A taste of Nigeria

Michael Elegbede demonstrates his kitchen skills at Otago Polytechnic. PHOTO: PETER MCINTOSH
Michael Elegbede demonstrates his kitchen skills at Otago Polytechnic. PHOTO: PETER MCINTOSH
Michael Elegbede works with the growers who supply the produce for his kitchen. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Michael Elegbede works with the growers who supply the produce for his kitchen. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Garden egg stuffed with ayamase relish, fried shallot. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Garden egg stuffed with ayamase relish, fried shallot. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Plantain chips, calabash nutmeg spiced avocado puree. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Plantain chips, calabash nutmeg spiced avocado puree. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Lobster groundnut stew, efo riro, eba crisp. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
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Lobster groundnut stew, efo riro, eba crisp. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE Jollof rice, uda roasted semi deboned quail stuffed with morels and caramelised onions, plantain twill, ata dindin. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Lobster groundnut stew, efo riro, eba crisp. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE
Lobster groundnut stew, efo riro, eba crisp. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL ELEGBEDE

Food is more than just something to eat when you are hungry, says Nigerian chef Michael Ade Elegbede. The keynote speaker at the upcoming International Food Design Conference and Studio tells Rebecca Fox about his journey from Nigeria to one of the world's top restaurants and back. 

It is easy to imagine Michael Elegbede as a little boy helping his grandmother and mother in the kitchen.

The love of food generated in those Nigerian kitchens has stayed with him and can be seen in his quick grin and enthusiasm.

So much so it has prompted him to make some life-changing decisions, first to go against family expectations in his choice of career and, second, to give up a high-flying career in one of New York's top restaurants to go back home and set up his own restaurant.

Speaking via Skype from the living room of his aunt's home in Lagos, Nigeria, Elegbede is enthusiastic for his national cuisine and his new endeavour, a restaurant using local produce to create a fine-dining experience.

To get to that point has been a story in itself.

Elegbede grew up in Nigeria with a grandmother and mother who were both cooks who ran restaurants.

But his mother moved to the United States to get a culinary degree, becoming a pastry chef, and he and his brother remained in Nigeria with his grandmother, who had apprenticed to a French chef during the country's years as a European colony.

In her kitchen, he peeled carrots and potatoes and did other chores.

"Somewhere along the way I fell in love with cooking. I learnt so many traditional dishes from my grandmother.''

When he followed his parents to Chicago in the US at age 13, he worked in his mother's Nigerian restaurant there.

"After school, I would go and help when I didn't have soccer or wrestling practice or homework.''

His aptitude for sciences meant his family encouraged him to enter the University of Illinois to study pre-medicine.

"As the first son of a Nigerian family, it was never conceived I would go into the cooking profession. It was not something I thought was ever possible.''

However, he soon came to realise he needed to find his own "true calling in my happiness''.

To do that meant going against the social norms and expectations of his family, which was not easy.

So he decided if he wanted to cook for the rest of his life, then he had better get a good education.

"If I wanted to be a doctor, I went to med school, so if I wanted to be a chef, I go to culinary school. I'm glad I did.''

He was accepted into California's Culinary Institute of America and then had a realisation."

"I was used to cooking traditional Nigerian food. The culinary world is so, so different from that. Going to culinary school opened my eye to the reality of culinary art. It was beautiful.''

The school in the middle of vineyards and farms could not be further from what he was used to.

"It brought back so many memories of my childhood with my grandmother and to me this was incredible. I constantly got motivated going to different restaurants, to understand what it really meant to be in the culinary arts world.

"It was all new to me. Just because you cook didn't mean I understood culinary art. I didn't understand culinary art.''

When it came time to do his internship, he decided to look for the best chefs and restaurants in North America to learn from.

One stood out - Eleven Madison Park in New York - recently named the third-top restaurant in the world.

"I felt so intimidated. This is a kitchen where everyone was caucasian and very, very knowledgeable. There's no way they're going to give me a chance.''

He was wrong. He got the internship and after that was offered a job.

It was here his passion for the experience side of food began to grow.

"How food is life because food is life to me and I began to see restaurants that saw food as more than just something to eat when hungry but as a way to give people a different experience, give people something that could be memorable.''

He realised food could not only create memories but bring back memories of the past.

Through his brother, an industrial designer, he met New York food designer Emilie Baltz, who spoke at the last International Food Design Conference in Dunedin.

The pair began to collaborate, go to restaurants, creating dinners first in friends' homes and then with others of a similar mind, sharing their ideas through the creation of the Food Design Network of America.

