Hungry in London with a stomach dreaming of home? From the smoky to the sensory, the city offers distinct African culinary encounters.

The unfussy algorithm of a well-known review website has decided there are 105 ‘African’ restaurants in London. Search for ‘European’ restaurants, and you’ll discover 2,654 – now your gut might be telling you something is amiss in the capital’s gigantic foodscape.
‘European food’ seems rather a strange and empty phrase (bouillabaisse and chips, anyone?), but an equivalent suspicion of categorization seems not to apply to dishes from Africa, a continent boasting 54 countries to Europe’s 50. London may indeed be aggressively cosmopolitan, but it might be a while before this ravenous city can really consider itself fully ‘woke’.
Thankfully, word-of-mouth is still a solidly reliable guide to the thousands of eateries in the city, so let this small slice of recommended eats from the African continent – Ghanaian, Senegalese and South African – serve as a modest appetizer, should you find yourself hungry in London with a stomach dreaming of home.
“For me, it should be seamless – the tradition is in the flavor profile of the dish,” says Zoe Adjonyoh, author of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, of the challenge of reinventing Ghanaian flavors for a new audience.
“The reinterpreting is in the creativity of how to rebuild the dish through different cooking methods, or blending its inherent ingredients in new ways.” Try her ‘Suya Cauliflower Florets’, featuring the smoky notes of the Nigerian and Ghanaian suya spice blend, by way of tasty example.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2018/10/22/the-foodies-with-a-drive-for-business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Foodies With A Drive For Business</a>
Through her increasingly popular pop-ups and residencies, Adjonyoh tries to avoid “preaching or teaching” what Ghanaian food should or shouldn’t be.
“I’m highlighting what’s possible, and giving people the motivation to do more with these amazing flavors and ingredients to maximize their taste and longevity,” she says. The cookbook features “traditional Ghanaian recipes remixed for the modern kitchen”.

