As a committed lunatic, I spend an undue amount of time trawling Yelp pages and MenuPages listings, seeking out the strange and the unique amid the torrents of food selfies and vaguely described menu items. Last Thursday, while immersed in a messy spread of browser tabs on local Caribbean restaurants, I stumbled upon what seemed like an ordinary French bakery, clicking through to the listing mostly to keep up my frenzied momentum. Amid the croissants and omelets listed on Richol’s menu I noticed a strange item, simply labeled ‘agoulou,’ which neither I nor any internet content written in English seemed to recognize. This is obviously a rare occurrence; the web hosts a field of diverse information, and even the most obscure items have usually inspired some English reportage (although admittedly I’ve struggled trying to figure out exactly what hedysarum water, spotted in a Persian Jewish supermarket, is used for (I think it’s medicinal?). Some French language sources confirmed that ‘agoulou’ wasn’t a proprietary invention, and using my sparse knowledge of the language and the assistance of Google image search, I discovered that the name describes a kind of pressed sandwich, native to the French West Indian islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. I was also reminded of the agoulou burger at the recently-closed Kaz An Nou, which seems to have applied some of the dish’s taste profile to the most classic of American sandwiches. A visit to Richol, an unassuming spot near the Nostrand Ave. LIRR station, seemed to confirm its culinary bona fides, boasting a packed house which validated its high Yelp rating. After a few minutes of waiting, watching fellow customers order an encouraging amount of food, I received the agoulou, which turned out to be a sort of round panino, the inside layered with delicately spiced ground meat, cheese, ham and tomato. Not the most unusual thing, but undeniably delicious, the spice mixture positioned somewhere between African and Caribbean, the layered ham and cheese reminiscent of a Cuban (or a French jambon beurre). Yet another reminder of how many different cultural forces are at work in the food of the Caribbean, a multicultural stew in which each island possesses a slightly different combination of colonial influences, immigrant infusions and native ingredients. As yet, I’ve not been able to figure out any exact differences between the Martinican and Guadeloupe versions of the agoulou, nor whether this unfamiliar snack is also found on Dominica, another Francophone island which is sandwiched between them. Even more appealing is the possibility of finding a bokit, a similarly miscellaneous concoction often sold alongside the agoulou in their island home, and which, as far as I can tell, is not yet obtainable in the city at all.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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