"If flavor is what you want, I'll give you real flavor."Īfolayan explained that Nigerian cuisine doesn't have much colonial influence, which is why every ingredient that he works with is true to West African culture. "If come here what they have to know is that nothing is fake," he says. The Nigerian chef attributes his success to telling the truth through food. Now, almost 12 years later, Afolayan's restaurant continues its tradition of serving authentic West African food. "They would always ask me, 'Lookman, when are you going to open a restaurant?'"Īfter leaving the store for nearly a decade to pursue other employment opportunities, Afolayan opened BUKA in 2009 and never looked back. "People were after my cooking," he recalls. Shortly after being hired, he began cooking Nigerian food at the store and it became very popular. The Nigeria-born chef got his start working at a small grocery store in New York. "Whatever you get in my restaurant is what you're going to get anywhere in West Africa or Nigeria." "I focus solely on Nigerian food," says Afolayan. But some true treasures of West African cuisine, like fufu and egusi (a type of melon seed) remained more elusive.
Enslaved African chefs also developed cooking methods for frying fish, grilling meat, stewing greens that are still used today.
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When West Africans were forced into slavery in the Americas during the 16th century, they planted their own gardens full of fruits and vegetables native to Africa. As farming techniques spread across West Africa, people in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone grew a variety of crops like millet and sorghum that are now staples in West African cooking.
West African cuisine's use of unaltered ingredients stems from its farming history that dates back to 3000 BCE. Since some, like locust bean, alligator peppers and calabash nutmeg are still not readily available in the United States, Afolayan imports a few ingredients straight from West Africa himself. At his restaurant, he estimates that 99% of the ingredients he cooks with are completely unprocessed.
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