Stamford Talk Field Trip: Cafe Moja

So. I've written a lot about Cafe Moja- drug selling, gunshots, melees with cops. I drove by that place for the 4 years I lived in Southfield. It always looked sketch but I never wanted to judge. Well, a fellow Stamford Talker who lives in Southfield said she had always wondered about that place too. "Happy hour?" she joked. I'm not a big joker, so I took her up on her offer.

I will go almost anywhere if it's going to get me a good story. I've been to a KKK rally, for goodness' sake. (Not as a participant, but as a protester. Let me give the KKK an official Stamford Talk "F You, Get a Life.") That was in Hazard, KY. Long story.  Today, on day 6 of my Mississippi visit, I said to my sister, "I kind of want to go to that taxidermy place, just because I think it would be disgusting."  I'm just wondering, where do the guts go? I tried to get a glimpse of the back of the store as we drove by, but didn't see any hints of gut-filled garbage cans. Oh well.

CM serves West Indian and Southern cuisine.  Even though I thought we'd be the only white women in the joint, I figured it would be fine, because restaurants exist for people to eat at them.  However, when we called to confirm that CM was open, we got the answering machine.  When I had driven by, it looked closed, too, with the blinds down, and more run-down than I'd remembered.  We didn't want to give up that easily since we'd already gotten our minds set on it. 

I suggested we stake the place out and see if there was any activity, and if we determined it was closed, we'd go to Crabshell for a drink.  We staked it out inconspicuously (in the parking spot four feet from the door) for 5 minutes and the place was dead as a deer about to be taxidermied.  "This is ridiculous; let's go to Crabshell.  Wait! Before we go, just pull on the door to see if it's open."  Well, it wasn't, somewhat to our relief.   "We gave it a good faith effort; let's go to Crabshell!"

We had Amstel lights and good conversation at Crabshell. Decent little happy hour group, with the requisite group of young-ish men in button-downs looking sort of cute and talking sort of loudly.