Sam Osemene and his team must be doing something right. A steady stream of Uber Eats and Door Dash delivery drivers strolled into his restaurant to pick up orders for clients just as plates of an assortment of African dishes were being served to dine-in clients.
Seated on different tables were a potpourri of African immigrants that included Congolese, Cameroonians, Ghanaians, Nigerians and Liberians eating and chatting over beer about their work and life in Austin, Texas.
Makena Tarichia-Ambassa receives $25,000 in startup funding for her catering company, Out Of Africa
By Logan MacLean | Saltwire
Makena Tarichia-Ambassa’s cooking career started with a choice.Growing up on a coffee farm in Mikinduri, Kenya, she and her 10 siblings often had chores. Cooking, cleaning and tending the animals all had to be done — so did fertilizing the crops with maggot-filled manure.
Joeneen Hull had never tried fufu, but for weeks the 31-year-old nail artist watched mukbangs of people dipping warm chunks of starchy dough into rich, spicy soups.
“One day, I was just like, ‘you know what? Today’s gonna be the day’,” she said. “I’m craving it so bad. I don’t even know what this food tastes like and I’m craving it.”
Akintunde Asuquo Osaigbuovo Ojo Wey, popularly known as Tunde Wey, is a New Orleans-based writer, activist-artist, and celebrity chef. Tunde was born in 1983 to a comfortably middle-class Yoruba family; his grandfather had been second-in-command during the military junta that ruled the country from 1966 to 1979. Tunde was born in Lagos, Nigeria, before moving to Detroit, Michigan at age 16 to complete his education.
When it comes to food, those who aren’t lucky enough to call New Jersey home think the Garden State is only good for a few things. Pizza, bagels, and that beloved salty breakfast meat are our calling cards (and we would add top-notch Italian and fresher-than-fresh seafood, too). But beyond the Parmigiana and pork roll is a world of cuisines some might not expect. Ethiopian, Ghanaian, Nigerian, Moroccan, Caribbean, Southern and soul food: These are the cuisines of the African diaspora.
In addition to the abundance of Ethiopian and Eritrean eateries along St. Paul’s University and Snelling, the Twin Cities are home to a wealth of restaurants reflecting cuisines from other communities within the East African diaspora: milky, fragrant cups of shaah from Somalia, seared beef suqaar, tender, puffed flats of Yemeni mulawah.
Here are six favorites across Minneapolis and St. Paul.
NEW YORK (AP) — If anyone asks chef Marcus Samuelsson what African food taste like, he has a ready answer: Have you ever had barbeque? Rice? Collard greens? Okra? Coffee?
“All of that food comes from Africa, has its roots in Africa,” says the Ethiopian Swedish writer and restaurateur. “Everyone has had African American dishes, whether they know it or not.”
In the middle of the summer, a new specialty coffee shop opened in Louisville with little fanfare. Cousins Tar Molla and Kidest Getachew aren’t really about recognition — except for the detailed and expert way they make their coffee.
The pair, who immigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. more than 10 years ago, opened Abol Cafe to share their love of coffee with Louisville.
Jollof Rice King, a new destination for Nigerian cuisine, is just about ready to make its Houston debut. Located at 3833 Richmond Avenue, the exciting new addition to the city’s dining scene is set to open its doors on October 13, after multiple delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Brittney Brothers first tried the South African staple known as biltong, she was surprised by the way it didn’t taste. It looks salty, tough, and chewy, like jerky and other cured meats. But biltong was more delicate. “The seasonings compliment the natural flavor of the beef,” she says. “And it was very tender, unlike anything I’ve tasted before.” For her, it became a point of fascination. And now, it’s a career.
You’d be forgiven if you didn’t notice Yendidi from the outside. The restaurant in Norfolk’s Norview Heights neighborhood is backed off of a flyby stretch of Chesapeake Boulevard, nestled into a mini-mall next to a church and a hair salon. Its parking lot amounts to a ribbon of rough pavement against the roadside.
This was supposed to be a story about how the owner of San Francisco’s only Nigerian restaurant made a bold move to save her business, shuttering her dining room, pivoting to a takeout and delivery model, and moving her operation into a commissary kitchen. That’s not what this story is about anymore, however, because , a gigantic, six-building blaze destroyed it all.
In my experience, people who immigrate to this country often exhibit a deep faith in the lofty ideals on which America was founded.
This explains the striking decorations inside Afra Grill, a modern, highly accommodating and pristinely sparkling Northland-area restaurant that Abcos Ahmed, an emigre from Somalia, opened in June.
There’s a scene in No Passport Required where chef Marcus Samuelsson and Patricia Nyan, chef-owner of Suya Hut in Houston, talk about the importance of suya. The spice rub, originating from predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria, is made from peanuts and chili peppers and used to marinate grilled beef and chicken in Nigerian cookery.
Senegal’s flavors and one-pot cooking gave us gumbo, jambalaya and Hoppin’ John, but why aren’t we savoring the originals, says Serigne Mbaye, a young chef born in Harlem but raised in Senegal. Why isn’t Senegalese food as revered as the cooking of France and Italy?
At Romeo and Milka Regalli’s Crown Heights restaurant, vegan proteins stand in for meats, and tangy, fermented injera soaks up sauces spiked with traditional berbere spice or puckery lime.
Bolé Ethiopian Cuisine in St. Paul was destroyed during the protests.
