WHAT IT’S ABOUT: New York African Restaurant Week Festival is a yearly occasion that happens within the African Restaurant Week, where NYC’s most exciting chefs introduce their cooking to the salivating audiences. Such festivals are especially valuable because you can find food not represented in any of NYC’s restaurants and food trucks. For instance, Congolese cuisine that I’ve been dying to try. This year, I went for the first time and loved it. My only complaint was that the music was club-level loud at lunchtime. It did not pair well with cute dashiki-clad toddlers stuffing their faces with plantains.

WHAT WE ATE: Red Red—Ghanaian stewed black eye peas with plantain bread & kelewele dust. Plantains were reigning the ball at the festival, and rightly so. Plantain bread is similar to banana bread in texture, but not as sweet, and it pairs remarkably well with the savory bean stew. The balance between tomatoes and onions was just right to complement the beans, and the kelewele (fried plantains with spices) dust added the umami kick.

WHO MADE IT: Chef Bryan Lindsay, aka SacredChef, is a personal chef who has appeared on the TV Show Chopped. He hosts popular seafood boils and specializes in Caribbean cuisine, but clearly, there is nothing out of reach for him. We came back for seconds after lapping our portions of red-red up.