سناء خالد .. وجه مشرق من بلادي

I remember one of the parties that gave me the biggest motivation. I remember before guests came, I was so worried, them being prestigious and well-off people — was my food going to please them? But then I thought, they probably never tried Sudanese food anywhere, because they haven’t been to Sudan — and in other parts of the world, Sudanese food is not a very common thing. So, I thought, that’s my chance. That’s the arena I can play in. So I did make international food, plus Middle Eastern, plus Sudanese dishes, all in this same party.
And people loved the food. For my own shock and happiness, they asked to take the Sudanese food! And there was the Sudanese peanuts chili sauce. The ladies all had brand bags, and they wanted to take this sauce with them, but I didn’t have “iremono” to put it in for everybody. So ,they actually took paper cups and plastic cups and they put the sauce in it — they divided it — and they wrapped it with plastic wrap. I was looking for disposable bags to put it in, or something, but they said, “No, no, no, it’s okay!” and put it in their expensive brand bags. And you can imagine how I felt at that time. I was so proud.
And they said, “why don’t you open a restaurant?” I said, “If I open it, will you come and eat there?” They said, “Yes, sure, we’d love to.”
And actually, a long time before that, other friends said, “We want to go eat your food whenever we want — not just when you have a party, because that doesn’t happen as often as we want to eat your food.” That’s one of the things that stayed in the back of my mind, and kept tickling there!
So that’s how I started. It’s also a good service to my own country, because this was also a sad thing for me, that Japanese people don’t know Sudan at all. I thought before I came that there are many reasons people should know Sudan, being the biggest country in Africa, having the longest river in the world. Just by studying geography, people should have heard of Sudan somehow. But no, they hadn’t! It was a shock for me. And I thought, maybe I could introduce Sudanese culture through its food.x