First of all, we need to understand that Lafun, or as it is commonly called, white amala, deserves more credit than it gets.
If you haven’t heard much about lafun, it is black amala’s ‘brother from another mother.’ Unlike amala which is made from yam flour, the journey of lafun begins with cassava flour.
Maybe if we stop calling lafun white amala, it will finally emerge from amala’s dark shadow.
Let’s talk about Seventy-Thirty.
My friend led me to this lafun place at the end of Ibadan Street, Ebute Metta, Lagos.
The first sign of a good buka is this; no matter how tiny the place is, there will always be a queue of people waiting to buy. They start selling by 7.30 in the morning, everyday. The crowd thins and thickens, but the line is never empty till around 6 in the evening when they close shop.
Fast forward to when I get my lafun. It’s everything you’d expect, soft and fluffy, like pressing a good pillow between your fingers.
Fast forward to me putting the first mound in my mouth, and my brain just goes like this.
My lafun is soft, as expected, but my people, today is not about the softness of swallow. Today is about the soup.
You know when you take soup and swallow, and the soup won’t stop slipping through your fingers? This soup is nothing like that.
The Ewedu is real. Fresh. Real, fresh draw.
But perhaps, what makes the soup, and even the entire meal truly special, is the gbegiri or bean soup itself.
You know that great flavour of beans that tastes burnt, but isn’t actually burnt? That taste that just lets you know it has withstood a great amount of heat to come out good? That’s the taste of the gbegiri.
Even with the strong gbegiri flavour, this one fills the mouth like milkshake with its thickness, trying and almost succeeding at eclipsing the taste of the ewedu every time.
When you swallow the happiness, you realise that was only the first mound, and you still still have an entire bowl of happiness to take in.
Who would like some happiness?
This is how the food tastes, everyday. This is why the queues never really fizzle out all day. Talk about mastery of the lafun, gbegiri and ewedu temple. Seventy-Thirty Style.
You might be on the dark side, that is the amala side. But if you ever want to give the light side a shot, then start at Seven-thirty, at the end of Ibadan Street, in Ebute Metta, Lagos.
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