World-firsts take a little time, even if they are happy accidents. “This started many, many years ago,” says Ifeyinwa Frederick, nodding to the small restaurant surrounding her. On the Tottenham High Road and called Chuku’s, it serves Nigerian tapas and is the only place that does.
It began about a decade ago when Ifeyinwa, 27, and elder brother Emeka, 29, were growing up in Ilford. “We had this friendship group of all sorts and we could share their cultures, but we didn’t have a place where we could show them ours. You’re saying ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ and you keep saying it — then it becomes a bit frustrating.”
They dreamt of a restaurant. “Our problem had been how to make Nigerian food and culture easily digestible,” says Emeka, 29. “We’d chucked down some ideas, but nothing stuck.”
Things changed after university, when Emeka spent a year in Madrid and Ifeyinwa — Ifey, her brother calls her — moved to Martinique to teach English and polish her French. “We’d both been in these places that were really welcoming, where things are slower,” Emeka remembers.
“He told me, people think tapas is just sharing plates, but it’s more about social dining, it’s very warm, very hospitable, very chilled out — which is just so married with Nigerian culture,” says Ifey. “We realised, we’ve got one shot to show people a cuisine,” nods Emeka, “How about we give them an opportunity to try as many different bits as we can?” They’d stumbled upon their solution.
Easier said than done, though. With a population of nearly 200 million, three primary tribes and countless smaller ones, there was a lot for them to consider. Besides, they had little know-how. “But we just kind of jumped in,” grins Emeka, “As our mum always says, ‘try a ting’.”
“That first year was just learning,” says Ifey, who in 2015 took a job in a bowling alley (“there were a lot of children. I learned a lot about clean-up”), before moving to Yard Sale Pizza. Emeka swapped a well-paid City job as a sustainability consultant for a minimum-wage gig at Honest Burger. Between them, they sized up the industry quickly — “We’d cold call, send emails, always asking people ‘why this, why that?’” — before launching their first pop-up in 2016.
“When people say, ‘oh, I was at that!’, I’m like, ‘oh, you were…?!’” grimaces Ifey. “That day we turned up, the venue had had a party the night before so the whole place stunk of beer. We opened at noon, and were full by 12.30 — people were outside, getting the wrong food. It was an operational nightmare, but people could see what we were trying to do.
“You’re not going to come to Chuku’s and become an expert on Nigeria, but you’ll get a sense of it. It’s an introduction.”
“I’d say there’s no subtly about our culture,” adds Emeka, “and the food is very much like that.” The pair relied on their family for some recipes, and stayed with friends in Nigeria for others. “Northern tribes don’t really travel much outside of Nigeria, so we had to go back to understand a bit more. We’d meet people and ask, ‘how do you do this? How does your mum do it?”
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Their menu encompasses food from across the country and its tribes, with the siblings proudest of their moi-moi, a polenta-esque dish of baked black eyed peas, peppers and onion; another must-try is sinasir, a rice pancake served with miyan taushe, a peanut and pumpkin stew.
“There’s this myth that Nigerian food is meat-heavy and that’s not actually the case. Traditionally meat was kind of a special occasion thing — when you slaughter an animal it’s a big deal — so we do a lot for vegetarians and vegans,” says Ifey, “and most of the dishes are gluten-free.”
Still, there are suya meatballs too, beef rolled in traditional spices. Where they’ve had to get creative is with their puddings, which, Emeka says, “just don’t exist in Nigeria. So we’ve taken inspiration from our ingredients — a chocolate brownie made with yam, plantain waffles, a cheesecake using chin chin [a traditional biscuit]. But everything is kind of taste-tested: if the Nigerian element can’t be felt, it’s not on the menu.”
Chuku’s is somewhere born, then, of Nigeria, Spain and Martinique, and bowling alleys and burger joints. The pair want it to be the first of many; they say it’s as much about sharing their heritage and offering that space they never had as it is the food. The gold letters on the door say it best: Welcome to Lagos.