I rarely set my feet upon Somali restaurants, not that I dislike dining outside but I cook for myself because it is cost effective and saves the trouble of oily unbalanced diet. I went to this restaurant very well known in San Diego and was even coined after the name of the largest Somali community in the city ,”Ogaden”. Since the place is a social center to many people from all walks of life, retired personnel, elders, cab drivers, blue and white-collar workers, small business owners, and gang-wannabes, it often swarms with but dejected people who mainly frequent the restaurant not only for their daily Basto and Baris intakes but for playing cards and relieve their gutless stomachs of grudges they hold for particular and traditional rival clans. As you enter the exterior lunch area, physically roofless platform, you hear raving voices that will slug your cartilage, so the murmurs and disputes slanted with invective remarks never subside and the more people the more the boisterous noises in there. Sometimes, you come across the only Somali police officer with his police vehicle at the parking. To first-timers, the sight of the police vehicle in the parking is an indicative of a on-duty officer resolving differences or conducting an arrest, but the officer known as Haybe is there mingling with his people. He is modest and gregarious who never evinces an air of patronage towards his people. He was also said to have let go traffic violators unpunished—an officer only decides to cite violators according to his/her own discretion. He also helped the city fight gang activities and crimes and released his first draft in Somali language on gang-related activities and member organizations, the underlying root cause of their rise and turn to delinquent behavior. My credit to Haybe is to chiefly educate parents and got them into fostering closer relationship with their teenagers.So this restaurant commands both popularity and notoriety and it is the center of Anti-TFG. My last visit almost resulted in a fist fight with an ignorant nomad who tirelessly and shamelessly kept insulting a segment of society.
