February 26, 2020 • 48 mins
Point of Origin Season 2 kicks off by honoring Black History Month. We’re exploring Nigerian foodways, what Naija is and how it’s expressed through food.
Chefs Tunde Wey, Yewande Komolafe, and Michael Ade Elebede join us to discuss the origin of Nigerian dishes, and how they champion their food to interrogate systems of power. See more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, so we're talking Nigerian food. I feel like you
know where this is going. I don't want it to
go there. I'm contractually obligated. Okay, let's let's just do it.
Let's just do it, all right, let's get into it.
(00:20):
I have to ask you about Jolo, of course, and
I know that this is something that is shall we
say spirited. Sted is a great word, Spirited is a
great worry. Hello Point of origin listeners. I'm your host,
(00:44):
Stephen Saderfield. It's our second season of the podcast and
we're back in better than ever, delivering you the very
best stories from the world of food from around the world.
And to begin our second season in celebration of Black history,
we're in Africa, in Nigeria to be more specific. And
(01:04):
I'm so very excited about this season and today's episode
in particular, because today we're talking to three Nigerian chefs
who are bringing Nigerian cuisine to the four for diners
all over the world and in some cases bringing it
back to the consciousness of Nigerians in their own country.
And the thing that makes each of the three of
our chefs so unique and the reason that we have
(01:27):
them on the show today is that they're not simply
preparing food. They're using food in a very specific way
to make a broader point about how they see the
world and what they want you to see in it too.
I think the power of storytelling. People often say the
people who write the story will tell the story on
(01:49):
the story. And what I've learned from a lot of
the chefs are the stories they tell. They get to
tell the story of their cuisine, of their food, of
their people through the art that they have. I mean,
I think there's there's also a point where you realize
(02:10):
that this thing that you're trying to achieve doesn't welcome you.
I was learning about all these other cuisines and you know,
not realizing that I had my own, and anytime I
would try to bring it up, it would it would
be like, oh no, it doesn't fall into this category.
And so you know, the categories are an even there
(02:31):
to let you in, Like you kind of have to
create your own category. So like the structures in place
are not really there to welcome people like us or
to tell our stories, which is why it's so important
to tell our own stories and to create our own structures.
Regional dishes, the power and privilege of owning your own
(02:52):
story today. On point of origin, it's Niger, okay chef,
So the people want to know Niger. What is Niger?
Nay Nina. Nina is kind of like you know, you know,
(03:12):
you think of Chicago, you think of Chi town. Nangi
is the the young people's name for Nigeria, you know,
the youth's abbreviation for Nandia and Nangil like the street
name for Nigeria amongst the chef Michael alec Debe moved
(03:32):
to Legos from New York in February two thousand sixteen.
It was his first time home in thirteen years. Elec
deb whose mother and grandmother were also chefs, cooked in
some of the nation's pre eminent kitchens before moving back
to Nigeria to find himself in the food that he
was preparing. My grandmother and my mother, you know, had
(03:54):
training in culinary arts that never really went into culinary
arts in in a philosophical way, and I I found
that I can actually make a difference in the direction
that I approached the art and the type of influence
that I can have with the representation I can be
(04:17):
in culinary art. You know, you mentioned and I didn't
actually know this that your grandmother was also a chef
and Lego, so you're a third generation chef. Yes, during
the colonization of Nigeria, my grandmother studied under French chef
in Nigeria, I mean Suilarry Legos. Then you know, used
(04:40):
that as her means of being an entrepreneur. She had
a catering school and restaurants and a fashion school, and
she used that to raise her seven kids, six girls
and one boy. And you would find in my mother's
side of the family, most of the women are in
(05:02):
the line of food, including my mom. You know, philosophically speaking,
what is your point of view as both a professional
but as sort of an ambassador of Nigerian cuisine as well.
I've always thought, you know, our food can stand amongst
the more accolated cuisines around the world. I just it
(05:27):
just needed to be understood and represented in a way that,
you know, was approachable enough for people to want to
know more about it. And for me, I think Nigerian
food and African cuisine in general has been under underrated
on the global scheme and being misunderstood for the most part.
(05:47):
And I find myself very lucky to have had so
many opportunities to explore different cultures cuisine under chefs who
really adhere to what it means to be philosophical about
the approach they take in food, and that really helped
me in in the in the direction that I went
(06:09):
in African cuisine. I'm always interested in chefs like yourself
who have this formal education and come back home, so
to speak. And you've sort of alluded to this and
what you just said, but I guess I'm hoping you
(06:30):
can further articulate kind of what you feel you gathered
from the chefs in those formal environments, who themselves were
coming with a very strong point of view around food.
What is it that you were able to garner there
that you brought back to Nigerian cuisine. I think the
power of storytelling. People often say the people who write
(06:54):
the story, who tell the story on the story, And
what I learned from a lot of the chefs are
the stories they tell. They get to tell the story
of their cuisine, of their food, of their people through
the art that they have and through the art that
(07:15):
they exhibit. UM and seeing how a tradition, seeing how
people um can be translated into the storytelling of food
and food experiences, and seeing how even chefs that I
didn't work with, like Renewed Zeppi and alex Atala and
mass Mosbotura, how their approach towards their cuisine have changed
(07:40):
the world's perception. For our Reneed, no one looked at
Scandinavian food as you know, anything more than potatoes and
you know, carrots, And now the Northern cuisine is being
revered and it's because of that representation and the stories
that are told behind the food, the people and the tradition.
(08:01):
So I think that one of the most powerful things
I've learned from the chefs, it's the power of the
power of storytelling and the representation the people telling the story.
You know, it's a predictable question among first generation and
immigrant chefs. We want to know was there a particular
(08:23):
dish or a moment of enlightenment that could be credited
for one of the chefs that they were working under.
I've asked this question of many chefs many times before,
but for Chef Michael Aldbe, the answer came as a surprise.
Presumably he learned techniques that eluded him before walking into
the door of some of the nation's best restaurants. But
(08:45):
what was far more indelible for the young chef is
just how much freedom of expression had played a role
in granting European and European trained chefs the ability to
talk about the food that they were making. As you
are now writing your own story, what is it that
you want people to know about Nigerian food? The diversity,
(09:08):
the diversity of Nigerian food. I have a strong opinion
about when people classify African cuisine as as just a
singular cuisine. You know, Nigerian food and Ethiopian food that
as different as German food can be from French food.
And coming back home, it was very important for me
(09:30):
to learn about that diversity even further off, specifically Nigerian
food and in in trying to attain that knowledge, I
started traveling by road across Nigeria and cooking with the
keepers of the cuisine so grandmother's you know, cooks in
very very rural areas of Nigeria and sharing how diverse
(09:55):
in technique, in culture, in flavor, in ingredients that Gerian
food biz. I remember one of the most transcendent moments
in my travel was experienced in within I was in
(10:16):
Cross River. Cross River is on the border of Nigeria
and Cameroon and just experiencing like pepper soup. Pepper soup
is a is a broth like soup with primarily seafood.
People you know across Nigeria, you know enjoy. But just
to see that the differences in the spices that are
(10:40):
used from the northern part of Cross River to the
eastern part of Cross River completely different. So traditionally, generally
pepper soup often have about maybe eight to thirteen different spices,
bark spices, so it's not really pepper. So you you
have something like alabash, not meg, yeah, clothes, lemon, grass,
(11:05):
so you have all these spices and ingredients that come
up into like this fortified broth. Then the seafood is added.
But you find in the northern part of the country,
because it's not very close to the coast, they use
a lot more dried seafood. So you see a lot
of stockfish, you see a lot of dried catfish being
used in the pepper soup. But then you go to
(11:27):
the coastal part of Cross River and you find a
very very fresh approach towards the preparation of pepper soup
and just this is literally you know, in the same state, uh.
