Groovy Gurus - the kick off

Groovy Gurus is a bunch of gastronomically inclined city dwellers (and then some) who've chosen to spend a couple of Thursdays each month - the 2nd and 4th to be precise - dining at a yet-undiscovered venue (at least for the purposes of the Thursday dinners), picked by a rotating designatory in the group. San Francisco has such a wide range of cuisines served up by restaurants that often reflect the unique character of their neighborhoods that it would be an opportunity lost to not give the lot of them a try. The day we run out of new options (hah, yeah right) would be a day to seriously contemplate packing our bags. Groovy Guru Thursdays isn't meant to be a laundry list of 4-5 star toting "people love us on yelp" eateries - though it's hard to avoid them. Neither is it a checklist of the high-end joints or restaurants that everyone's familiar with. It's an opportunity to get adventurous, to step outside one's comfort zone and surprise the rest with a choice of venue that they wouldn't have ordinarily considered. It's hard to meet that standard consistently given how prolific some of us are with dining out - but it's something worth striving for to elicit that occasional 'ooh... I didn't know this place existed'. These Thursday nights are also a chance for us to get an early start on the weekend with good company so the following day feels like a short break from fun times rather than the weekend feeling like a brief respite from the week's grind. It would be remiss of me to not mention here that the inspiration for these outings came from a similar concept I was introduced to in Seattle a few years ago by some friends at Amazon.com (I was interning there then) called 'Safari' - weekly Wednesday nights of dining, wining and the occasional karaoke.

Well, with that context established, I should spare a few words for the first such night (March 2, 2010). I picked a place called Bissap Baobab that happened to be one of the first off beat restaurants I had eaten at in the city - this was while I was still in college. I'd loved the festive, cozy atmosphere of the place and I remembered the food and drinks being equally delicious. Now, Bissap Baboab serves Senegalese food. Seriously, how many of us would have known there were Senegalese restaurants in the city? Sure, we know Senegal is a country on the west coast of Africa and sure, every country/region has its distinct flavorings and food combinations - but a restaurant devoted to Senegal's cuisine in San Francisco had been an eye opener. It was four of us - Surabhi, Diwaker, Shradha and I - this first night and we made quite a meal out of it. The appetizers, a fried plantains dish called Aloko and spinach Pastelles, did just the right job of whetting our appetite. The main dishes were mostly vegetables/tofu or meat in tasty sauces served with cous cous on the side (the names of the actual dishes slip my mind) - and we polished those off. The alcholic drinks were a bit on the ordinary side but the melt-in-your-mouth warm soufflet cake served for dessert more than made up for it. One noticeable change in the restaurant since the last time I'd visited were the seating arrangements - better comfort but more cramped. Also, the bustling, festive nature of the place was a bit lost with immobile couch seating replacing wooden chairs.

All said, the inaugural night was a lot of fun and it felt really good to kick things off.