Well this is exciting. In a sadistic, unflattering sort of way. We were not long settled into the chic, exposed-brick gloom of Akara — a new West African spot in the redeveloped outer rim of Borough Market — when our waitress’s introductory spiel, about the restaurant’s namesake black-eyed bean fritter, was interrupted by a voice that sounded alarmingly like my own.
“And what’s really cool,” I butted in, as she looked on in frozen puzzlement and my mate stifled a knowing, lightly mortified laugh, “is that the same dish from Nigeria is basically reinvented in the Caribbean as accra, the saltfish fritter. And then, in Brazil, as acaraje.”