And it was just very transformative for me to experience
that and see how passionate they were about just the
(11:52):
origionality of how they experience one certain dish. The market
(12:14):
you're hearing is called Oyingbo Market, one of the oldest
and busiest markets and legos. It's popular for fresh produce
from all parts of the country, from tomatoes, onions, pumpkin
leaves and peppers to live chickens and catfish. As you
walk through the market, you can hear the sounds of
people grinding dry fruit products such as dried yams and
(12:36):
cassava into flour, and traders calling you to patronize their
stand and purchase fresh produce. The market has its own ecosystem.
At a certain point, you will hear the sound coming
from the mosque. At this time of day, Islamic traders
go to the mosque and pray the people who are
(13:01):
coming to your pop ups or who are eating your food.
I'm assuming that these are mostly people who are are Nigerians, right,
who are in legos. Definitely, it's a good mix. So
you have a lot of Nigerians and you have a
lot of experts that are in Nigeria that want to
experience Nigerian food and understand more about Maningerian food in
(13:26):
a way that they can't anywhere else. So eaton Test kitchen.
It's a space that I have in equality that I
practice and also exhibit some of my work. And what
I do with those type of experiences is give people
and more insightful experience into the different cultures we have
(13:52):
in Nigeria. So I can host a dinner specifically exhibiting
e b Bo cuisine in my way, you know, is indigenous,
what flavor profiles, what ingredients are indigenous to the Bibio people,
or the Colaba people, or the Ausa people or specific
region in the North. And using that approach to kind
(14:14):
of an educational conversational approach towards experiencing Nigerian cuisine and
its diversity is what I do in the test catching.
I'm curious about your time in the US as an
African chef. What your experience was like in talking to
or being in community to or with rather other African
(14:37):
American chefs. Did you find that there was any difference
culturally in the experiences that you all are having an
African American chef and and visit Nigeria, and we went
to eat at a local booka and we we ordered
almost everything on the menu, and you know, at a
(14:58):
certain point, you know, he was he said, this reminds
me of my grandmother's ban dish. And that was an
incredible moment, you know, because of course, why is from
the southern part of America. You know, a lot of
West African people were taken to the southern part of America.
(15:21):
And it was a very, very um important moment because
we were now able to have this experiential synchronicity in
the way we saw each other's food and the way
that we experienced it, rather than two different entities, the
(15:42):
two different cuisine more so like uh, you know, a
derivative of a cuisine of the people. And I think
it's important that Africans and African Americans begin to see
those similarities and what makes us similar rather than different. Um.
I think African cuisines in general is experiencing you know,
(16:05):
this burst and curiosity globally. And I think it's a
great time to be an African chef, an African American
chef exploring the history and indigenousness of the food that
we call ours and and sharing it of course, M
a little lot. Are you do shure frough vallet? Social
(16:34):
shure frough vallet, social shure frough vallet. And what do
you remember about your childhood in Nigeria food wise? Otherwise
food wise? Gosh, I remember farm the table was pretty
(16:57):
much how we ate. I I didn't realize that that
was a style of eating or a thing until I
moved here and I was in the food world and
working at farm to table restaurants. But pretty much. I mean,
if we were having chicken that evening, we had been
running around just a couple of hours before. Or if
(17:19):
we were having spinach or something like that, I was
picking it from the garden. So I grew up in Lagos,
which is like the city, It's like the hub the
one day. Kamalafe is a recipe developer in Brooklyn, New York.
She's also the author of the New York Times feature
Ten Essential Nigerian Recipes, and she is the founder of
(17:39):
the dinner series My Immigrant Food Is. I'm from Nigeria.
I wasn't born there, but I grew up there from
about I would say, like two to sixteen when I
moved to the US. So my formative years, I would say,
we're in Nigeria, and both my parents and Nigeria and so.
(18:00):
And my dad was from just a little outside of Legos,
a state called a k T and I have gathered
from him that he grew up eating like that, you know,
growing whatever he ate, or maybe a neighbor growing whatever
they ate. But food was it was as much a
part of life as everything else. You weren't removed from it.
(18:23):
I remember thinking that the rich people had orange juice
and boxes and we had to we had to squeeze
the orang or like the people on TV had orange
juice and boxes. And I'm interested that you chose the
terminology farm to table to describe that experience, because obviously
(18:46):
that's you know, language and ideology that really has sprung
from the Western world. So um, at what point did
you realize the way that you had grown up with food, um,
was actually something that was now starting to be coveted
or fetishized or commercialized in the US. Absolutely. Um. So
(19:07):
I moved here to go to college, and then I
decided to move to Atlanta, And it was while I
was living there in Atlanta and I was working at
a restaurant called Restaurant Eugene, and I remember whatever was
on the menu that night was something that the the
chef where the farmers had picked up at the market
(19:28):
or um. We had this farmer Dan who would bring
huge boxes of strawberries, and I sort of recalled that
that was what I had known growing up in Nigeria.
It was the first time I had felt not so
much removed from the food world as um my culinary
(19:50):
education and my training had taught me. And I was like, oh, like,
I guess what how I grew up was farming the
table then, But later on, when I finally got to
revisit Nigeria, I sort of shunned that that terminology because
I felt that it added another class layer to it,
(20:14):
where it was something where you had to aspire to be,
but it really just was. It wasn't something for rich people,
it wasn't something for special people. It's really just how
most of the world eats. So to backtrack a little bit,
(20:39):
I had been running these dinners called My Immigrant Food
Is and so I started these dinners sort of to
create a platform too for me, primarily to learn about
my own cuisine and my own culture and through food,
which is how I usually examine a lot of things.
I started them in two thousand and sixteen, you know,
after right after the election, and there was so much
(21:00):
going on, and I felt that it would be great
to be able to have conversations about, like the immigrant narrative,
because it was something that I had never really heard
in the larger discussion as it was in two thousand
and sixteen. And so the immigrant story, the immigrant narrative
what happens when someone moves here, because the stories before
(21:24):
that I always felt were so incomplete. It would go
something like, oh, so and so moved and then their
family joined them, and now they're living the American dream.
And I'm like, well, what how did they get a visa?
Or you know, how did they move their family here?
You know, there were so many gaps in that story.
And also I had been going through my own immigrant
(21:44):
crisis way. I had lived undocumented for about ten years
in the United States. I wasn't able to go back
to Nigeria in that time, but I just hadn't been
back in about eighteen years at that point. When people
think of immigrants, my face is not the first one
(22:06):
that comes up, and so I thought that these are
the stories that you hear, but you don't really see
the faces of these people. And so I wanted a
platform to share my story and also give other people
a chance to share their stories. And so I wanted
to also talk about the regionality of the cuisine, because
(22:27):
Nigerian food isn't just one thing depending on the region,
depending on the people, depending on the part of the country.
It's influenced by all of those different things. And so
I thought that it wouldn't be fair if I said, oh,
Albeta is the classic Nigerian the classic Nigerian sauce, but
(22:48):
you know it's not called Alberta. So let's talk about
some of these dishes. Maybe we should start with one
from Legos. What is a quintessential dish from the big
city of Nigeria. I would say Free John. To tell
the story of Free John is serves to tell the
story of Legas because Legos is a place where a
(23:10):
lot of people have settled and it was a port city,
and so it was the seat of the slave trade,
which is an interesting story to tell because the story
of slavery is also the story of Legos. And so
for John is a dish that was brought back by
people who returned to Legos, who found their way back.
(23:34):
They discovered that they were from Nigeria. They returned to Legas,
but they brought with them cuisines, cultures, customs um from
Brazil where they had been. And so these are people
who were taken as slaves away, but they made their
way back to Nigeria. And so for John is a
dish that tells that story, because it's also a dish
(23:57):
that served in Brazil. So I love this part because
though I haven't been to Brazil, I always think of
Brazilians as our cousins on the other side of the
Transatlantic slave trade. And as always, this connection is most
(24:17):
easily identifiable in our food. After the abolition of slavery
in Brazil, many Brazilians of West African origin returned to
Nigeria and settled in Lagos Island, now known as the
city's Brazilian Quarter. Their unique blend of African and Latin
cultures flowered into a cuisine that continues to be enjoyed
(24:39):
across Nigeria. Free Home is reminiscent of Brazilian Vigoatum for
John is a dish of beans cooked and pured with
coconut milk to make a sort of a thick soup.