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“I’m very keen to champion and promote the next generation of female chefs cooking cuisines from across Africa,” she says. “I see it as part of my challenge and responsibility to keep encouraging them to fall in love with their heritage again through food, and tell their own cultural stories – to be the masters and makers of this food revolution.”
A short bus ride through East London brings us to Little Baobab, a monthly food and music pop-up above a vibrant corner grocery in Hackney. It’s a bright late afternoon, and Senegalese chef Khadim Mbamba is making his ‘Lamb Mafe’ – lamb in a tomato and peanut sauce (a traditional base sauce in Senegal), with rice and salad. It is creamy and tangy-sweet; hearty, but fresh on the palate. He makes me a gift of a home-made chilli paste that celebrates the spice’s medicinal punch but marries perfectly with the roasted umami of the nut gravy.
The events are themselves a marriage of music and food; guests share starters, and then choose from ‘Thiebou Dienne’ (fish casserole), ‘Chicken Yassa’ (chicken with onions and olives), ‘Lamb Mafe’, or ‘Vegetarian Thiou’ (tomato-based vegetable stew). Mbamba’s band – he plays bass – rounds out the sensory smorgasbord while the guests tuck in. It’s an experience close to Mbamba’s heart, full of the joy of community so integral to the Senegalese culinary encounter.
“There is a lot of soul in our food,” he says. “The love you have, making the dish – when people eat that dish, they will feel that love.” Little Baobab began life as a restaurant, with live music every night, but Mbamba and his team are now focussed on pop-ups and catering (especially for weddings).
Westward now towards the financial center, and Etienne Pansegrauw’s Hammer &amp; Tongs braai restaurant in Farringdon. Braai dishes seem perfectly suited to British culture: the locals crave an evolved barbecue civilization of their own, but wage constant war with a climate that seems hell-bent on wrecking any carefully-planned Sunday afternoon cook-out. What better, then, than letting a South African do it all for you?
Pansegrauw, from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, has invested in state-of-the-art extractors that allow chef Rodrigo Navarro to prepare a succulent array of locally-sourced fresh meats, vegetables and seafood on fires fed with sickle bush wood imported from Namibia.
This elevates the food to much more than barbecue (indeed, South Africans might argue that braai and barbecue are not the same thing at all; that the braai is closer to something like a cultural state of mind). ‘Mutton Chops in Cape Malay Curry’ are tender and sweetly charred; ‘Prawns with Lime Salt’ are juicy and moreish; and ‘Pork Belly with Apple Cider Compote’ gains most from the sickle bush smoke, the layers of pork fat richly infused with the fragrant nuttiness of the wood. The surprise star of the menu, though, is the ‘Honey Fried Carrots with Chilli’ – the plump, crunchy carrots are cooked in honey before being finished on the grill, giving them a caramelized meatiness equal in textural complexity to anything fish or flesh. These are the big, bold flavors of the camp fire, but prepared with panache and an attention to the subtle combinations of flavor and aroma that are the hallmark of great grill cooking.
“If you go back five years, even, if you had opened up a wood fire place, I don’t think that many people would have gone,” says Pansegrauw. “So the timing has been important. I wanted to see if British people would be receptive to this kind of food; that’s why I opened up in an area near the city, rather than South West London for example, which has a large South African community. For every group of 20 Brits that come, there’s usually one South African that drags them here! But then they all come back.”
Our final destination is two miles west, but a galaxy away. Ikoyi is the first ‘African’ restaurant in London to have earned a coveted Michelin star, but the continental label seems even more incongruous here – the irony is that the Ikoyi concept plays with the African association as readily as it flirts with the aesthetics of costume design, science fiction and pop art. This thrilling challenge to expectations is almost an affront – one isn’t completely sure if the menu, and the intensity of its creators, Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale, isn’t just some bizarre but delicious practical joke (chef Chan likens his food in the press pack to the paintings of Mark Rothko, a correlation that some will think pretentious &#8211; I found it endearingly ballsy and appropriate).
The ‘Plantain, Raspberry &amp; Smoked Scotch Bonnet’ starter is like something from an Eiko Ishioka fantasy costume sketch: there is a magenta slash of plantain, encrusted with a tart-sour raspberry salt, and a saffron-yellow quenelle of citrusy chilli mayonnaise. The plantain is dense and sugary, the raspberry salt reminiscent of a child’s fizzing candy powder, but with a bass note from the emulsion of Scotch Bonnet warmth. It’s odd, exhilarating and a little bit Star Trek – you might be served this if you were an alien ambassador at a private function on the USS Enterprise.
“The dishes have to lure you in,” says Chan. “You have to look at the dish and think – I want to destroy that! So, for example, a pork chop that looks more like a pig than the animal did – a cartoon version of itself. It’s about aesthetics and deliciousness, but unified. This dish is your kill, your prize!”
<div id="attachment_37673" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37673" class="wp-image-37673 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="987" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Ikoyi-Jeremy-and-Iré-photo-by-P.A-Jorgensen-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />Ikoyi Jeremy and Iré. Photo by P.A Jorgensen</div>
Childhood friends Chan and Hassan-Odukale were inspired to open the restaurant by a visit to Lagos (Chan is from the north-west of England, Hassan-Odukale is Nigerian-born), but Chan insists that these are “purposely not Nigerian dishes. They have to be completely innovative. That’s the rule”.
The ‘Smoked Jollof Rice’ is a sensuous love song to the crab – the perfect al dente rice has been cooked in a crab broth, and is finished with an unctuous crab cream; the entire crustacean is used in the preparation. It’s sophisticated comfort food, demonstrating Chan’s instinctive understanding that juxtapositions tradition and experimentation at the core of everything good emerging from 21st century multiculturalism.
“The dishes have to be driven by a creative interpretation of the ingredients,” says Chan, in a suitably enigmatic coda to a week of great eating from Africa. “It’s about a primal connection with the guest. Everything is stripped of any preconceptions.”
&#8211; By Alastair Haggar

