The aroma of spices and peppers emanates from a lime green food truck near the Memorial and 15th intersection in Tulsa. In big block letters the truck says, “African food.” The name of the food truck is Smooth Flavors. It’s owned by two Liberian brothers.
Prince and Ivan Doe are trying to bring to Tulsa a little piece of their home country’s cuisine, like Jollof rice, a dish with zesty tomato sauce.
“Most of the stuff on here is more like a holiday dish back home we would say, like the Jollof rice. Where I’m from normally, if we was to eat Jollof rice, it would be maybe like on a Sunday or more like a major holiday because of how unique it is,” co-owner of Smooth Flavors Prince Doe says.
Prince Doe has been here since 8 a.m. cooking soups and rolling fufu. He’ll be here until 8 p.m. He does this six days a week.
"You got to at least follow through with the day, right? So, my energy level when I get here [to Smooth Flavors] is always in tight,” Prince Doe says.
He’s cooking other African favorites like Egusi soup and red oil okra soup. Prince and his brother Ivan emigrated to Tulsa in 2015. They began their time in the city in quarantine due to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. For six months they couldn’t leave their home.
“We were anxious to get outside to see what America is looking like, you know. But at the same time, we just had to make sure that we keep everybody else safe, including ourselves and stuff like that,” Ivan Doe said about being cooped up inside.
Once the Doe brothers got out, they noticed the lack of authentic African food in Tulsa. Like many Africans in town, they wanted to eat some home cooking. Nigerian immigrant Clergy Celeste wanted to do the same thing.
“Oh my God. I’ve been eating sandwiches, burgers and I was like, when will I finally get to eat African food? Because I was like wishing we had [an African food restaurant]. Finally, I do. We have one. I pray God. God, I pray expand it. Just expand the business. Expand it!” Celeste says after trying Smooth Flavors for the first time.
Celeste has been yearning for African soups. He orders the Egusi. Among other ingredients, Egusi soup contains spinach, melon seeds, seasoning and smoked meat. It traditionally comes with fufu, a sticky, starchy dough, for dipping. Celeste says Egusi soup is a feeling.
“It goes straight to your brain. That’s how Egusi soup is. It goes straight to the brain. You feel the flavor. That melon seed. You feel the flavor,” Celeste says.
The Doe brothers offer samples to customers. It makes it easier for people with limited experience eating African food, like Sami Bee, who’s originally from a small Oklahoma town.
“Oh, this is so good. Delicious!” Bee says while eating her soup.
This was the second time that Bee tried African food. Bee can’t recall much about their first experience eating African food other than the fufu not being this good.
“This is way better. The fufu has like, it has the texture I imagined it would, and the other one was too soft. Like it would fall apart in my fingers,” Bee says while eating the fufu.
Bee drives out of the parking lot. It’s 8 p.m.
Closing time.
Prince closes the door on the Smooth Flavors food truck. Another 12 hours of working to provide African eats ends. The thing that excites Prince Doe is he gets to do it all over again tomorrow.