(25:00):
And it's served typically with a fish in a tomato
based sauce and fish because Legos is also a port
city and so seafood is a big, a big part
of the cuisine of Legos. So it's it's a beans
purade with coconut milk served with a spicy tomato eat
fish sauce. What why is it such a thing as
(25:23):
it did? Let's take a quick break and meet your
one day in the kitchen as she walks us through
how she makes freege on. Soak your beans for four
hours and up to twelve hours, Rinse and transferred to
(25:43):
a heavy bottomed pot, pouring enough water to cover the
beans up to four inches. Make a bouquet garney with
your time, bay leaf, have onion and add to the
pot of beans. Simmer and low until the beans are
tender season Removed from heat and allow the beans to
(26:05):
cool in the cooking liquid. Discard the bouquet garden. Strain
out the liquid from the pot of beans. Puree the
beans with up to one cup of whole coconut milk.
Return the bean puree to the pot and keep warm
over low heat. Slice the remaining onion and saute with
(26:32):
olive oil over medium heat. Stare in the garlic, pavonera
and dried crayfish, adding the tomatoes plus juice, and allow
the sauce to simmer. When the sauce is slightly thickened,
adding the red palm oil. Cook this for an additional
two to three minutes. To serve, combine the herbs, scallions,
(26:56):
and lime zest in a small bowl. Divide the bean
puree among several bowls and top with a spoon of
the chunky tomato sauce. Sprinkle with gary, scatter the herbs
over the top, and finish with a squeeze of lime juice. Okay,
(27:18):
so we're talking Nigerian food. I feel like you know
where this is going. I don't want it to go there.
I'm contractually obligated. Let's let's just do it. Let's just
do it, all right, let's get into it. I have
(27:38):
to ask you about Jolov, of course, of course, and
I know that this is something that is shall we say, spirited.
Merited is a great word. Spirited is a great word
among many countries, and many of those of us from
of the diaspora. So what is the deal with joll
(28:01):
of rice? Like, why is it such a thing? Why
is it such a thing as a dish? Or why
is it such a thing that people want to own
it so bad? I think I think both, Like, what
is the relationship between the two, you know what, what
is the significance of this dish that it kind of
(28:23):
moves between countries as a sense of pride and friendly contention?
Um So, I think jella price is easy, easily recognizable
for one, I mean, I think it's also just delicious.
I think that the story of how it's traveled across
(28:45):
West Africa is an interesting one. I can say this
as a Nigerian that it's it's not a dish that
belonged to Nigerian's you know. I think it's it's a
dish that's traveled. It's a dish that we've come to.
I don't think that it's a that we originated, but
it's rooted in Senegal. If you explore Senegalese cuisine, there's
(29:07):
a dish called tape of gen. It's their popular dish
there and it's a dish of broken rice cooked with
meat and vegetables in a tomato based sauce. The difference
with that angela frice is that we typically don't cook
jella frice with meat and vegetables. It's typically just rice
(29:28):
that's cooked in the tomato based sauce. So tabogen it's
a dish that the you know, the wall of people
who are also called the Jela people have thankfully given
to us, you know. And so I think every West
African country has made it their own and has found
a way to make it their own. And jela frice
is something that's just easily recognizable. If you're a West
(29:50):
African and you see a pot of jella frice, you're like, oh,
I know that, I know that dish. I know where
you might be from, depending on how you make it.
I think jello frice in Nigeria is also associated with
party and celebration and and on the weekend. It wasn't
really a dish that we ate every day. Maybe things
(30:13):
have changed now. Um I asked you wanted her thoughts
on Nigerian food becoming increasingly mainstreamed. She made an important
point that you can't really put a trend on food.
Nigerians have been eating their cuisine for thousands of years,
and it's not possible for food or an ingredient to
be newly discovered. Uh. It's also important to recognize that
(30:36):
it's not a trend. It's you know, it's a way
of life. It's a source of living and has been
for a very long time. The fact that it's getting
the attention that it is right now is good in
some ways because it's sort of like levels out the
playing field, you know, where I can now talk about
(30:56):
my cuisine and people can recognize, oh yeah, jellofrice like that?
Heard of that before? You know. I think that all
cuisines deserve this recognition, you know. I don't think that
it does humanity due diligence to only label one cuisine
as a trend or as important. I think that all
(31:18):
couisins deserve recognition because it belongs to a people, and
those people deem it important, whether you do or not.
I hope that the people who are involved in Nigerian
Nigerian food are given the opportunity to tell our own stories,
because I think that's also where it's gone very wrong
(31:41):
with other other couisins. My brother Tune day Way is
(32:04):
a new Orleans based chef and writer. I'm always humbled
not only to call you a friend, Tune Day, but
to consume your work as someone who thinks deeply about
matters of food, access, justice, equity, culinary arts. You know
all of it, and I'm really pleased that you're joining
us today. On point of origin, I thank you for
your time and talent. Of course I know who you are,
(32:27):
but for those who are listening to this podcast who
want to know who is Tune Day, way, who are you?
The first thing is like I'll just say I'm I'm
an inguriant, which is extremely to say because I haven't
been home in twenty years. Well, yeah, I'm just an
durant cook and a writer, and I used like food
(32:48):
and my writing to interrogate systems of exploitative power, and
then and then these systems of power that are explodative
created disparities. And so now my work is moving towards
trying to close those disparities while absolutely acknowledging that they
can never be closed completely or even remotely. So yeah,
(33:15):
that's I guess who I am? And centering yourself as Nigerian.
When did you come to the United States? So when
I came to the United States, I moved to Detroit,
and then um to living my aunt, and then we
moved out of Detroit to a suburb of Detroit. And
(33:36):
then two thousand and eleven, so eleven years after I
moved back into the city by myself, and two years
later I opened up a restaurant in Detroit, technically in
ham Traffic, which is an unclay within the city of Detroit.
And I tell the Detroit story because Detroit was central
(33:57):
to me opening up a restaurant and getting your food.
It was serendipity. Like if I didn't move to Detroit
in two thousand and eleven, I would never have been
in food. Like being in Detroit at that time and
having sort of access that I had, and being in
mostly wide spaces, the opportunities were not as democratic. They
(34:17):
were not nearly as democratic as I thought. So. Distribution
of capital, both material and social, is a big part
of your work. At what point did you start to
(34:39):
realize that you yourself had developed a social capital that
you could spin down I was I was cooking and
telling the story about endurining food and like using it
as a way to juxtapose or to juxtapose against European
or Eurocentric food and trying to get people to think
about food as different kinds of food, as having different
(35:02):
kinds of like parallel relationships instead of the way it
was thought about, which was like French cuisines at the
top and then you know, brown and black food is
at the bottom. So so this was the work that
I was trying to do, was just about engaging people
around questions of superiority when it came to food. But
what was really the thing was the Black Lives Matter movement,
(35:26):
which had started probably in two thousand and fourteen fifteen. Yeah,
I think around two thousand and fifteen, at least for me,
it rose to the top of the of of national
consciousness in the United States, you know, and it definitely
like it definitely came to my consciousness more assertainly then.
(35:49):
And I would say just completely honestly, like before two
thousand and sixteen, I didn't have any politics in the
sense that, like I didn't have an analysis, like a
critical analysis of power. Can you tell me like what
the impetus was to kind of shift more into making
(36:11):
your dinner almost like performance? Aren't I wanted to talk
about blackness? That those were the first series of Dinners
that I did, but I had no idea what he
was going to be, So I just, you know, I
had this the first series of Dinners, and I invited
black people in New Orleans to share the experience experiences
(36:33):
of being black. And then from that, you know, it
just became me then asking questions to these folks in
the space, and then the white people who started, you know,
coming to the dinners, it became more mixed, and then
I started asking questions to the white people, and then
it moved away, you know, from a dinner series on
(36:55):
blackness to an interrogation of whiteness because you know, folks
on the problem. I mean, the part of the racism
isn't the black folks, as I've heard some people say,
and and and it's true. So so it moved to that,
and I am aversed to performance. But you know, to
your point, I guess that dinners were performative because there
was this like element of like a strong element of tension.