Khadim-Mbamba-from-Little-Baobab

Taking A Bite Out Of Africa

FORBES AFRICA is slightly early for the interview and photoshoot at the SA Culinary Club in Bryanston, Johannesburg. The owner tells us the chef is running a bit late and, also, that he didn’t take him seriously when he walked in one day wearing shorts asking to cook for them.
He finally arrives in jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers looking young and far from the fat chef one would expect. He is short and slim and has cooked for everyone, from Jay-Z to the president of Nigeria.
As we begin our conversation, he jokes that every article on him starts in Soweto; a vibrant township south of Johannesburg where he was born and bred. He grew up in different parts of South Africa, going to different schools, but in his early teenage years he knew he loved the kitchen.
Chef Wandile Mabaso, South Africa’s French cuisine ambassador, cooked his first meal for his family at the age of 14. His father didn’t understand, nor approve, of him being a chef because at the time it wasn’t a job for black people. The misnomer faded and Mabaso started traveling; exploring and making money cooking.
“After high school I went to a hotel school; did a hotel degree. I found myself a job on a small private cruise ship in the Mediterranean. So I spent a lot of time in Italy, around Scandinavia, Barcelona, Monaco,” he recalls.
It was Mabaso’s first time outside of South Africa and he didn’t know what to expect, but he was in his early 20s and very excited. On his return, Mabaso furthered his studies and went for a culinary degree where he was offered a job in the United States while studying. He didn’t look back and went straight to Miami, where he spent 18 months and from there headed to New York, where he was trained in classical French cuisine. He has worked for many famous French chefs and was mentored by the world-famous Chef Olivier Reginensi.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/10/01/man-knows-billionaires-eat-lunch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Man Who Knows What Billionaires Eat For Lunch</a>
Mabaso was more eager and passionate than the rest of the class when cooking; trying new things was his ideology. He stood out and was handpicked over the other chefs who were more shy, unsure or scared.
“I worked at Daniel, I worked at Le Bernardin, which are all two-star, three-star Michelin restaurants, at least top 20 in the world. I worked in a whole lot of high-end places in Manhattan, probably all these restaurants are at least in the top 50 in the world,” he says.
<div id="attachment_34938" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34938" class=" wp-image-34938" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Chef-Wandile-Mabaso-1-e1515483290853-300x200.jpg" alt="Chef Wandile Mabaso Beyonce Paris" width="500" height="333" />Chef Wandile Mabaso (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
When he cooks, it’s professional; it’s rare for him to cook the same dish again. His training made him creative.
He has cooked for Jay-Z, Beyoncé, presidents and NBA stars in Paris.
“People are fascinated by cooking for celebrities, for me it means nothing, in a sense we’re all people, whether you a celebrity or a guy helping park cars. Chances are people like Beyoncé just like fried chicken and the average guy has a better palate than Jay-Z. It doesn’t mean cooking for Jay-Z is the ultimate person to cook for. I’m not about showing off,” says Mabaso with a straight face.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/08/04/pots-pans-passion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Pots, Pans And Passion</a>
There’s a culture of collecting knives among chefs in New York. Before Mabaso left the Big Apple for Paris, he was gifted with a Misono knife (handcrafted Japanese chef&#8217;s knives), by Chef Reginensi, engraved with his name. The knife is worth $420.52 and he treasures it.
In 2017, Mabaso was in partnership with <a href="https://carrolboyes.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carrol Boyes</a>; a renowned cutlery and crockery artist and designer. He served all his food on Carrol Boyes plates on a sold-out tour he took across South Africa.
“I would have a class where I would invite junior chefs or students and show cooking techniques. From there I’d choose one, two or three kids to come work with me for the dinner. At the end we put out a bursary where I choose two from the whole tour to go work in Paris at a three-star Michelin restaurant,” he says.
The tour ended in Cape Town and two learners will be undergoing French speaking lessons for three months with the French Institute of South Africa and the French Embassy before leaving, and will be funded by Mabaso and other chefs in France.
Next, Mabaso will be collaborating with a South African artist on a cutlery and crockery range. The artist will work on the plate and Mabaso will serve on it in 2018.
“It’s art and food combined.”
Mabaso was out of the country for nine years and missed traditional South African food. Tripe is one of his favorite childhood memories and he says he prefers street food over haute cuisine. He doesn’t like Johannesburg’s central business district because there is “no sanitation, no cleanliness and you can’t cook like that,” he says.
“The best I have experienced is a falafel in Paris, it’s just this place man. They sell shawarmas for 10 euros but there’s always a line, sometimes about 800 meters long, every day, and it&#8217;s Algerian guys doing it in Paris.”
Mabaso started in Soweto, traveled and cooked for VIPs globally. Now he’s back in South Africa, sharing his skills with younger chefs, and hopes to have long queues outside his restaurant one day.

