Get Yourself A Taste Of Naija

Breaking bread, breaking borders.

Africa is not a country. It’s the second-largest continent with 54 countries. And Nigeria, a West African country, is its most populous nation with one of its largest economies. Besides, cultural exports like Nollywood – the second-largest film producer in the world after Bollywood; sports – the Super Eagles, their national football team are Olympic champions; music – the late Fela Kuti is reckoned to be the principal innovator of Afrobeat, to Beyonce collaborators Yemi Alade and Burna Boy; literature – Wole Soyinka was the first Black African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, to Chinua Achebe to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who resides there too. The list of luminaries from this nation run wide and deep across industries and fields.

But if universal prejudices or our national and local press coverage were to be entirely believed, it is a country of email scammers and drug mules. Nevermind, that India’s bilateral trade with this ‘Giant of Africa’ has risen to nine billion dollars in the past year, growing beyond oil to investment, technology, healthcare, security, energy, and agriculture. While there’s much work to be done in the service of shifting this narrative around Nigeria. Perhaps, a shared meal might be the start to changing the conversation.

Tale me more

Three months ago, Monica Fatogun decided to play her part in shifting these perceptions with the launch of A Taste of Naija, her Nigerian weekend supper club that brings the Naija ‘Owambe’ experience to the city. After her first post on Instagram, she has been chipping away at the over 200 enquiries in the account’s inbox. We at the LURU newsletter managed to jump the line and negotiate a single spot at a Sunday seating even though a maximum of four people are usually accommodated.

Our lunch companions were a Bengali trio – mother, father and daughter – who had “lived, worked and studied in Benin City, Southern Nigeria” in the early 1980s and their Bengaluru-born and bred son-in-law. Moving to Nigeria in those days was a surprising choice, they agree, but thought that “everyone else going to the US or UK was quite boring,” and they were looking “for some adventure.” While they kept the conversation engaging with their lived experiences, they also acted as taste tests for the food. “We are here for nostalgia,” they sweetly declare.

Rice and shine

Over our welcome drink of zobo, a ruby-coloured, refreshing, punchy concoction “of sun-dried hibiscus florets boiled in water for hours with whole spices and pineapple peels” but served cold with chilled pineapple slices on the side, Monica tells us about herself. She tells us, “she’s half-Nigerian from her father’s side and half-Bengali from her mother’s,” her parents met “while studying medicine in Russia” in 1980s and she presently works with “creating accessibility in climate education for visually-impaired children” building on her previous experience with wildlife conservation projects in India, Mauritius, and Nigeria.

Alongside sipping on our drinks, Monica holds a trivia round to help us get our facts straight on Africa and Nigeria before a short presentation on Nigeria and its culture. The information passed on, pleasantly ranges from the personal to the general. We learn of the Harmattan, a dry wind that blows from the Sahara Desert “that makes Nigeria hot in the day, cold at the night, and covered in a thick layer of fine dust” annually from late November to mid-March. The other season “is just wet.” We’re told that Mount Kilimanjaro, the continent’s highest peak, is “actually” located in Tanzania even if “the cabin crew of AirKenya might insist otherwise.” And that Sudan has double the number of ancient pyramids than found in Egypt. The two green stripes on Nigeria’s flag represent “its abundant natural resources” and the single white stripe in the middle “stands for peace.” We discover that Nigeria is “home to over 350 tribes” with the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa being the three largest, and so on.

Monica is Yoruba herself, so we’re taken down a tangential journey through the legends and culture of this ethnic group. We’re told of Yoruba spirituality, their “Orishas, who are divine spirits and forces of nature” and “act as guides and intercessors" between Olodumare – the formless supreme creator – and humans. And because of the transatlantic slave trade, Yoruba Orisha traditions and West African Vodun travelled to the Americas into religions like Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil, and Voodoo in Haiti. And Monica even drops a pop culture reference that “Orisha Oya, the female spirit of winds and storms inspired the Ororo Munroe aka Storm, a member of the X-Men”. She also draws us into this exchange of information with allusions to “Lagos being just like Mumbai” or “Nigerian weddings are big and bold like ones in Punjab” allowing for us to find a more familiar footing in the foreign.

Worth every grain

Once our appetites are suitably whetted with curiosity, lunch is served up. For starters, there’s garri, a versatile snack of textured, coarse cassava flour stirred with water, sugar and peanuts, that’s similar to a sweet semolina porridge. And moin moin, a steamed, spicy cake made of ground black-eyed peas, that tastes like punchier sannas from the Konkan Coast except crowned with a slice of boiled egg. The Bengali aunty recalls the dish “having dried anchovies or shrimps” as the toppings at the street-side snack stalls in Lagos. But this version was delish too.

The main course is served family-style: we help ourselves to generous portions of jollof rice, fried chicken, pan-fried plantain, and coleslaw. Smoky, spicy and flavoursome jollof rice is “a party staple at Nigerian homes” and tastes closer to a robust, pungent pulao than the delicate, aromatic biryani. The accompanying peppery fried chicken built on the spicy profile of the rich dish but the caramel notes of the plantain and the creamy coleslaw cut through with a cooling wave of sweetness. This interplay of flavours and textures has us returning for more, fine-tuning each of our bites to get the balance just right: a little private game of demolishment. Eating this cuisine is an exciting first time for us; the attending Bengali family concur that the meal “kickstarted their memories” of this exact plate of food “eaten at many birthday parties.” We round off our meal with puff-puff, a dessert of deep-fried, fluffy sweetened balls of dough served with vanilla-ice cream. With our final course too, the dance between temperatures and textures continues wonderfully.

While “back in Nigeria,” Monica was the go-to-person for Indian food, here she’s confidently taken the stride to bring something fresh, inviting and appetising to Bengaluru, her adopted city. And rest assured, we’ll be rounding up more hungry bellies for our next seating at Monica’s supper club. On our way out, while we are still scarfing down yet another glass of zobo, Monica suddenly remembers, “that zobo was frozen, packed into plastic tubes and sold outside of her high school in Nigeria.” And we collectively chorus, “Like ice lollies!” Just another moment, of several, of building the bridge between two cultures that A Taste of Naija makes possible.

The details: Send a direct message to A Taste of Naija for bookings. Location will be texted on confirmation of booking against payment; a minimum of 2 people per booking.