(37:19):
In fact, it wasn't. In two thousand eighteen, Today hosted
a month long dinner series that was somewhat controversial. So
I'm going to try to explain for the listeners what
was going on here and Tunday will later explain in
greater detail, but basically, he was in New Orleans and
he hosted a pop up in which the average dish
costs twelve dollars, but for white diners, they were asked
(37:43):
to pay or recommended to pay thirty dollars for the
same dish. The price of that dish reflects the racial
wealth gap in New Orleans, which is something like ten
to one, and I guess it is somewhat performative, but
it is also in keeping with two days approach in
the kitchen and outside this series. Blackness. My work has
(38:07):
taught me is that you have to look like beneath
you know, you have to have multiple reads, right, So
so the first read was I was kind of surprised
at all the white people that I asked. Most of
them that I asked to pay the higher price did so,
(38:27):
and I was like, wow, this is incredible. But I
then started to like think about how how they did
it right? So a lot of time girls happening was
like they were negotiating, you know, folks, where is this
money going to? Who is the extra money going to?
So if I pay thirty dollars instead of twelve dollars
(38:48):
for a mail where does the difference go to? And
then people wanted to just pay the twelve but then
maybe leave me a big tip to know all there
was all this maneuvering, and what I realized was that,
you know, it's a difference between like money and power. Right,
So folks are very comfortable giving money, especially when it's charity.
But to give up power, which is to maybe sometimes
(39:10):
give money and then give up control, it is super difficult.
So and this is like the amazing thing with racism,
like racism or any sort of power. Disparity is so
ingenious because you think it's one thing and then you
go in there you find it as something completely different,
you know, and everything really is just um, it's just
(39:31):
a mask for for power. And so when we talk
about you know, like I talked about reparations or I
talk about closing disparity, it is just as important how
it is done, not not that it's done, because people
can give money, but if they give money, but they
still control how the money is spent, who the money
(39:51):
goes to when they give the money, and nothing changes,
you know. So that was the biggest lesson. Was there
a moment where you thought that this interrogation of whiteness
at these meals needed to be taken to another level
(40:12):
or was this just an organic outgrowth. Yeah, so the
answer is both. Right. Like, if I was to describe
my work to interrogate systems of exploitive power, which is
what I was doing at the dinner table during my
My Dinner series, I was interrogating whiteness, which to me
is a system of exploitive power. And then these systems,
(40:34):
like I said earlier, create disparities. And so I got
like emotionally exhausted from doing this interrogation without seeing any
from my perspective, tangible change. So I wanted to move
to closing, closing these disparities and let me go back
(40:57):
to them. Before two thousand six, team, before this shift,
when you were motivated by trying to get people to
think more deeply about or even perhaps at all, Nigerian food,
what is it that you felt was absent in the
lexicon of the food world? Um, in that moment to
(41:19):
use a gender terms too pregnant, with too many, too
many words. Two, there was too much, it was too abstract,
you know American food or your eu eccentric food was
self referential. It only talked about itself, talked about walls
on the plate, It didn't talk about anything else. You know,
when I was growing up and the way I understood
(41:41):
and during food and people have different perspectives on this.
You know, you eat the food, and the food is
is nourishment, yes, but it's also an experience. When I
served my food, I just served it, and I served
it mostly to American folks, and I didn't say what
was on the menu, not because I was trying to
(42:03):
be a dick or anything, but because I didn't want
to give folks references to foods they've never had. That
We're based on a cuisine that is completely different from
Urian food. So I didn't want to tell somebody that
like a goosey tastes like blue cheese, because it doesn't.
(42:25):
You know, you have to like eat a goosey to
know what it tastes like. And it's it's funny that
you see you say I'm lexicon because it's the language
you needed to be simplified, and I think it's still
it still does I am interested in you know, like
you leave with the fact that you are Nigerian. Obviously
you are Nigerian through and through, but you grew up
(42:47):
in another sense, you know, here in the US for
the last twenty years around African American people culture. How
do you hold your Nigerian nous in the context of
blackness in the United States of America. That's such a
contested question, Steven, for real, uh, And it's also like
an uncomfortable question for me because I would say, and
(43:11):
again this is something that I didn't know into two
thousand and sixteen that most of my time here I've
been shaped around africanness and whiteness. My Black American experience
is like mostly through like cultural consumption, lack of music, fashion, cinema,
all that kind of stuff. And this is I don't
know this made controversial or hard to say. This is
(43:32):
a complicity too, in that Black Americans are still Americans, right,
And I think that to a certain extent is irresponsibility
for Black Americans to begin to reach out to Africans,
you know, and do the work of understanding say the
(43:55):
African experience and then the African immigrant experience, because that's uh,
those are like very specific experiences and there is there
there's domination from both sides. Like you know, I grew
up in Algeria and I had we had kids in
my high school who were Americans who were black, and
(44:16):
they were treated differently from me because like they had
an accent that was more I'm coveted, you know. Similarly,
you know I have African or my my Nangerian parents
and aunties, like sometimes may look down on certain black
people because you know, of of stereotypes that they have
(44:36):
been fed. And so I think it's great that we
that that we have these distinct identities, you know, across
the continent and the Aspera and within the diaspora and
also within the continent. But these disparities or differences need
to shouldn't create the riffs that they have. This universality
(45:01):
pain for the events despite dispiredness as possible because of
a few things, including all food. Yeah, thank you so
much for tuning in to point of origin. You know,
(45:23):
I have so much enjoyed this episode. As I mentioned
at the top of the show, these are three individuals
whose work I admire and I think are doing the
imperative work of expanding people's ideas about African cuisine and
and affect Africanness. And there was so much to absorb
from these conversations. But the one thing that I'd like
to call back to a takeaway, if you will, was
(45:45):
Chef Aldabe's response to what he learned in formal culinary
education and in professional kitchens, and that was owning their
own stories, more than their ideas, more than their techniques,
and yes, even more than their talent, was the biggest
predictor of what we perceived to be genius. And for
(46:05):
his ability to identify this, I think Chef Alec Debe
himself is a genius. Genius is not the property of
a particular place or people. Why is it, for instance,
so uncommon for non white chefs to be referred to
in this manner? And to what degree have we conflated
genius and craft with access to audience and capital. Finally,
(46:30):
for the geniuses cooking and the shadows of chefs who
benefit from the power of their own narratives, it is
my hope that they will never fail to lose sight
of their own m m m m m m m
m m m m m m m m h. We'll
(46:56):
be back next week with our second episode of Point
of Origin season two on behalf of our team at
wet Stone Magazine and wet Stone Media. We thank you
for tuning in. Please, if you like what you've just heard,
rate us review us, give us five stars so that
we can continue to make these podcasts just for you.
I'd like to thank our guest today, Chef Michael Alecdby
(47:16):
one Day Como Lafe and Chef tun day Way Special
thanks to Selene Glacier, our lead producer, to Cat Hong,
our editor, Quentin Lebau, our production intern. And to my
business partner who makes all things at wet Stone possible,
our co founder, Melissa She Thanks mel and thanks to
our friends at I Heart Radio for helping us bring
(47:37):
you this podcast. To Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer, and
to Christopher Hasiotis, our executive producer. I'm your host, the
origin Forager Steven Sadderfield, and we'll be back here next
week with more from wet Stone Magazine's Point of Origin podcast.
That's all for this episode of Point of Origin. Thanks
(47:59):
for listening and supporting the wet Stone podcast, where we
travel the world to champion food as a means of
expanding human empathy. To keep abreast with all things wet Stone,
follow us on I g at wet Stone magazine or
online at wet Stone magazine dot com. That's w h
E T S t o n E magazine dot com,
(48:22):
where you will find the latest on all things wet Stone,
including the details from today's show and information about purchasing
our print magazine. Once again, I'm your host, Steven Saderfield,
and we'll see you next week. H
Okay, so we're talking Nigerian food. I feel like you
know where this is going. I don't want it to
go there. I'm contractually obligated. Okay, let's let's just do it.
