Before Jollof Became a Debate, It Was Dinner

Nigeria and Ghana can keep arguing over who makes it better. We’re more interested in what one pot of rice tells us about home, memory, migration and the extraordinary food cultures of West Africa.

There are certain conversations you should enter carefully.

Religion.

Politics.

Other people’s children.

And apparently—

jollof rice.

[Laugh.]

Ask who makes the best jollof and suddenly perfectly reasonable adults from Nigeria and Ghana begin behaving as though national sovereignty itself is at stake.

The Nigerians have entered the chat.

The Ghanaians were already there.

Senegal is somewhere in the background wondering why everyone has forgotten where this conversation began.

And somebody’s auntie has already decided that none of you know what you’re talking about.

Welcome to West Africa.

But underneath the jokes and the rivalry is something considerably more interesting.

Because jollof isn’t simply a dish.

It is a map.

One Pot. Many Countries.

At its most recognizable, jollof brings rice together with tomatoes, peppers, onions, spices and stock, with recipes changing dramatically depending on where—and by whom—it is made.

But trying to define jollof with a single recipe almost misses the point.

Travel through West Africa and the dish changes.

Nigeria has its traditions.

Ghana has its traditions.

Senegal has its own deep relationship to the family of dishes from which modern jollof developed.

Sierra Leone.

Liberia.

The Gambia.

Cameroon.

Different kitchens answer the same basic idea differently.

And isn’t that what culture does?

It travels.

It adapts.

It absorbs.

It remembers.

Then There Is Nigerian Party Jollof

If you’re going to discover Nigerian jollof, there is one phrase worth learning:

party jollof.

The name already tells you this is not rice interested in sitting quietly in the corner.

This is celebration food.

Wedding food.

Birthday food.

Big gathering food.

The kind of food connected to music, clothes, conversation, family and the possibility that somebody told you the event started at one time while everybody involved understood something completely different.

[Laugh.]

One of its signatures is that smoky character associated with cooking over fire and the concentrated flavors produced in a large pot.

And then there is the bottom of that pot.

The slightly scorched rice.

The part that might look like a mistake to somebody unfamiliar with the food.

Until you taste it.

Suddenly everybody understands why hovering around the kitchen has advantages.

Food Can Tell You Things History Books Cannot

This is what makes food such an extraordinary way to discover a place.

A history book can tell you when borders changed.

Food can tell you what people carried across them.

A textbook can explain migration.

A kitchen can show you.

Ingredients move.

Techniques move.

People move.

Recipes meet other recipes.

Something changes.

Something survives.

And eventually a dish becomes so connected to identity that suggesting another country prepares it better feels like a personal attack.

Food preserves memory differently.

Not through dates.

Through taste.

And Black America Knows Something About That

Think about the foods Black Americans defend.

Macaroni and cheese.

Greens.

Cornbread.

Fried chicken.

Gumbo.

Red rice.

Rice and peas throughout the Caribbean.

Hoppin’ John.

Ask five families how one of those dishes should be prepared and you’ll get seven answers.

Because recipes aren’t merely instructions.

They are inheritance.

Who taught you?

Where were they from?

What could they afford?

What grew nearby?

What did they substitute?

What did their mother do?

What did their grandmother insist you were doing wrong?

That’s how food carries history without announcing itself as history.

And when we begin looking seriously at the foodways connecting Africa, the Caribbean and Black America, familiar ingredients and techniques start raising fascinating questions.

How far did this flavor travel before it reached our table?

Lagos Is Hungry for the Future Too

And this is where our discovery of Nigeria needs to resist another stereotype.

African food is sometimes presented internationally as though its greatest value is authenticity measured by how rustic the setting appears.

But Lagos doesn’t exist in the past.

Its dining culture includes street food and family kitchens, certainly.

It also includes ambitious chefs, beautifully designed restaurants, sophisticated hospitality and diners interested in what Nigerian cuisine can become next.

That matters.

Because preservation does not require refusing innovation.

A chef can honor an ingredient without putting it behind glass.

A traditional flavor can enter a luxurious dining room and remain Nigerian.

A plate can reference grandmother and still look toward tomorrow.

The same culture can contain the roadside and the rooftop.

Neither makes the other less authentic.

Luxury Doesn’t Have to Mean European

Perhaps that’s another idea worth challenging.

When many of us were taught to imagine luxury dining, the images were remarkably predictable.

French technique.

Italian wine.

White tablecloths.

European names.

Africa entered food media through another visual vocabulary entirely.

Markets.

Street stalls.

Open fires.

Hands stirring enormous pots.

Those images can be beautiful and real.

But they are not the entire story.

What happens when the visual language changes?

When Lagos is photographed through its extraordinary architecture?

When Nigerian ingredients arrive on beautiful ceramics?

When African hospitality is presented not as something quaint to discover but as something sophisticated enough to define luxury for itself?

That is the Africa we’re interested in exploring too.

Not because we need to prove Africa can be luxurious.

Because it already is.

So Who Makes the Best Jollof?

Oh, absolutely not.

Mood has a Nigerian office now.

We are trying to build relationships.

I’m not destroying an international media network over rice.

We’ll let Nigeria and Ghana continue negotiations.

What interests us more is what the argument reveals.

People defend jollof because food can hold something enormous inside something ordinary.

Country.

Family.

Childhood.

Migration.

Celebration.

Pride.

Memory.

Home.

You think you’re arguing about rice.

Sometimes you’re actually saying:

This tastes like where I come from.

And there may be few sentences more powerful than that.

The Mood Question

What dish from your family or culture would you defend against anybody who claimed another version was better?

Stay in the Mood

This week, eat something from a culture you don’t know well.

But don’t just order it.

Learn something about it.

Where did the dish originate?

What does its name mean?

When is it traditionally eaten?

How has it changed as people migrated?

And if you’re trying jollof for the first time, try more than one version.

Nigerian.

Ghanaian.

Senegalese.

Then form your opinion carefully.

Because apparently you’re choosing sides now.

As Mood expands its relationship with Nigeria and the African continent, food will be one of the ways we travel together.

From Harlem kitchens to Lagos dining rooms.

From family recipes to extraordinary restaurants.

From the foods our grandparents preserved to the dishes a new generation of Black chefs is reinventing.

Because sometimes the shortest distance between two cultures isn’t an airplane.

It’s a table.

Taste widely. Eat beautifully. Stay curious. Stay in the Mood.

Mood Magazine. Mind. Body. Spirit. Culture. Harlem to the world.