Rekik Abaineh and her husband Solomon Hailie, owners of Bolé Ethiopian Cuisine in St. Paul, Minnesota, told ABC News it was “overwhelming” to see their restaurant reduced to rubble after the first night of George Floyd protests in Minnesota’s Twin Cities
Soon, Norfolk will be home to a kind of restaurant rare in America — a casual and friendly lunch counter devoted to the West African flavors of Ghana. At Yendidi restaurant in Norview Heights, Ghanaian-born chef Josephine Oteng-Appiah plans to serve the tomato-rich jollof rice stews, spiced beef and plantains, and vibrant grilled fish she grew up with — along with a whole new world of flavors she’s learned since moving to America.
By Christi Wayne And Charlie Whitescarver | Roanoke Times
“We have never been to Ethiopia,” said just about everyone in Radford. But now you can have a little taste from this eastern African country courtesy of Mamma Kitchen.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Jonathan Adewumi was the popular co-owner of the Amarachi restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn, but for many Nigerians he was much more than a restaurateur. The 57-year old was the person many called when they needed to make a business and personal connection. Now many are in mourning following his death from COVID-19.
In the 1970s, amid changing tastes and a growing population from Ethiopia and Eritrea, chef Desta Bairu’s DC restaurant won national attention. The woman in the kitchen, not so much.
Ope Amosu shares the beauty and love of West African culture through the food he grew up eating. He created ChòpnBlọk, a contemporary West African-inspired, fast, casual pop-up dinner concept serving as a cultural crossroads between West African culinary traditions and local communities in Houston, Texas
He is the man behind the delicacies of California’s new «place to be» restaurant Tagine Beverly Hills. Chef Ben, or Abdessamad Benameur, is a self-taught, spontaneous and full of love and energy Moroccan man who brought the secrets of the Moroccan cuisine to Beverly Hills.
Food is so ingrained into the culture of Cameroon that even the West African country’s name, camarão, means shrimp in Portuguese. Throw in some 250 ethnic groups and the influences of colonization by Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Add the Portuguese explorers who named the country after a crustacean and you get an eclectic Instapot of flavors. Flavors served up in African Chop, as far as I can tell the only sub-Saharan African food truck in Los Angeles, California.
Houston is often called the most diverse city in America, and the influence of immigrant communities has a huge impact on its food. In Houston, most of the West African population is Nigerian, but people, and ingredients, from Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, and other countries in the region also continue to make their mark on the local food scene. Popular dishes found in Houston range from suya and jollof rice to peanut soup and plenty of other stews.
Located at the heart of Washington, District of Columbia, USA is a restaurant, Safari DC famed for the Kenyan cuisines it dishes out and is the only Kenyan themed eatery in Washington DC.
The restaurant has hosted a number of prominent persons from Kenya when they made their trips abroad, most notably President Mwai Kibaki, ODM leader Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Keneth Matiba, and Mama Sarah Odinga the Standard reported.
Many people that have visited the restaurant, shower it with praise stating that it gave them a taste of Africa and the zeal of African food. It has established itself as a fan favorite among Kenyans and Africans in the larger DC metro area.
“Once you walk in here, you are an African and we love to eat, talk politics and interact with each other,” Everitus Kalaba then a Consular official from Zambia described the restaurant.
The restaurant was founded by William Mukabane and his wife Alice. Coincidentally, Mukabane left for the US to pursue the American dream the same day President Jomo Kenyatta passed on, August 1978.
After doing manual jobs at various restaurants, he pursued hotel Management and classical french cuisine, served as a chef and later branched out to start the restaurant.
A yearn for Kenyan food ignited the desire to establish a restaurant majoring in African delicacies.
Talks of the restaurant as an authentic Kenyan cuisine joint attracted people across Washington DC, inking its name among fan favourites.
A corner of the restaurant is dedicated to US’s 44th President Barack Obama and was christened the Obama shrine.
During Obama’s inauguration, it hosted his grandmother, Mama Sarah Obama and several Kenyan dignitaries who were set to attend the function.
A section of Safari DC, a Kenyan-themed restaurant in Washington DC. A section of Safari DC, a Kenyan-themed restaurant in Washington DC. She came in at around 10 am and left at 3 pm. I treated them to Tilapia, Samosas, Kenyan sausages, chapatis, nyama choma,” Alice recounted.
The hotel features cuisines such as grilled meat, staples such as collard greens, cassava, and grains.
In 2017, the restaurant was acquired by David Laichena, a Kenyan, and he along with his partner continued the Kenyan theme for the restaurant.
According to American publication Petworth news, some of the chefs at the restaurant are Kenyans. And Laichena constantly liaises with the Kenyan embassy to import Kenyan chefs for the restaurant.
For its African dominated menu, the restaurant imports a majority of the foods from Kenya. Kenyan tea including spiced masala tea, Arabica coffee from Kenya, Tilapia from lake victoria, Farmer’s choice pork sausages.
The soothing Kenyan music that plays in the background adds to the African experience the restaurant’s clientele seeks.
Parked in front of Manhattan’s Nigerian consulate, during a blizzard or heat wave, is the intrepid Divine Flavored Food Truck selling home-cooked Nigerian food. Customers line up at the window to order jollof rice with goat, gizzdodo (chicken gizzard with plantain cooked in fresh thyme and curry), or a pureed red bean called moimoi, among other traditional Nigerian dishes.
Queen of Sheba has been serving Ethiopian food in Hell’s Kitchen for nearly two decades, and is still going strong with a wide array of tasty dishes from owner and chef Philipos Mengistu.
Before Mengistu moved to America in 1990 with dreams of opening an Ethiopian restaurant in New York City, he learned the craft in a restaurant that his parents ran in Addis Ababa.
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