Let's just do it, all right, let's get into it.
(00:20):
I have to ask you about Jolo, of course, and
I know that this is something that is shall we
say spirited. Sted is a great word, Spirited is a
great worry. Hello Point of origin listeners. I'm your host,
(00:44):
Stephen Saderfield. It's our second season of the podcast and
we're back in better than ever, delivering you the very
best stories from the world of food from around the world.
And to begin our second season in celebration of Black history,
we're in Africa, in Nigeria to be more specific. And
(01:04):
I'm so very excited about this season and today's episode
in particular, because today we're talking to three Nigerian chefs
who are bringing Nigerian cuisine to the four for diners
all over the world and in some cases bringing it
back to the consciousness of Nigerians in their own country.
And the thing that makes each of the three of
our chefs so unique and the reason that we have
(01:27):
them on the show today is that they're not simply
preparing food. They're using food in a very specific way
to make a broader point about how they see the
world and what they want you to see in it too.
I think the power of storytelling. People often say the
people who write the story will tell the story on
(01:49):
the story. And what I've learned from a lot of
the chefs are the stories they tell. They get to
tell the story of their cuisine, of their food, of
their people through the art that they have. I mean,
I think there's there's also a point where you realize
(02:10):
that this thing that you're trying to achieve doesn't welcome you.
I was learning about all these other cuisines and you know,
not realizing that I had my own, and anytime I
would try to bring it up, it would it would
be like, oh no, it doesn't fall into this category.
And so you know, the categories are an even there
(02:31):
to let you in, Like you kind of have to
create your own category. So like the structures in place
are not really there to welcome people like us or
to tell our stories, which is why it's so important
to tell our own stories and to create our own structures.
Regional dishes, the power and privilege of owning your own
(02:52):
story today. On point of origin, it's Niger, okay chef,
So the people want to know Niger. What is Niger?
Nay Nina. Nina is kind of like you know, you know,
(03:12):
you think of Chicago, you think of Chi town. Nangi
is the the young people's name for Nigeria, you know,
the youth's abbreviation for Nandia and Nangil like the street
name for Nigeria amongst the chef Michael alec Debe moved
(03:32):
to Legos from New York in February two thousand sixteen.
It was his first time home in thirteen years. Elec
deb whose mother and grandmother were also chefs, cooked in
some of the nation's pre eminent kitchens before moving back
to Nigeria to find himself in the food that he
was preparing. My grandmother and my mother, you know, had
(03:54):
training in culinary arts that never really went into culinary
arts in in a philosophical way, and I I found
that I can actually make a difference in the direction
that I approached the art and the type of influence
that I can have with the representation I can be
(04:17):
in culinary art. You know, you mentioned and I didn't
actually know this that your grandmother was also a chef
and Lego, so you're a third generation chef. Yes, during
the colonization of Nigeria, my grandmother studied under French chef
in Nigeria, I mean Suilarry Legos. Then you know, used
(04:40):
that as her means of being an entrepreneur. She had
a catering school and restaurants and a fashion school, and
she used that to raise her seven kids, six girls
and one boy. And you would find in my mother's
side of the family, most of the women are in
(05:02):
the line of food, including my mom. You know, philosophically speaking,
what is your point of view as both a professional
but as sort of an ambassador of Nigerian cuisine as well.
I've always thought, you know, our food can stand amongst
the more accolated cuisines around the world. I just it
(05:27):
just needed to be understood and represented in a way that,
you know, was approachable enough for people to want to
know more about it. And for me, I think Nigerian
food and African cuisine in general has been under underrated
on the global scheme and being misunderstood for the most part.
(05:47):
And I find myself very lucky to have had so
many opportunities to explore different cultures cuisine under chefs who
really adhere to what it means to be philosophical about
the approach they take in food, and that really helped
me in in the in the direction that I went
(06:09):
in African cuisine. I'm always interested in chefs like yourself
who have this formal education and come back home, so
to speak. And you've sort of alluded to this and
what you just said, but I guess I'm hoping you
(06:30):
can further articulate kind of what you feel you gathered
from the chefs in those formal environments, who themselves were
coming with a very strong point of view around food.
What is it that you were able to garner there
that you brought back to Nigerian cuisine. I think the
power of storytelling. People often say the people who write
(06:54):
the story, who tell the story on the story, And
what I learned from a lot of the chefs are
the stories they tell. They get to tell the story
of their cuisine, of their food, of their people through
the art that they have and through the art that
(07:15):
they exhibit. UM and seeing how a tradition, seeing how
people um can be translated into the storytelling of food
and food experiences, and seeing how even chefs that I
didn't work with, like Renewed Zeppi and alex Atala and
mass Mosbotura, how their approach towards their cuisine have changed
(07:40):
the world's perception. For our Reneed, no one looked at
Scandinavian food as you know, anything more than potatoes and
you know, carrots, And now the Northern cuisine is being
revered and it's because of that representation and the stories
that are told behind the food, the people and the tradition.
(08:01):
So I think that one of the most powerful things
I've learned from the chefs, it's the power of the
power of storytelling and the representation the people telling the story.
You know, it's a predictable question among first generation and
immigrant chefs. We want to know was there a particular
(08:23):
dish or a moment of enlightenment that could be credited
for one of the chefs that they were working under.
I've asked this question of many chefs many times before,
but for Chef Michael Aldbe, the answer came as a surprise.
Presumably he learned techniques that eluded him before walking into
the door of some of the nation's best restaurants. But
(08:45):
what was far more indelible for the young chef is
just how much freedom of expression had played a role
in granting European and European trained chefs the ability to
talk about the food that they were making. As you
are now writing your own story, what is it that
you want people to know about Nigerian food? The diversity,
(09:08):
the diversity of Nigerian food. I have a strong opinion
about when people classify African cuisine as as just a
singular cuisine. You know, Nigerian food and Ethiopian food that
as different as German food can be from French food.
And coming back home, it was very important for me
(09:30):
to learn about that diversity even further off, specifically Nigerian
food and in in trying to attain that knowledge, I
started traveling by road across Nigeria and cooking with the
keepers of the cuisine so grandmother's you know, cooks in
very very rural areas of Nigeria and sharing how diverse
(09:55):
in technique, in culture, in flavor, in ingredients that Gerian
food biz. I remember one of the most transcendent moments
in my travel was experienced in within I was in
(10:16):
Cross River. Cross River is on the border of Nigeria
and Cameroon and just experiencing like pepper soup. Pepper soup
is a is a broth like soup with primarily seafood.
People you know across Nigeria, you know enjoy. But just
to see that the differences in the spices that are
(10:40):
used from the northern part of Cross River to the
eastern part of Cross River completely different. So traditionally, generally
pepper soup often have about maybe eight to thirteen different spices,
bark spices, so it's not really pepper. So you you
have something like alabash, not meg, yeah, clothes, lemon, grass,
(11:05):
so you have all these spices and ingredients that come
up into like this fortified broth. Then the seafood is added.
But you find in the northern part of the country,
because it's not very close to the coast, they use
a lot more dried seafood. So you see a lot
of stockfish, you see a lot of dried catfish being
used in the pepper soup. But then you go to
(11:27):
the coastal part of Cross River and you find a
very very fresh approach towards the preparation of pepper soup
and just this is literally you know, in the same state, uh.
And it was just very transformative for me to experience
that and see how passionate they were about just the
(11:52):
origionality of how they experience one certain dish. The market
(12:14):
you're hearing is called Oyingbo Market, one of the oldest
and busiest markets and legos. It's popular for fresh produce
from all parts of the country, from tomatoes, onions, pumpkin
leaves and peppers to live chickens and catfish. As you
walk through the market, you can hear the sounds of
people grinding dry fruit products such as dried yams and
(12:36):
cassava into flour, and traders calling you to patronize their
stand and purchase fresh produce. The market has its own ecosystem.
