Review: At Simply Soul, family feeds Niagara Falls heartfelt classics

Rasta pasta with oxtails, catfish nuggets, and fried chicken headline Main Street menu

Rasta pasta with oxtails, Simply Soul

A long time ago, at Gigi’s on the East Side, a Black woman showed me the right way to eat oxtails.

I was using a knife and fork to worry beef off the bone, while she watched with mild amusement. 

That’s not how you eat oxtails, she said. Then she picked up a piece between thumb and forefinger, and ate it like a juicy peach off a pit.

Someone with such a dynamite set of manicured nails must be serious to eat with their hands, I thought, and followed suit. 

She was right, and I’ve carried on eating oxtails that way since. The best morsels hide in bony crevices, making a certain amount of discreet meat-slurping essential. 

The worst examples of the dish still make me reach for a knife and fork. Undercooked oxtail is chewy as a rawhide dog treat. Serving it to customers is a sign of a cook in a hurry, or too many other fish to fry. 

At Simply Soul, when the oxtails with rasta pasta arrived, I picked up a piece, vacuumed the bone clean, and sighed with relief. In a quiet dining room on Main Street, Niagara Falls, cooks with patience are doing the work.

Fried catfish nuggets, Simply Soul