When Abdullahi Maikano opened Alhaji Suya just over a year ago it was a huge deal for the London Hausa community who finally had one of their own owning and operating a restaurant dedicated to a Hausa speciality. In that time Maikano has become the indisputable king of suya in London: Beef, lamb, and chicken are the standard options here, cooked on the long barbecue at 45 degrees and rested, then finished on an electric grill to develop a crust. There are also, occasionally, gizzards and kidneys, but it’s the fatty cut of tozo (beef), veal like in its colour and texture, that melts on the tongue, while the homemade yaji provokes a nasal rush that is almost ecstatic. Always ask for kilishi if he has it, a type of jerky made from dried, flattened muscle, the bright purple colour of a bruise, that packs a sweet heat that builds and builds and builds. Not just a great suya spot but one of the best takeaways of any kind in London.

Oliajide Agbede’s stall in the moat of Elephant and Castle is dedicated to broader Nigerian cuisine — fufu and eba, leafy nutty egusi soup, and fiery beef stews — but it’s his suya that brings people in. Seasoned and charred, the chicken suya is then reheated, chopped on the bone, and sprinkled with yaji, aromatic with ginger, freshly ground chiles and possibly cumin that is redolent of the spice mix used for Chinese skewers. Gizzard suya is made fresh and doused in an oily marinade containing onions and peppers. A double portion is £2 and can be mopped up with a Nigerian bun for 50p — a delicious dough dumpling with a crunchy outer crust of sugar, that offers a plain, sweet ballast to the gizzard’s fire and funk: simply, one of the best things possible to buy with £2.50 in London.

All the way out in Erith — a small town located by the Thames Estuary that is only not in Kent on a technicality and by virtue of being reachable by a red London bus; it is home to one of the biggest Nigerian communities in the U.K. The restaurant scene here is still small — at K’s African Spice near the station Efik and Yoruba specialities reign, but further down, at Korede’s Africoal lies one of London’s most unlikely suya spots. The pair who run it will walk through the options for those unfamiliar (and will tone the spice down on request — this is almost Kent, remember) but the best of the meat options is the perfectly grilled rack of lamb ribs where the creamy lamb fat deliriously mixes with homemade yaji.

Kolawole Ajayi — aka Nigeriacuisine — is a YouTuber with nearly 75,000 subscribers who tune in for his charismatic and opinionated takes on everything from the best okro-ogbono to pepper soup. He also has a street food stall on Choumert Road in Peckham where he slings out excellent suya on a small grill, portion by portion. The beef suya — the most popular option — is pre-cooked at home and finished on the grill with two yajis, one cinnabar and hot, made predominantly from kuli kuli (roasted peanut cake) sprinkled generously from trays resembling red sand dunes, a blend made by Ajayi himself. The other, used sparingly, is lighter, complex and gingery, that he sources from one of his favourite spots in Lagos. Less hot than many other suya spots, and more adjustable (Ajayi will always offer a taster to check the heat level) this is a great, relatively central place to start for suya newcomers. The asun, however, chock full with the heat of c. 1 million scotch bonnets, takes absolutely no prisoners.

In the early stages of Ikoyi when Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale were working out how to collaborate, Chan went on a trip to Nigeria to understand the food. In short: he didn’t like it that much. However the kernel of Ikoyi was born, the idea that a restaurant could use techniques and ingredients from West Africa, decontextualise them and repurpose them in unexpected ways. The use of a complex spice powder applied at the end of the dish for seasoning and aromatics is not unique to Nigerian food; indeed there are obvious Chinese, as well as French avant-garde, connections detectable in Ikoyi’s most iconoclastic dish — the plantain with raspberry salt. More explicitly, Chan pushes the idea of suya in a new direction — the mushroom suya infused with pine must first be dipped in an emulsion and then the yaji, while a beautiful thick cut of grass-fed beef inauthentically medium rare comes not coated with yaji but on the side, so the customer applies it to taste. Is this West African food? No, but it definitely is top grade suya.

A decent half way house on the Old Kent Road that compromises between quality of/time taken waiting for suya. At the takeaway section next to the restaurant, generous portions of beef, lamb, chicken; or gizzard, kidney, shaki (tripe) are ready made then heated up again and seasoned for taste. The spiciest level here is not actually that spicy, but pushes all the buttons, and best of all comes in layers and layers of fish and chip like wrapping that means it can be eaten with greasy fingers all the way down to Burgess Park.

The idea of a mail delivery service as a cure-all for homesickness it not a new one — after all, many of London’s pie and mash shops do delivery for those who have taken the long and irreversible journey from east London to Essex. And some London Nigerians have wondered, if rich residents of Lagos can order in pizza from London then why not suya going the other way? Kehinde Tayo-Quaye’s Mai Suya aims to fill this gap in the market, offering postal orders of suya, peppered gizzards, and asun from as well as pick-ups for those who can make the trip to the HQ. While something will always be lost in the reheating, the beef suya holds up well and the kidney suya offers something the competition doesn’t, a kidney so devilled it’s in the ninth circle of hell, where the fire of yaji plays off against the offal funk. To accentuate the nostalgia factor, all suya comes wrapped in newspaper with paper-wrapped pellets of yaji for those who want even more heat. Except, because this is London after all, the paper is the Evening Standard.

One of the slickest non-permanent suya spots in the city, who can often be found either at Peckham Springs or at Mama Leah’s on the Old Kent Road. Suya Spot’s pop-ups are more like communal events where suya becomes a way of bringing people together to ‘capture a sense of family’. The beef and chicken suya are reputedly excellent, as well as the wings and vegetarian options which are not found so often in suya spots, while orders are supplemented with pots of bright orange jollof and plantain pie for dessert. For those planning a visit, the next Suya Spot event is on August 18th at Peckham Springs.