At a certain point, you will hear the sound coming
from the mosque. At this time of day, Islamic traders
go to the mosque and pray the people who are
(13:01):
coming to your pop ups or who are eating your food.
I'm assuming that these are mostly people who are are Nigerians, right,
who are in legos. Definitely, it's a good mix. So
you have a lot of Nigerians and you have a
lot of experts that are in Nigeria that want to
experience Nigerian food and understand more about Maningerian food in
(13:26):
a way that they can't anywhere else. So eaton Test kitchen.
It's a space that I have in equality that I
practice and also exhibit some of my work. And what
I do with those type of experiences is give people
and more insightful experience into the different cultures we have
(13:52):
in Nigeria. So I can host a dinner specifically exhibiting
e b Bo cuisine in my way, you know, is indigenous,
what flavor profiles, what ingredients are indigenous to the Bibio people,
or the Colaba people, or the Ausa people or specific
region in the North. And using that approach to kind
(14:14):
of an educational conversational approach towards experiencing Nigerian cuisine and
its diversity is what I do in the test catching.
I'm curious about your time in the US as an
African chef. What your experience was like in talking to
or being in community to or with rather other African
(14:37):
American chefs. Did you find that there was any difference
culturally in the experiences that you all are having an
African American chef and and visit Nigeria, and we went
to eat at a local booka and we we ordered
almost everything on the menu, and you know, at a
(14:58):
certain point, you know, he was he said, this reminds
me of my grandmother's ban dish. And that was an
incredible moment, you know, because of course, why is from
the southern part of America. You know, a lot of
West African people were taken to the southern part of America.
(15:21):
And it was a very, very um important moment because
we were now able to have this experiential synchronicity in
the way we saw each other's food and the way
that we experienced it, rather than two different entities, the
(15:42):
two different cuisine more so like uh, you know, a
derivative of a cuisine of the people. And I think
it's important that Africans and African Americans begin to see
those similarities and what makes us similar rather than different. Um.
I think African cuisines in general is experiencing you know,
(16:05):
this burst and curiosity globally. And I think it's a
great time to be an African chef, an African American
chef exploring the history and indigenousness of the food that
we call ours and and sharing it of course, M
a little lot. Are you do shure frough vallet? Social
(16:34):
shure frough vallet, social shure frough vallet. And what do
you remember about your childhood in Nigeria food wise? Otherwise
food wise? Gosh, I remember farm the table was pretty
(16:57):
much how we ate. I I didn't realize that that
was a style of eating or a thing until I
moved here and I was in the food world and
working at farm to table restaurants. But pretty much. I mean,
if we were having chicken that evening, we had been
running around just a couple of hours before. Or if
(17:19):
we were having spinach or something like that, I was
picking it from the garden. So I grew up in Lagos,
which is like the city, It's like the hub the
one day. Kamalafe is a recipe developer in Brooklyn, New York.
She's also the author of the New York Times feature
Ten Essential Nigerian Recipes, and she is the founder of
(17:39):
the dinner series My Immigrant Food Is. I'm from Nigeria.
I wasn't born there, but I grew up there from
about I would say, like two to sixteen when I
moved to the US. So my formative years, I would say,
we're in Nigeria, and both my parents and Nigeria and so.
(18:00):
And my dad was from just a little outside of Legos,
a state called a k T and I have gathered
from him that he grew up eating like that, you know,
growing whatever he ate, or maybe a neighbor growing whatever
they ate. But food was it was as much a
part of life as everything else. You weren't removed from it.
(18:23):
I remember thinking that the rich people had orange juice
and boxes and we had to we had to squeeze
the orang or like the people on TV had orange
juice and boxes. And I'm interested that you chose the
terminology farm to table to describe that experience, because obviously
(18:46):
that's you know, language and ideology that really has sprung
from the Western world. So um, at what point did
you realize the way that you had grown up with food, um,
was actually something that was now starting to be coveted
or fetishized or commercialized in the US. Absolutely. Um. So
(19:07):
I moved here to go to college, and then I
decided to move to Atlanta, And it was while I
was living there in Atlanta and I was working at
a restaurant called Restaurant Eugene, and I remember whatever was
on the menu that night was something that the the
chef where the farmers had picked up at the market
(19:28):
or um. We had this farmer Dan who would bring
huge boxes of strawberries, and I sort of recalled that
that was what I had known growing up in Nigeria.
It was the first time I had felt not so
much removed from the food world as um my culinary
(19:50):
education and my training had taught me. And I was like, oh, like,
I guess what how I grew up was farming the
table then, But later on, when I finally got to
revisit Nigeria, I sort of shunned that that terminology because
I felt that it added another class layer to it,
(20:14):
where it was something where you had to aspire to be,
but it really just was. It wasn't something for rich people,
it wasn't something for special people. It's really just how
most of the world eats. So to backtrack a little bit,
(20:39):
I had been running these dinners called My Immigrant Food
Is and so I started these dinners sort of to
create a platform too for me, primarily to learn about
my own cuisine and my own culture and through food,
which is how I usually examine a lot of things.
I started them in two thousand and sixteen, you know,
after right after the election, and there was so much
(21:00):
going on, and I felt that it would be great
to be able to have conversations about, like the immigrant narrative,
because it was something that I had never really heard
in the larger discussion as it was in two thousand
and sixteen. And so the immigrant story, the immigrant narrative
what happens when someone moves here, because the stories before
(21:24):
that I always felt were so incomplete. It would go
something like, oh, so and so moved and then their
family joined them, and now they're living the American dream.
And I'm like, well, what how did they get a visa?
Or you know, how did they move their family here?
You know, there were so many gaps in that story.
And also I had been going through my own immigrant
(21:44):
crisis way. I had lived undocumented for about ten years
in the United States. I wasn't able to go back
to Nigeria in that time, but I just hadn't been
back in about eighteen years at that point. When people
think of immigrants, my face is not the first one
(22:06):
that comes up, and so I thought that these are
the stories that you hear, but you don't really see
the faces of these people. And so I wanted a
platform to share my story and also give other people
a chance to share their stories. And so I wanted
to also talk about the regionality of the cuisine, because
(22:27):
Nigerian food isn't just one thing depending on the region,
depending on the people, depending on the part of the country.
It's influenced by all of those different things. And so
I thought that it wouldn't be fair if I said, oh,
Albeta is the classic Nigerian the classic Nigerian sauce, but
(22:48):
you know it's not called Alberta. So let's talk about
some of these dishes. Maybe we should start with one
from Legos. What is a quintessential dish from the big
city of Nigeria. I would say Free John. To tell
the story of Free John is serves to tell the
story of Legas because Legos is a place where a
(23:10):
lot of people have settled and it was a port city,
and so it was the seat of the slave trade,
which is an interesting story to tell because the story
of slavery is also the story of Legos. And so
for John is a dish that was brought back by
people who returned to Legos, who found their way back.
(23:34):
They discovered that they were from Nigeria. They returned to Legas,
but they brought with them cuisines, cultures, customs um from
Brazil where they had been. And so these are people
who were taken as slaves away, but they made their
way back to Nigeria. And so for John is a
dish that tells that story, because it's also a dish
(23:57):
that served in Brazil. So I love this part because
though I haven't been to Brazil, I always think of
Brazilians as our cousins on the other side of the
Transatlantic slave trade. And as always, this connection is most
(24:17):
easily identifiable in our food. After the abolition of slavery
in Brazil, many Brazilians of West African origin returned to
Nigeria and settled in Lagos Island, now known as the
city's Brazilian Quarter. Their unique blend of African and Latin
cultures flowered into a cuisine that continues to be enjoyed
(24:39):
across Nigeria. Free Home is reminiscent of Brazilian Vigoatum for
John is a dish of beans cooked and pured with
coconut milk to make a sort of a thick soup.
