Nigerian Cuisine And Culture On Point Of Origin

Point of Origin is a podcast about cuisine, yes, but it’s also a podcast about culture, customs, and heritage. Host Stephen Satterfield uses food as the lens through which to discover more about different cultures, examining ingredients, preparation, and people to highlight how food helps tell the story of their country. On this episode, he helps us discover Nigeria with the help of three celebrated chefs: Michael Elegbede, Tunde Wey, and Yewande Komolafe. They discuss Nigeria’s signature dishes, its history, its connection to other cultures, and what they hope people will learn about African cuisine in general from their work in the kitchen.

Michael came from a family of chefs, and cooked in some of the nation’s preeminent kitchens for 13 years before moving back home to Nigeria to reconnect to his heritage. “Nigerian food and African cuisine in general have been underrated on a global scale,” Michael points out, but he hopes to change that, in the same way Nordic chef René Redzepi helped elevate Scandinavian cuisine. Michael tells Stephen about the diversity of the food in Nigeria; depending on which region you’re in, different spices and methods of preparation are used to delicious effect. And the connections to American food are very apparent; because Nigeria is on the coast of Africa, it was the seat of the slave trade. Michael recalls eating a dish in Lagos, Nigeria that reminded him of his Southern grandmother’s food, underlining the heritage of the slaves who cooked in the South. “I think it’s important that Africans and African-Americans begin to see those similarities,” he says. 

Yewande sees that story clearly, as well, pointing to a dish called frejon, beans cooked with coconut milk and often served with fish in a tomato-based sauce. Many enslaved Nigerians ended up in Brazil, she says, and when some of them returned to Lagos, they brought with them cuisines, cultures, and customs. “Frejon is a dish that tells that story, because it’s also a dish that’s served in Brazil,” she points out. “Nigerian food is not just one thing.” 

Tunde also sees African food as a chance to discuss the uniquely American form of racism that black people face in this country; he held a dinner series in New Orleans, where each dish was around $12 – but white diners were recommended to pay $30, instead, to represent the racial pay disparity in New Orleans. “It moved away from a dinner series about blackness to an interrogation of whiteness,” he reflects, creating “a strong element of tension.” A huge part of that conversation was around food: In his career as a chef, he found that everyone thought the same way, putting “French cuisine at the top, and brown and black food at the bottom.” Besides thinking about race, he wants to engage people to think about African food in a different way. Listen to this episode of Point of Origin for more insights into Nigerian customs and history, how these African immigrants experience and handle race relations in America, and how important food really is in telling the story of their heritage.

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