See more suya skewers and soup — and see how the tuwo is made — in our behind-the-scenes slideshow.
Troy Fields
Spend a leisurely afternoon eating egusi soup and kebabs and drinking beer.
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11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays; noon to 6 p.m. Sundays.
• Beef suya: $1.29
• Chicken suya: $2.25
• Tilapia pepper soup: $7.99
• Lansir: $2.99
• Jollof rice: $5.99
• Miyan taushe: $9.99
• Egusi soup: $10.99
READ MORE:
• Slideshow: Skewers and Soup at Suya Hut
• Blog: Tuwo and Suya and Egusi, Oh My!.
Suya Hut
11611 W. Airport Blvd., 281-265-1411.
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Our journey to find Ghanian food had led my friend Steve and me into a section of Missouri City that I had never traversed in my entire 30 years in Houston. I was more and more excited to reach Ghana House, our destination, as the terrain became less and less familiar. Finally, we were there.
Except that Ghana House was gone, its spot at the end of a particularly dingy strip center replaced by a taqueria. Crestfallen, we sat and figured out what to do next.
"I'm still hungry for African food," I told him. "Are you?"
"Yes," came his emphatic reply. After all, our entire journey was inspired by Steve's time spent in Ghana — where he lived briefly before returning to the States — and his quest to find good West African food in Houston. "But where should we go?" he asked.
"Well, we're in Missouri City," I said. "I have an idea."
Fifteen minutes later, we were in the tiny dining room of Suya Hut, a restaurant that specializes in Northern Nigerian food. While Ghana is to the west of Nigeria, much of the food of the two countries is roughly the same — names of dishes change from region to region, and ingredients vary somewhat — but it was still exactly what Steve was looking for.
Over a bowl filled with egusi soup and a massive, doughy ball of tuwo, he sighed. "This is great." And it truly was.
How best to describe something like tuwo (also known more commonly as fufu)? Starchy root vegetables like cassava or yams are pounded into a thick paste, which is then formed into a softball-sized round that looks and tastes like the raw dough used to make dumplings in a pot of good, old-fashioned chicken and dumplings. Depending on the vegetable used, tuwo can be very sticky and somewhat difficult to swallow (you aren't technically supposed to chew the stuff, although I usually do).
That's where the soup comes in. Like injera is used with doro wot in Ethiopian cuisine, tuwo is a multipurpose foodstuff that serves as both a nutritious carbohydrate as well as a utensil to eat your soup. Steve was surprised to find our tuwo delivered to the table delicately swaddled in Saran Wrap. I told him that they served it like that everywhere else I've been in Houston. He chuckled, and said you'd never find it that way in Ghana, before heaving it into the egusi soup.
We pinched off thumb-sized pieces of the tuwo and dragged them through the soup, a mixture of bright orange and vibrant green that soaked into the bottom of the cassava-ball as we ate. Egusi is by far my favorite of the soups I've tried at Suya Hut, the nutty egusi melon seeds (which taste vaguely like pumpkin seeds) balancing out what could be an overly sweet soup, with spinach, peanut oil and tomatoes all contributing their own range of sweet notes to the mix. Lest you think it's a simple vegetable soup, though, beware the hearty goat chunks in the middle as well as that startlingly bright burn from some cleverly concealed habanero peppers. Our eyes watered happily as we ate, the burn lessened somewhat by a pleasantly skunky Heineken and nibbles from the quickly shrinking sphere of tuwo.
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I like the tuwo at Suya Hut better than I do at any other African place in town, including that old standby Finger Licking Bukateria. It seems more well-pounded overall here, with a consistent feel and texture all the way through. As at other West African restaurants, you can order your tuwo in either cassava, yam, corn or rice. Be warned, however, that Suya Hut often has only one option.
And along with only one choice of tuwo, it also only has one choice of soup to accompany your tuwo ("soup" is used here to describe the main dishes, which are honestly more like very thick stew) and one choice of fish for your pepper soup (which is an appetizer, not a main course), and it generally runs out of menu items on a fairly regular basis. Far from being bothered by this, I just take it as a sign that the kitchen is working with whatever fresh ingredients it has available. To that end, the food also takes a long time to prepare, so don't come and think you'll be dining in a hurry. That wouldn't be very African after all, anyway. Meals are meant to be eaten slowly and enjoyed in the company of friends.
At around 2:30 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, a group of Nigerian men trickled into Suya Hut and started placing tables together. They gave hearty hugs and handshakes as each member came through the front door, while one man stood placing one order after another with the young man who runs the cash register.
"This is lunchtime in West Africa," Steve said as we nibbled on the dregs of our tuwo and suya. I was sad that we'd already eaten all of our suya — marinated meat grilled on a wooden skewer, similar to kebab — and even sadder when I saw the table of Nigerian men receive several giant platters of the stuff. I could sit and eat suya and drink beer all afternoon long (and would be especially happy to do so outside, in the sun, if Suya Hut had a patio), and it appeared these gentlemen had the very same idea.