(25:00):
And it's served typically with a fish in a tomato
based sauce and fish because Legos is also a port
city and so seafood is a big, a big part
of the cuisine of Legos. So it's it's a beans
purade with coconut milk served with a spicy tomato eat
fish sauce. What why is it such a thing as
(25:23):
it did? Let's take a quick break and meet your
one day in the kitchen as she walks us through
how she makes freege on. Soak your beans for four
hours and up to twelve hours, Rinse and transferred to
(25:43):
a heavy bottomed pot, pouring enough water to cover the
beans up to four inches. Make a bouquet garney with
your time, bay leaf, have onion and add to the
pot of beans. Simmer and low until the beans are
tender season Removed from heat and allow the beans to
(26:05):
cool in the cooking liquid. Discard the bouquet garden. Strain
out the liquid from the pot of beans. Puree the
beans with up to one cup of whole coconut milk.
Return the bean puree to the pot and keep warm
over low heat. Slice the remaining onion and saute with
(26:32):
olive oil over medium heat. Stare in the garlic, pavonera
and dried crayfish, adding the tomatoes plus juice, and allow
the sauce to simmer. When the sauce is slightly thickened,
adding the red palm oil. Cook this for an additional
two to three minutes. To serve, combine the herbs, scallions,
(26:56):
and lime zest in a small bowl. Divide the bean
puree among several bowls and top with a spoon of
the chunky tomato sauce. Sprinkle with gary, scatter the herbs
over the top, and finish with a squeeze of lime juice. Okay,
(27:18):
so we're talking Nigerian food. I feel like you know
where this is going. I don't want it to go there.
I'm contractually obligated. Let's let's just do it. Let's just
do it, all right, let's get into it. I have
(27:38):
to ask you about Jolov, of course, of course, and
I know that this is something that is shall we say, spirited.
Merited is a great word. Spirited is a great word
among many countries, and many of those of us from
of the diaspora. So what is the deal with joll
(28:01):
of rice? Like, why is it such a thing? Why
is it such a thing as a dish? Or why
is it such a thing that people want to own
it so bad? I think I think both, Like, what
is the relationship between the two, you know what, what
is the significance of this dish that it kind of
(28:23):
moves between countries as a sense of pride and friendly contention?
Um So, I think jella price is easy, easily recognizable
for one, I mean, I think it's also just delicious.
I think that the story of how it's traveled across
(28:45):
West Africa is an interesting one. I can say this
as a Nigerian that it's it's not a dish that
belonged to Nigerian's you know. I think it's it's a
dish that's traveled. It's a dish that we've come to.
I don't think that it's a that we originated, but
it's rooted in Senegal. If you explore Senegalese cuisine, there's
(29:07):
a dish called tape of gen. It's their popular dish
there and it's a dish of broken rice cooked with
meat and vegetables in a tomato based sauce. The difference
with that angela frice is that we typically don't cook
jella frice with meat and vegetables. It's typically just rice
(29:28):
that's cooked in the tomato based sauce. So tabogen it's
a dish that the you know, the wall of people
who are also called the Jela people have thankfully given
to us, you know. And so I think every West
African country has made it their own and has found
a way to make it their own. And jela frice
is something that's just easily recognizable. If you're a West
(29:50):
African and you see a pot of jella frice, you're like, oh,
I know that, I know that dish. I know where
you might be from, depending on how you make it.
I think jello frice in Nigeria is also associated with
party and celebration and and on the weekend. It wasn't
really a dish that we ate every day. Maybe things
(30:13):
have changed now. Um I asked you wanted her thoughts
on Nigerian food becoming increasingly mainstreamed. She made an important
point that you can't really put a trend on food.
Nigerians have been eating their cuisine for thousands of years,
and it's not possible for food or an ingredient to
be newly discovered. Uh. It's also important to recognize that
(30:36):
it's not a trend. It's you know, it's a way
of life. It's a source of living and has been
for a very long time. The fact that it's getting
the attention that it is right now is good in
some ways because it's sort of like levels out the
playing field, you know, where I can now talk about
(30:56):
my cuisine and people can recognize, oh yeah, jellofrice like that?
Heard of that before? You know. I think that all
cuisines deserve this recognition, you know. I don't think that
it does humanity due diligence to only label one cuisine
as a trend or as important. I think that all
(31:18):
couisins deserve recognition because it belongs to a people, and
those people deem it important, whether you do or not.
I hope that the people who are involved in Nigerian
Nigerian food are given the opportunity to tell our own stories,
because I think that's also where it's gone very wrong
(31:41):
with other other couisins. My brother Tune day Way is
(32:04):
a new Orleans based chef and writer. I'm always humbled
not only to call you a friend, Tune Day, but
to consume your work as someone who thinks deeply about
matters of food, access, justice, equity, culinary arts. You know
all of it, and I'm really pleased that you're joining
us today. On point of origin, I thank you for
your time and talent. Of course I know who you are,
(32:27):
but for those who are listening to this podcast who
want to know who is Tune Day, way, who are you?
The first thing is like I'll just say I'm I'm
an inguriant, which is extremely to say because I haven't
been home in twenty years. Well, yeah, I'm just an
durant cook and a writer, and I used like food
(32:48):
and my writing to interrogate systems of exploitative power, and
then and then these systems of power that are explodative
created disparities. And so now my work is moving towards
trying to close those disparities while absolutely acknowledging that they
can never be closed completely or even remotely. So yeah,
(33:15):
that's I guess who I am? And centering yourself as Nigerian.
When did you come to the United States? So when
I came to the United States, I moved to Detroit,
and then um to living my aunt, and then we
moved out of Detroit to a suburb of Detroit. And
(33:36):
then two thousand and eleven, so eleven years after I
moved back into the city by myself, and two years
later I opened up a restaurant in Detroit, technically in
ham Traffic, which is an unclay within the city of Detroit.
And I tell the Detroit story because Detroit was central
(33:57):
to me opening up a restaurant and getting your food.
It was serendipity. Like if I didn't move to Detroit
in two thousand and eleven, I would never have been
in food. Like being in Detroit at that time and
having sort of access that I had, and being in
mostly wide spaces, the opportunities were not as democratic. They
(34:17):
were not nearly as democratic as I thought. So. Distribution
of capital, both material and social, is a big part
of your work. At what point did you start to
(34:39):
realize that you yourself had developed a social capital that
you could spin down I was I was cooking and
telling the story about endurining food and like using it
as a way to juxtapose or to juxtapose against European
or Eurocentric food and trying to get people to think
about food as different kinds of food, as having different
(35:02):
kinds of like parallel relationships instead of the way it
was thought about, which was like French cuisines at the
top and then you know, brown and black food is
at the bottom. So so this was the work that
I was trying to do, was just about engaging people
around questions of superiority when it came to food. But
what was really the thing was the Black Lives Matter movement,
(35:26):
which had started probably in two thousand and fourteen fifteen. Yeah,
I think around two thousand and fifteen, at least for me,
it rose to the top of the of of national
consciousness in the United States, you know, and it definitely
like it definitely came to my consciousness more assertainly then.
(35:49):
And I would say just completely honestly, like before two
thousand and sixteen, I didn't have any politics in the
sense that, like I didn't have an analysis, like a
critical analysis of power. Can you tell me like what
the impetus was to kind of shift more into making
(36:11):
your dinner almost like performance? Aren't I wanted to talk
about blackness? That those were the first series of Dinners
that I did, but I had no idea what he
was going to be, So I just, you know, I
had this the first series of Dinners, and I invited
black people in New Orleans to share the experience experiences
(36:33):
of being black. And then from that, you know, it
just became me then asking questions to these folks in
the space, and then the white people who started, you know,
coming to the dinners, it became more mixed, and then
I started asking questions to the white people, and then
it moved away, you know, from a dinner series on
(36:55):
blackness to an interrogation of whiteness because you know, folks
on the problem. I mean, the part of the racism
isn't the black folks, as I've heard some people say,
and and and it's true. So so it moved to that,
and I am aversed to performance. But you know, to
your point, I guess that dinners were performative because there
was this like element of like a strong element of tension.
