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Simileoluwa Adebajo has been treating San Franciscans to Nigerian food since she started catering in 2018, with dishes such as fried plantains, Asun, which is smoked goat in a sauce of bell peppers, tomatoes and onions, and jollof rice.
Originally from Nigeria, Adebajo earned a master’s degree in international and developmental economics and was a financial analyst for the tech company Twitch before quitting to open her restaurant, Èkó Kitchen, in May of 2019.
“Eventually my passion project became my real thing,” she said.
With the pandemic, Adebajo had to shift to takeout and delivery, which she said would not likely have been successful had she not teamed up with SF New Deal, which pays restaurants to feed people in need.
“They have jollof rice at least once a week,” she said.
Adebajo said she tries to keep her food true to their roots. She might tone down the spice level, but otherwise she makes the dishes as she would in Nigeria.
That wasn’t always the case: At first Adebajo tried to rework her dishes to suit a broader set of palates, “but at some point I realized also that people were coming for an authentic experience,” she said in an interview last year. “So if you’re not giving them the authentic experience, then why are they coming anyway? They can just buy some frozen product and microwave it at home. So I decided just to make it exactly the way my mom or my grandma would make it.”
So far, so good. Èkó Kitchen survived a fire in its commissary last spring that destroyed Adebajo’s inventory and equipment, thanks to her insurance and generous support from the community, and now she’s ready to expand.
A new Èkó Kitchen opened in Los Angeles in early April, doing takeout and delivery out of Crafted Kitchen, a shared-use facility in the city’s Arts District. She offers outdoor dining at the facility once a month, and might consider a brick-and-mortar facility later on, she said.
“After time we’ll see where that journey takes us.”
—Bret Thorn
Eric Rivera’s former tasting-menu-only restaurant, Addo, hasn’t served a guest in its dining room since it shut its doors in March of 2020, mostly because it’s not safe to do so in the middle of a pandemic, Rivera says, but also because he doesn’t have to.
He has been listening to his customers through his active social media presence and has given them what they want. In the early days, that was packets of yeast, and popcorn and Zoom meetings during which his customers could eat hot dogs that Rivera’s team had delivered while watching vintage Seattle Mariners games.
Now he’s delivering do-it-yourself tasting menus with complex mise en place that some of his customers, to his surprise and delight, respond to. He’s also done Spam tasting menus that can be microwaved.
But customers can also pick up a $9 Sloppy Jose — his take on a Sloppy Joe — or a $16 bowl of Lechoncito Ramen that reflects his Puerto Rican heritage. Want to do a cooking class as a team-building exercise? Rivera offers that, too, starting at $85.
Rivera estimates that he’s offered more than 250 different things, from groceries to chicken sandwiches to a chicken wing hot sauce challenge. That last one was touted as “a night of bad decisions!”
Rivera’s approach is often tongue-in-cheek, but he’s no joke. With a background in finance — a field he said he was kicked out of with the economic collapse of 2008 — Rivera also has classic culinary training and spent three and a half years as director of culinary research at Alinea in Chicago before moving home to Washington and going into business on his own.
Rivera is not just pushing culinary boundaries, but he’s challenging what it means to be a professional chef, both in terms of how and what he provides his customers and what he wants his legacy to be.
“When I’m done, it’s done,” he said. “I want to see other people have a chance. I’m not cool with someone becoming famous as a chef and then having 20, 30, 40, 50 restaurants. That’s not okay … at a certain point, how much more of your own bullshit do you need everybody else to have?”
—Bret Thorn
Chef Sheldon Simeon is on a mission to educate the world that Hawaiian cuisine is so much more than SPAM and pineapple on pizza.
The two-time “Top Chef” competitor and James Beard Award nominee is the chef/owner of the restaurants Tin Roof and Lineage on Maui. This year, he authored his first cookbook, “Cook Real Hawai’i: A Cookbook,” which is a collection of 100 Hawaiian recipes along with the history of the island’s culture.
