peanut sauce. My first exposure to this, years ago and far away, set fire to my palate. Here you have to add your own heat to the peanut sauce, which I did. Their yellow hot sauce delivered the right degree of picante --- it was subtantially milder than if they had made it out of yellow aji chombo.
The muamba and most entrees come with a salad and a choice of potatoes, coconut rice or rice and beans. It costs $6.25, placing it at about the middle of the price range on a menu whose priciest offering, lobster in the Angolan fashion, will set you back 13 bucks. For the weekday working crowd, the Tchissola offers a $3 executive lunch.
The Restaurante Tchissola is a worthy addition to Panama City's restaurant scene, and I hope it survives. Actually, I'm kind of hoping that it inspires a little more curiosity about African cuisines in these parts, to the extent that Ethiopian and some of the other great styles from humanity's original homeland become available here.