(37:19):
In fact, it wasn't. In two thousand eighteen, Today hosted
a month long dinner series that was somewhat controversial. So
I'm going to try to explain for the listeners what
was going on here and Tunday will later explain in
greater detail, but basically, he was in New Orleans and
he hosted a pop up in which the average dish
costs twelve dollars, but for white diners, they were asked
(37:43):
to pay or recommended to pay thirty dollars for the
same dish. The price of that dish reflects the racial
wealth gap in New Orleans, which is something like ten
to one, and I guess it is somewhat performative, but
it is also in keeping with two days approach in
the kitchen and outside this series. Blackness. My work has
(38:07):
taught me is that you have to look like beneath
you know, you have to have multiple reads, right, So
so the first read was I was kind of surprised
at all the white people that I asked. Most of
them that I asked to pay the higher price did so,
(38:27):
and I was like, wow, this is incredible. But I
then started to like think about how how they did
it right? So a lot of time girls happening was
like they were negotiating, you know, folks, where is this
money going to? Who is the extra money going to?
So if I pay thirty dollars instead of twelve dollars
(38:48):
for a mail where does the difference go to? And
then people wanted to just pay the twelve but then
maybe leave me a big tip to know all there
was all this maneuvering, and what I realized was that,
you know, it's a difference between like money and power. Right,
So folks are very comfortable giving money, especially when it's charity.
But to give up power, which is to maybe sometimes
(39:10):
give money and then give up control, it is super difficult.
So and this is like the amazing thing with racism,
like racism or any sort of power. Disparity is so
ingenious because you think it's one thing and then you
go in there you find it as something completely different,
you know, and everything really is just um, it's just
(39:31):
a mask for for power. And so when we talk
about you know, like I talked about reparations or I
talk about closing disparity, it is just as important how
it is done, not not that it's done, because people
can give money, but if they give money, but they
still control how the money is spent, who the money
(39:51):
goes to when they give the money, and nothing changes,
you know. So that was the biggest lesson. Was there
a moment where you thought that this interrogation of whiteness
at these meals needed to be taken to another level
(40:12):
or was this just an organic outgrowth. Yeah, so the
answer is both. Right. Like, if I was to describe
my work to interrogate systems of exploitive power, which is
what I was doing at the dinner table during my
My Dinner series, I was interrogating whiteness, which to me
is a system of exploitive power. And then these systems,
(40:34):
like I said earlier, create disparities. And so I got
like emotionally exhausted from doing this interrogation without seeing any
from my perspective, tangible change. So I wanted to move
to closing, closing these disparities and let me go back
(40:57):
to them. Before two thousand six, team, before this shift,
when you were motivated by trying to get people to
think more deeply about or even perhaps at all, Nigerian food,
what is it that you felt was absent in the
lexicon of the food world? Um, in that moment to
(41:19):
use a gender terms too pregnant, with too many, too
many words. Two, there was too much, it was too abstract,
you know American food or your eu eccentric food was
self referential. It only talked about itself, talked about walls
on the plate, It didn't talk about anything else. You know,
when I was growing up and the way I understood
(41:41):
and during food and people have different perspectives on this.
You know, you eat the food, and the food is
is nourishment, yes, but it's also an experience. When I
served my food, I just served it, and I served
it mostly to American folks, and I didn't say what
was on the menu, not because I was trying to
(42:03):
be a dick or anything, but because I didn't want
to give folks references to foods they've never had. That
We're based on a cuisine that is completely different from
Urian food. So I didn't want to tell somebody that
like a goosey tastes like blue cheese, because it doesn't.
(42:25):
You know, you have to like eat a goosey to
know what it tastes like. And it's it's funny that
you see you say I'm lexicon because it's the language
you needed to be simplified, and I think it's still
it still does I am interested in you know, like
you leave with the fact that you are Nigerian. Obviously
you are Nigerian through and through, but you grew up
(42:47):
in another sense, you know, here in the US for
the last twenty years around African American people culture. How
do you hold your Nigerian nous in the context of
blackness in the United States of America. That's such a
contested question, Steven, for real, uh, And it's also like
an uncomfortable question for me because I would say, and
(43:11):
again this is something that I didn't know into two
thousand and sixteen that most of my time here I've
been shaped around africanness and whiteness. My Black American experience
is like mostly through like cultural consumption, lack of music, fashion, cinema,
all that kind of stuff. And this is I don't
know this made controversial or hard to say. This is
(43:32):
a complicity too, in that Black Americans are still Americans, right,
And I think that to a certain extent is irresponsibility
for Black Americans to begin to reach out to Africans,
you know, and do the work of understanding say the
(43:55):
African experience and then the African immigrant experience, because that's uh,
those are like very specific experiences and there is there
there's domination from both sides. Like you know, I grew
up in Algeria and I had we had kids in
my high school who were Americans who were black, and
(44:16):
they were treated differently from me because like they had
an accent that was more I'm coveted, you know. Similarly,
you know I have African or my my Nangerian parents
and aunties, like sometimes may look down on certain black
people because you know, of of stereotypes that they have
(44:36):
been fed. And so I think it's great that we
that that we have these distinct identities, you know, across
the continent and the Aspera and within the diaspora and
also within the continent. But these disparities or differences need
to shouldn't create the riffs that they have. This universality
(45:01):
pain for the events despite dispiredness as possible because of
a few things, including all food. Yeah, thank you so
much for tuning in to point of origin. You know,
(45:23):
I have so much enjoyed this episode. As I mentioned
at the top of the show, these are three individuals
whose work I admire and I think are doing the
imperative work of expanding people's ideas about African cuisine and
and affect Africanness. And there was so much to absorb
from these conversations. But the one thing that I'd like
to call back to a takeaway, if you will, was
(45:45):
Chef Aldabe's response to what he learned in formal culinary
education and in professional kitchens, and that was owning their
own stories, more than their ideas, more than their techniques,
and yes, even more than their talent, was the biggest
predictor of what we perceived to be genius. And for
(46:05):
his ability to identify this, I think Chef Alec Debe
himself is a genius. Genius is not the property of
a particular place or people. Why is it, for instance,
so uncommon for non white chefs to be referred to
in this manner? And to what degree have we conflated
genius and craft with access to audience and capital. Finally,
(46:30):
for the geniuses cooking and the shadows of chefs who
benefit from the power of their own narratives, it is
my hope that they will never fail to lose sight
of their own m m m m m m m
m m m m m m m m h. We'll
(46:56):
be back next week with our second episode of Point
of Origin season two on behalf of our team at
wet Stone Magazine and wet Stone Media. We thank you
for tuning in. Please, if you like what you've just heard,
rate us review us, give us five stars so that
we can continue to make these podcasts just for you.
I'd like to thank our guest today, Chef Michael Alecdby
(47:16):
one Day Como Lafe and Chef tun day Way Special
thanks to Selene Glacier, our lead producer, to Cat Hong,
our editor, Quentin Lebau, our production intern. And to my
business partner who makes all things at wet Stone possible,
our co founder, Melissa She Thanks mel and thanks to
our friends at I Heart Radio for helping us bring
(47:37):
you this podcast. To Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer, and
to Christopher Hasiotis, our executive producer. I'm your host, the
origin Forager Steven Sadderfield, and we'll be back here next
week with more from wet Stone Magazine's Point of Origin podcast.
That's all for this episode of Point of Origin. Thanks
(47:59):
for listening and supporting the wet Stone podcast, where we
travel the world to champion food as a means of
expanding human empathy. To keep abreast with all things wet Stone,
follow us on I g at wet Stone magazine or
online at wet Stone magazine dot com. That's w h
E T S t o n E magazine dot com,
(48:22):
where you will find the latest on all things wet Stone,
including the details from today's show and information about purchasing
our print magazine. Once again, I'm your host, Steven Saderfield,
and we'll see you next week. H
Host
Stephen Satterfield
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