Nile River Restaurant
Nile River’s menu is a greatest-hits array of popular African dishes like ful medames, fava beans sauteed with garlic and cumin, and sukuma wiki, beef-and-collards stew. Aguer’s grilled beef kofta are laced with fresh dill, and the kuku paka coconut-chicken stew is coconut-based. Beef halal, sauteed with tomatoes and white, green, and red onions is Nile River’s best-seller.
BUFFALO’S ONLY PLACE FOR:
sukuma wiki, kuku paka coconut chicken
VEGAN:
Ful medames minus egg, potato sambusa
GLUTEN-FREE:
Ful medames, hold the bread
OWNER’S STORY
During his cooking career, Akec Aguer has resumed kitchen duties after manhunts in Khartoum, risky South Sudanese border crossings, and an assassination attempt in Cairo. In Buffalo, he drove Uber and staffed airport car rental agencies until he got a chance at a Buffalo restaurant. Then it burned.
Now, Aguer said, he will get a chance to just “cook my food.” It beats subsistence farming and herding cattle, the reason he left his homeland. “I thank God” for the opportunity, says Aguer, a devout Catholic. Garang, his eldest son, works at Nile River as well.