Waka is open in Eastern Market. The Baobab Fare team's East African street food counter opened September 26 at 2465 Russell Street and serves every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The address is the one Russell Street Deli held for more than 30 years, a gathering place in the market that the owners said they wanted to bring back to life. When Hamissi Mamba and Nadia Nijimbere, the James Beard Award nominees behind Baobab Fare in New Center, announced the plan in 2024, they said the space would get a $600,000 overhaul and seat about 30. It is counter service for dining in, with meals to go and a shelf of coffee, chocolate and other goods from the couple's Soko retail line.
The menu is built around chapati, the flaky East African flatbread, wrapped around stewed meats and vegetables in the Burundian way, and brochettes, skewered meat grilled over an open flame. The lamb skewers are marinated and grilled over an open flame. The chicken skewers are seasoned and grilled until charred. The plates run to spiced chicken, seasoned beef or savory eggplant with slow-cooked beans or peas, fried plantains and a red cabbage salad, and grilled lamb or chicken skewers with fried potatoes. Mamba's mother sold chapati and brochettes in the markets of Bujumbura when he was a boy.
Mamba and Nijimbere came to Detroit as refugees from Burundi, started Baobab Fare as a pop-up in 2017 and opened the restaurant at Woodward and East Grand Boulevard in February 2021. The Waka truck followed in 2022, debuting at Noel Night, and worked the region and the market, where it parked outside Shed 5 once a month. "We didn't want to go anywhere else to start this," Mamba said when the plan was announced in 2024. "People here in Detroit take care of us, so this idea of bringing East African street food to America has to start here." Baobab Fare's own line on it is three words in Swahili, Detroit Ni Nyumbani: Detroit is home.
The truck can still be booked for events, and Waka itself is open seven days a week, lunch through dinner.
