A Taste of (and for) Africa
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Interest in cuisines of the diaspora is growing in DC
By Jessica Wolfrom, photography by Jennifer Chase | From the Edible DC Fall 2019 Issue
Although Africans have deep roots in the District, historically African food has been underrepresented in its dining scene.
But this is starting to change. In the past few years, there’s been an increasing interest in foods of the African diaspora, due in part to a new generation of young chefs and entrepreneurs who are reimagining traditional cuisines and using media social platforms to reach a larger audience.
From chef Kwame Onwauchi’s landmark restaurant Kith and Kin, to chef Eric Adjepong’s catering company Pinch and Plate, to Christophe Kambou’s pop-up dinner at Compass Rose, cuisines of the African diaspora are being reclaimed by young chefs and infused with new energy.
Nina Oduro, Nana Ama Afari-Dwamena and Maame Boakye, founders of Dine Diaspora.
“We’re no longer waiting for The Washington Post or The New York Times to tell us that this is our moment. We have social media at our fingertips. We are creating it ourselves.”
Dine Diaspora is the product of three entrepreneurs—Oduro, Maame Boakye and Nana Ama Afari-Dwamena—who are using social media platforms like Instagram to generate a groundswell of interest in African food.
But when Boakye, Afari-Dwamena and Oduro started Dine Diaspora in 2014, chefs of the African diaspora were hard to find. “We had to go to great lengths to find chefs for our events,” said Oduro. “It was not easy. There wasn’t a particular place we could go to; there wasn’t a particular platform.”
After much research, the women found the New York–based chef Eric Adjepong.
These were the early days. Long before Adjepong was touched by “Top Chef” celebrity or named one of the sexiest chefs alive by People Magazine.
“When they started it felt like a super grassroots effort,” said Adjepong, who cooked for Dine Diaspora’s inaugural dinner. “It was a no-brainer for me to hook up with them.”
It’s not that African food didn’t exist here. To say that African cuisine is new to the District is to ignore a long and complicated history.
“Due to its coastal connections and its place as part of the American South, DC has been shaped by the legacy of slavery,” said Dr. Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University.
Enslaved Africans cooked in the White House. They fed politicians and diplomats. They quite literally built our nation’s capital from the ground up.
“Few chefs of African descent work at the pinnacle of our national haute cuisine today, yet their contributions to American kitchens and dining rooms have been definitive. Without their expertise, the nation’s gastronomic heritage would be much the poorer.”
“Few chefs of African descent work at the pinnacle of our national haute cuisine today,” said Rafia Zafar in her book Recipes for Respect, “yet their contributions to American kitchens and dining rooms have been definitive. Without their expertise, the nation’s gastronomic heritage would be much the poorer.”
Over time, traditionally African foods like sweet potatoes, okra and peanuts—foods we might mistakenly consider American in origin—became quietly embedded in the upper echelons of Washington diets. Yet these early chefs and their cuisines have long gone unnoticed.
But now, black chefs and entrepreneurs are taking back these narratives, using food to tell complicated stories about the transatlantic slave trade or the experience of being a part of the diaspora, through something as simple as a meal.
“At the core of this are the entrepreneurs and creatives,” said Oduro. “Pushing things forward and saying ‘We cannot be ignored. Our food matters and we matter.’”
Part of this may also be due to an increasing number of Africans in the District. According to DC’s Office on African Affairs, native-born Africans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in DC.
DC boasts the highest proportion of African-born residents of any major city in the United States, and this number has been increasing steadily. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that more than two-thirds of African immigrants in the Washington metro area have arrived since 1990.
But the shift from small mom-and-pop restaurants like Appioo or Bokum, which serve traditional dishes like nkruma nkwan (okra soup) or kumasi nkatikwan (chicken with ground peanuts), to upscale restaurants like Kith and Kin or Adjepong’s forthcoming project, signals something new in the DC dining scene.
“I think DC has always had a robust African diaspora population who were cooking in their homes and opening small restaurants,” said Oduro. “But now, you have a Kith and Kin. That is major. It’s lux, it’s elevated. It’s in the Intercontinental Hotel. The magnitude of that is very big for the African diaspora population.”
