“You have eaten this before?  Is this your first time? ” the waitress queried with grave concern as I stared glumly at the pair of brown balls and creamy white sauce she had placed in front of me.  I was barely able to grunt a no to the first question.

I had been to B. First Restaurant at the corner of 13^th Street and Payne Ave a few times before.  A sign denoting specialties covering the cuisines of seemingly half the population of the world – India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh – beckoned.  On previous visits, I ate mutton biriyani, shrimp fried rice, butter chicken, paleek paneer, and other standard Indian fare.  The portion sizes shamed Mama Susu, and everything tasted pretty good.

This single visit, as I sought to duck out of a rain shower while walking along Tubman Boulevard, was shaping up as a different experience, however.  After placing my order, I addressed a call of nature, during which I belatedly discovered that the facility was not equipped with any toilet paper.  Thankfully, at least, there was a sink beside the toilet that provided some assistance amidst the challenging predicament.

The white sauce and brown balls seemed a fitting continuation of the general trend set by the toilet fiasco.  Something had possessed me to order an entirely unknown quantity – the “vegetable mali kofta.”  Perhaps it was because the NGO I work with was about to welcome a new staff member in a few days from Bamako.

However, the dish elicited no echoes of the Sahel.  The creamy sauce, perhaps rather thankfully, was as bland and tasteless as could be imagined.  The lightly fried balls, while I could not figure out what constituted them, were pretty good and resembled a vegetarian crab cake.  Unfortunately, they could only go a limited distance in making the dish a wise expenditure of US$9.

I confronted the balls and creamy sauce with as much stoicism as I could muster.  The waitress appeared quite concerned about my welfare, checking on me soon after I began to eat – “How is the soup? Are you ok?”  I was doing better than expected following my initial shock and the waitress’ concern with my unexpected predicament was rather comforting.  I doubt a similar check-in would have been forthcoming over a chicken masala.

I managed to eat the whole dish, no small feat given the generous plate of rice that tasted just as plain after pouring the unique white sauce on it.  The waitress was rather impressed by my gusto – “You ate all.  It was good?”  Again, I was just able to grunt a rather incoherent response.

As soon as I got home, I turned to Google to solve the mystery of the balls and white sauce.   Apparently “Malai Kofta” is a North Indian dish with fried dumplings in a rich, tomato based cream gravy.  I’m fairly confident that nothing even closely related to a tomato graced the B. First Mali Kofta.

Perhaps I should have been prepared for such a dining experience at B. First.  The vibe is a bit strange, with two large dining areas created by a glass partition, which someone must have walked into at one point as it is dotted with red X. The AC side has tables draped in tablecloths, while, with one exception, the non-AC area tables were not covered.  The space is also laden with some mysterious thin poles, which one could only presume serve a load-bearing function purpose.

Generally, the food is pretty good.  I’ve particularly enjoyed the large chunks of mutton in the biriyani; my go-to dish.  Usually, my greatest complaint is the substantial markup on beer, US$4 for a large bottle.  With a not particularly tasty main dish, grievances such as expensive beer, no toilet paper, and paying US$2 extra for rice become significantly more pronounced.

Featured photo by Brooks Marmon