It was at the network's first conference last year that Elegbede met Otago Polytechnic's Richard Mitchell, who runs Otago's culinary arts degree course.

Elegbede was still working at Madison Park but realised he was creating in a "little bubble'', cooking food to bring back memories Americans had as children.

"It took away from the personal attachment for the people I was creating food for and myself. It came to the point of me thinking ‘is this it for me?'.''

So he began to create "pop-up'' dining experiences based on Nigerian cuisine, providing tasting plates to give diners a feel for the little-known food.

"People loved it.''

Diners began asking when he would open his own Nigerian restaurant.

René Redzepi, of Noma, in Copenhagen, told him that if Nigerian food was what he wanted to do, then he needed to go back to Nigeria.

"That way I could love and show love of my food to the world.''

So he made the second-biggest decision of his life, to move back to Nigeria.

Since arriving back this year, he discovered he could still speak his native language Yoruba and had travelled around Nigeria refamiliarising himself with the food and produce of his country.

He had "created'' five dinners so far and the local diners had been amazed, he said.

"It is hard for this country to appreciate the food that is indigenous to us, they do not apply value to it. They have never seen it in that light.''

It had been an emotional journey for Elegbede. "It is everything I missed, that emotional experience of working in the restaurant in New York.''

He now understood how his fellow New York chefs felt when re-creating the dishes from their childhood.

"That ‘oh my god, that tastes like my grandmother's but so much better'. It's a great experience, a great feeling to have as [a] chef.''

The reaction to his dining experiences meant he was confident his new fine-dining restaurant, Itan in Lagos - "the New York of Nigeria'' - would be a success.

"They've called me the ‘mad scientist'. But I'm only scratching the surface.''

He has taken part in a food and drink festival that featured international chefs and has done a mini-Itan to give people an idea of what he is going to do.

"It's incredible how open people are to what modern Nigerian cuisine can be like.''

He hopes to open next year, telling the story of a country, its people, its culture and its food through cuisine, with a personal touch made from locally sourced ingredients, using ancient and modern culinary methods.

There is plenty of inspiration as Nigeria is so diverse, with 280 ethnic groups all having their own take on cooking a vegetable or dish, he says.

A major part of Nigerian cuisine is starchy soups and stews.

The climate influences the type of protein eaten.

For example, in the wetlands it is seafood, in the tropics insects, snails and bush meat.

"The resources we have shape the cuisine. Sun is our largest resource. We have sun all year round.''

As there is not a stable supply of electricity to refrigerate or freeze food, much is sun-dried to preserve it.

"It is then re-emulsified in broths or water and has an intense flavour. People here are used to intense flavours.''

One dish done this way is a dried prawn stew which has a "really rich sundried prawn flavour''.

People in urban areas had moved towards eating more imported food but a recent economic crisis had people looking again at locally raised food.

"People are going back to the farm where the meat came from.''

Elegbede is linking directly with the farmers who will grow the produce for the restaurant so they are aware of the quality he is after.

"It is about educating them about what I want to do with it. It's investing in them as well as the facility. It is a symbiotic relationship.''

In Nigerian cuisine, there are five major dishes everyone loves to eat, he says.

"We have so many other dishes across Nigeria that I want to take influences from and use to create food we serve at the restaurant.''

He is looking forward to being able to control the type of experience he wants to give diners, maybe a menu based on the tropics or the savannah.

The food will be delivered in a tasting menu style and, thanks to a business partner and financial backers, he can concentrate on the food rather than the business.

Elegbede is aware he could go too far too fast, as the modern culinary art movement in Nigeria is only at "crawling'' stage.

"If I move too fast, I will lose them. The idea is to bring them along. We have to grow together.''

However, he is not the only Nigerian chef looking at modern ways to present local cuisine.

"There has been an amazing food revolution. So many people are interested in what is next in food.''

Even in Nigeria, "Food media'' has brought global chefs and food trends to new audiences.

As a result, Elegbede has been welcomed back and is enjoying being home, mostly.

"I don't feel I've lost something: apart from the mosquitoes that bite every night and the electricity.''

One challenge he did not have to face in America was unreliable electricity supplies.

Most Nigerian homes and businesses have generators and gas cooking to rely on when the electricity goes out.

"All of that comes along with the growth of our country.''

Restaurants run on generators all day so for his new restaurant he is looking into solar power as he wants to make it as sustainable as possible.

"If we can use all our resources to create an experience, why not?''


The conference

The International Food Design Conference & Studio, organised by the Otago Polytechnic Food Design Institute, runs from Wednesday to Friday.

Chef Michael Elegbede gives his keynote talk on Thursday at 9am.

 

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