DC is slowly becoming a place of reckoning and recognition for these long-ignored histories and foodways. Chefs are moving here, cooking here, opening restaurants here.
“This generation is taking something and we are transforming it. We have our finger on the pulse of what people want. This generation is finally the generation that’s doing whatever we want to do.” — Kwame Onwauchi
Kwame Onwauchi was drawn to the District not only because of its deep connections to the diaspora, but also because cooking here felt like coming home. Although Onwauchi grew up in New York and Nigeria, he would often come to DC to see his grandfather, who was a professor of African American history and anthropology at Howard University.
“I have this connection to the city as a little kid, just running around South East,” said Onwauchi. “But it was also a natural fit for me because of the history here. DC has always been Harlem South. This is Chocolate City. There is no reason why Kith and Kin wouldn’t exist here. It should exist here.”
At 29, Onwauchi has already had a seismic effect across the food and media landscape. He’s been on “Top Chef.” He’s published a memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef. He helms the kitchen at Kith and Kin, where he showcases his Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian and Creole roots. And of course, he shares all of this on social media.
Onwauchi has forced people to pay attention—both to African food and the young chefs and entrepreneurs who are reinventing the ways we access it.
“What Kwame’s work at Kith and Kin is doing is allowing other chefs to say ‘There’s room for my food and my culture,’” said Oduro.
Chef Christophe Kambou, Maydan’s sous chef.
Christophe Kambou, a sous chef at Maydan, is one such chef carving out space for himself in this new culinary scene. “It started with Kwame,” said Kambou. “He’s been a pretty big catalyst in my wanting to do this.”
Kambou hosted his first pop-up event focused on West African food at Compass Rose this August. His menu drew from childhood nostalgia—Kambou was born in Boston, but has lived in Zambia, Togo, Ethiopia, Mali and the Ivory Coast, where he lived when a military coup forced his family to move back to the States in 2001—and included items like suya, or beef skewers, and jollof rice.
But the star of the meal was Kambou’s twist on kelewele, or fried plantains, with peanuts, chili and spices.
Plantains, purchased from a small woman at a roadside stall, are the first thing that Kambou remembers eating on a field trip to Ghana. “We got off the bus and I remember eating these plantains and buying a Puff Daddy CD,” he said, laughing. “Puff Daddy and plantains.”
What empowers many of these young chefs and entrepreneurs to be outspoken advocates for food of the diaspora is that they straddle the cultural divide between Africa and America.
“I can move between the two worlds,” said Adjepong. “I was born here, I’m American. But my household was all Ghanaian. I have the dichotomy of coming from a traditional Ghanaian home but, stepping outside, I was a normal New York City kid.”
But moving between worlds inevitably forces young chefs into a fraught territory where they must choose between honoring their family heritage or expressing new ideas on the plate.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” said Kambou. “I have the utmost respect for my ancestors, and paying respect to your lineage and where you come from is really important. But I also need to find my truth. It’s really hard. Especially because there is no one really doing it. There’s no model.”
A selection of West African dishes from Christophe Kambou, Suya Beef Skewers, Salad de Crevettes and Fried Plantains.
Because this food is still largely unfamiliar to Americans, these chefs have both an incredible freedom to experiment and the burden of getting it right.
“It is weird. It feels a little like being a pioneer,” said Adjepong. “But I feel prepared to be doing exactly what I am doing. Ultimately, it goes to being authentic. I am who I am: I’m from Ghana. I grew up eating this food. I’m a chef. There is nothing here I can fake.”
When you boil it down, this new energy around African cuisine is really meant to accomplish one thing: sharing this food and the histories attached to it.
“We welcome all to the table,” said Oduro. “But we want people to recognize that there is a history. There is a culture. There are identities tied up in this food that you need to respect and honor as you begin to embrace this food.”
Because this new generation lives a large part of their lives online, we might see cuisines of the African diaspora on a screen far before we ever encounter it on the plate. But finally, we are starting to see it.
For the recipe for a classic Senagalese dish, Yassa Poulet, go here.
