Les Ambassades

The peanut sauce for this vegetarian mafe (Mah-fay; $10) was too sweet and too thin, and for a Senegalese restaurant, the assortment of peas, carrots, and lima beans, plus potatoes and perhaps broccoli, seemed very much like succotash.

Also tried the nem (four for $5), Vietnamese-style deep-fried spring rolls with ground beef, baby shrimp, mushrooms, and carrots, accompanied by chopped lettuce and the fish sauce called nuoc mam. Vietnam, like Senegal, was once under French control; this example of cross-colonial cuisine was too thick-skinned.

Les Ambassades
2200 Frederick Douglas Blvd. (118th-119th Sts.)
212-666-0078
www.patisserielesambassades.com