Country 102 – Benin (Kejjis)

KejjisLocation: 5 McMurchy Avenue North, Brampton
Website: https://kejjis.com/

I think the meat pie is one those dishes that’s served in basically every part of the world.  From Jamaican patties to Argentinian empanadas to Cornish pasties (and beyond), it’s safe to say that wrapping meat in pastry is a universally beloved concept.

Kejjis

What’s not to love?  You’ve got tasty pastry and savoury ground meat, all delivered in a convenient hand-held package.  It’s great.

I recently tried African pepper soup and found it to be an acquired taste that I clearly haven’t acquired.  Well, the meat pies they serve at Kejjis are the complete opposite.  I could eat about a million of them.

Kejjis

The pastry shell is closer to an empanada than a Jamaican patty, with a slightly denser texture (perhaps a bit overly dense) and a lightly crispy exterior.  It’s decent enough, but it’s clearly just there as a vehicle for the meat; the meat-to-pastry ratio is something like like 10:1.

Kejjis

And that meat is absolutely fantastic — it’s tender and moist with no greasiness, and the flavour, oddly enough, reminded me a lot of an enhanced version of an American breakfast sausage (think: Jimmy Dean, Bob Evans, etc.).  It’s definitely not what I was expecting, but it was absolutely delicious.