The Chef Who Cooked For Beyoncé In Paris

<h3>Shashi Naidoo</h3>
South African businesswoman, model, actress and TV presenter, who recently became one of the founding members of Fashion with Feeling, a non-profit organization in the fashion industry.
HAPPINESS TO ME IS…Having the freedom and access to realize one’s potential and worth.
WHAT I FEAR THE MOST: Living a life without purpose.
WHAT I HATE IN OTHERS: Hate is such a strong and negative emotion. There are differences in others, which we find difficult to qualify with our own values and principles. I try to keep away from any negative behavior that is of no benefit to others or me.
I ADMIRE: My mother and sister have always been inspirational; they have always pursued their passions, and look for the best potential in everyone. One woman who is a great inspiration for me is Navi Pillay; she has gone where many women have not been able to, due to her dedication and commitment to human rights. She was the first woman of color to be a judge of the high court in South Africa; she was a judge of the international criminal court. It’s very important for us to speak up for those who are being deprived of their rights, and I find there is nothing nobler than pioneering one’s life to preserving human rights and equality.
MY LUXURIES: Shoes and handbags. I always remind myself that one day, my daughter will get to enjoy them as heirlooms.
WOULD YOU GO UNDER THE KNIFE FOR PLASTIC SURGERY? Plastic surgery exists for medical reasons and to help us enhance some of our features that we are insecure about. I prefer going to the gym than surgery, because the recovery period is not as painful as going under the knife. I am quite content with myself right now; maybe if gravity takes its toll one day, I will consider getting some work done.
MY THINKING: Keeping your focus is important if you want to make a success of anything. Sometimes we get really busy making a living and forget to make a life, which is detrimental to the mind. So always reward yourself for all your hard work, and take time out to say thank you.
&nbsp;
<h3>Chantel Dartnall</h3>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-29594 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-710x1024.jpg" alt="" width="710" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003.jpg 710w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-300x433.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-600x865.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-003-208x300.jpg 208w" sizes="(max-width: 710px) 100vw, 710px" />
Chef Chantel Dartnall is the culinary force behind Restaurant Mosaic at The Orient in Johannesburg that has one of the most diverse (and longest) wine lists this side of the Sahara.
<h4>Describe the food you create in three words?</h4>
Flavorful, botanical, artistic.
<h4>What makes a good chef?</h4>
Passion.
<h4>What make a terrible chef?</h4>
A chef who does not respect himself/herself or the people working with them.
<h4>What is your signature dish?</h4>
This season it has to be Birds of a Feather which is a trio of poultry. Fungi on the Forest Floor which features a beautiful combination of mushrooms. From previous seasons, Lobster Bisque, Duck leg Confit and Cambodian Butternut cream soup.
<h4>Your favorite restaurant in Johannesburg?</h4>
Chef Dario Di Angeli’s Cube Tasting Kitchen.
<h4>Whose cooking inspires you?</h4>
Chef Pieter Goosen at Hof van Cleve &#8211; Belgium, Chef Michel Bras &#8211; Aubrac, France, Chef Pascal Barbot – Paris.
<h4>Which words or phrases do you most overuse?</h4>
Taste, taste and re-taste.
<h4>What or who is the love of your life?</h4>
My lovable black cat, Peanut, short for Peanut Butter.
<h4>What is your greatest achievement?</h4>
Opening the Restaurant Mosaic eight years ago.
<h4>Where would you most like to live?</h4>
Italy for the food and the beautiful ancient cities.
<h4>What qualities do you most admire in other women?</h4>
Self-confidence, self-assurance and being a great leader.
<h4>What would your last meal on earth be?</h4>
Creamy wild mushroom and black truffle pasta and a very big wild strawberry
Mille-feuille and a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Belle Epoque champagne.

FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-047-Snippets-001

INSPIRATION

Sushi, the Japanese culinary export of note, has endured several incarnations since finding its way to the Johannesburg sprawl over two decades ago. But it didn’t really go mainstream until the start of the noughties, just under a decade after the country’s first democratic elections and hot on the heels of the Y2K scare. It was the cuisine of the millennium in South Africa, the poshest thing you could go out and order. It was food for the monied, then. But not anymore.
The sushi was good back then, righteously prepared and well worth its billing, says Andrea Burgener, a food journalist and restaurateur.
“The first time a piece of sushi wandered into my mouth&#8230;I was seated at the sushi bar of&#8230;Ohsho, a fine upstanding restaurant armed with the sort of sushi chefs you’re scared of.”
Ohsho, which opened its doors in the late 80s, no longer exists but it introduced the tastebuds of the city to its charms and its price tag. “Ohsho&#8230;[was] Johannesburg’s introduction to sushi; a formal introduction, with no sushi merry-go-rounds or California rolls. Very pricey. Very good. I spent every penny I had going there,” says Burgner.
But Johannesburg is a particularly fickle city, at least when it comes to sushi. After Ohsho and Daruma, the other sushi institution in town, faded into culinary purgatory, a new sushi convention followed – cheaper, mass produced, on-the-go sushi. What followed was a terrifying trend that Burgener christened as the age of ‘McSushi’.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29630" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-003-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-003-300x201.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-003-600x401.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-003-768x514.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-003.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“The Japanese chefs [at Ohsho or Daruma] would have thrown themselves upon their sashimi knives at the idea of putting cream-cheese and strawberries anywhere near a piece of sushi.”
But as the sushi trend continues to grow in Johannesburg, fusion has become the de facto status quo. Enter Vusi Kunene, proprietor of the city’s The Blackanese Sushi Bar in Maboneng. Kunene; not to be confused with the notorious Kenny ‘Sushi King’ Kunene infamous for eating sushi off of barely-clad models at his 40th birthday party a few years back, found his way to sushi while on a break from Jozi. Working in Cape Town, the former waiter found a passion in sushi. In the mid-2000s, returning to Johannesburg, Kunene decided to hedge his bets on a sushi operation. He teamed with other burgeoning sushi chefs in the city. Together they experimented at food fairs and held sushi classes across the city, eventually opening a restaurant two years ago.
Today, he’s the talk of the town, sushi and Kunene are almost synonymous. As the name suggests, there are no sushi purists at The Blackanese. But Kunene understands the sophistaction of Japanese sushi convention, although avocados and strawberries feature heavily in his creations. Kunene hopes to do something big with his sushi brand. But, for now, he’s happy with its success and all its perks. “I love the satisfaction of changing people’s lives through food,” he says.
The golden days are gone but the sushi apocalypse, imagined by Burgener as “curried sushi in a Tex-Mex wrap from a vending machine [or] free sushi enclosed with your favorite magazine”, is far from fruition. Hopefully, sushi innovators like Kunene will keep that reality at bay for a little while longer.

FWA-2014-Oct-Nov-078-Global-lunchbox-002

Sushi And The City

West African cuisine has gained increasing popularity worldwide as more indigenes at home and in the diaspora continuously share the influences that inspire their palates and dinner tables.
Minjiba Cookey is one such. She is a well-traveled Nigerian foodie, but her kitchen at home is where her heart is, and where all her culinary adventures finally lead her to.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29524 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5119.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
She documents her passion for culinary delights and her adventures with taste, texture and color on her blog, On Nom Lagos. The idea of fusion and creating exciting food experiences is a thrill her blog intends to ignite in a diverse readership.
The blog, which draws influences from various countries, regularly shares updated recipes and images of different dishes and dessert offerings.
“I was inspired to start the blog when I moved back to Lagos a couple of years ago. I hadn’t lived in Nigeria for a very long time. I love food and use it as a tool to explore my life experiences. I thought it would be great to share my adventures with food, all the flavors I came across and the inspiration and influences they draw from. This blog really represents my love affair with food,” says Cookey.
She initially ran a small bakery out of her home kitchen in Nigeria. Cookey now intends to create and share African lifestyle convenience products that have aided her in the kitchen. She also wants to play an advisory role to restaurants.
“African cuisine is highly versatile and is enjoying a worldwide wave of popularity. West African cuisine for instance, shares a few common ideologies, yet, there are so many variations to its translation in individual countries. Africa is a rich source of inspiration for food and there is so much to explore still,” says Cookey.
Cookey’s blog currently enjoys over 14,000 hits with 406 visitors per week. She also recently teamed up with an online lifestyle publication for her column ‘Om Nom Lagos Eats’. She is also in the process of working on a television cookery show, the content being fusion food with an African twist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29526 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5475.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29525 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-600x398.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-768x509.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSC_5127.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“The aim is to produce a show that is of world-class quality, which sits comfortably alongside cookery shows from around the world that I enjoy watching myself. I have always known that food was my natural home so I am enjoying this journey, learning and growing as each day unfolds,” says Cookey.

Tag: Culinary

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

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INSPIRATION

Sushi And The City

West Africa On A Plate