Wed-Sat 11 am-8 pm, Sun-Tues 11 am-6 pm.

When I went to Tanzania last fall, the food (and my stomach) got worse the farther away I got from the coast. There was one soup, however, that I could rely on, and fortunately, it was served everywhere. It wasn't unlike vichyssoise--both are thick with leeks--but where there would be cream in the French soup, this had soothing, thickening peanut butter, and a little peppery heat.

So I was already inclined to like the groundnut stew ($7.50) at Pan Africa Market, a sunny cafe down on First Avenue. In this West African dish, bell peppers, hunks of sweet potato, and pull-apart stewed chicken bathe happily in a ginger/tomato/ peanut sauce. The slightly spicy stew has a spoon-licking richness without the cloying quality I find in many peanut-based satay sauces, and is served with mellow black-eyed peas, yellow rice, and a green salad with a solid raw-garlic bite.

Pan Africa has dual menus. One rotates with African food from around the continent: my good old groundnut stew, a chicken braised with dates in a more Moroccan vein, and a Mozambican seafood stew. The other is devoted to Ethiopian standbys like spicy braised chicken, lentil stew, and beef with tomatoes.

Clearly, customers walk in with varying expertise. As I slurped my peanut stew at the cafe's sweetly mosaic-ed countertop, an African couple dug into their lunch using bubbly injera (teff-flour flatbread) to pick up bits of stew. Next to me, some visitors ate their curries more cautiously with forks and spoons, and left the tasty injera untouched at the bottom of the plate. I nearly grabbed some of their leftovers to soak up my stew, but reason, and manners, prevailed.