Really, Simeon says, he just wants to cook. He recently turned over the reins of Lineage to executive chef Mijin Kang Toride so he could focus more on Tin Roof. But Simeon also feels a calling to explain Hawaii’s foodways to the uninitiated.
“As I got these opportunities, I realized that the perception of what Hawaiian food is outside of Hawaii is so much different from what we actually experience,” said Simeon. “That’s when I started to tell stories about the dishes I cook and started to get recognized for that.”
The dishes at Tin Roof, for example, lean toward the homier side — food for the soul, like pork belly, warm rice bowls and six-minute eggs — they come with global influences, like a side of kimchi (Korean).
Hawaii’s cuisine is the melting pot result of hundreds of years of immigration blended with the native islanders and people from the mainland.
“It wasn’t until ‘Top Chef’ that I realized what we do in Hawaii was truly unique and that I can stand proud of the food that we serve here,” said Simeon.
In his cookbook, Simeon includes dishes ranging from Portuguese sausage and pocho (Portuguese-style steamed clams), to poke and Lomi Salmon (a ceviche traditionally eaten with poi and a roast pig).
Simeon said he is no longer annoyed with those who reduce Hawaiian cuisine to SPAM and pineapple. Now he sees it as an opportunity.
“I used to get mad about the pineapple [on pizza] but now I see it as a platform or that they’re interested. I have something to build upon,” said Simeon.
—Holly Petre
Rob Connoley, chef-owner of Bulrush in St. Louis, Mo., through deep research into the region and deft foraging of local ingredients has woven disparate threads into a rich tapestry of Ozark Cuisine.
Connoley has put Bulrush on the national map since opening in 2019, creating a new regional niche.
“The origin story is the Osage Nation,” Connoley said in an interview. “Those indigenous people began interacting with the settlers, and those settlers would often have the enslaved.” The settlers were often of European descent and the slaves were from Africa, and all brought their culinary roots to the food.
“The food we eat today is evolved from that very specific point in time which is the late 18th century early 19th century,” the chef said.
“The three cultures — and of course of subcultures — happened at one particular time, and that’s what evolved into what we know today.”
The restaurant’s name, another moniker for cattails, reflects one of the locally foraged ingredients used nearly year-round at the restaurant — from the hot-dog-shaped flower, to the pollen, the sprouts, the roots and the corms. All figure into the menu as well as Connoley’s book, “Acorns & Cattails: A Modern Foraging Cookbook of Forest, Farm & Field.”
Connoley was born and raised in Ste. Geneviève, Mo., a community founded by the French and then populated by German immigrants — all influences found on Bulrush’s menu.
Connoley’s early career as a grant writer for nonprofit organizations allowed him to work in various U.S. cities before he landed in Silver City, N.M. At 40, he shifted his interests to modern gastronomy and opened The Curious Kumquat, a gourmet market and restaurant. He opened Bulrush after moving back to his home state of Missouri.
Bulrush’s most popular dish remains an acorn donut, served atop a white chocolate-potato mousse with a seasonal root vegetable that’s roasted and tossed in a black-walnut-sap vinegar with a leafy green, such as kale, on top. A special acorn-shaped serving dish and smoke under the lid complete the presentation, he said, with the result being: “crunchy, green, chewy, sweet, sour, salty, bitter.”
Connoley and Bulrush partner with local organizations including the Seed Savers Exchange, Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis Archivist Association and the Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office to discover and preserve Ozark ingredients.
—Ron Ruggless
James Beard Award-nominated, “Top Chef” contestant/judge Chef Gregory Gourdet would have opened a new concept in Portland last year, if not for COVID-19.
After years spent cooking in various Jean-Georges Vongerichten kitchens, and a stint as executive chef at Departure Restaurant and Lounge in Portland, Gourdet’s next step is open his own concept: Kann, designed to bring the Haitian cuisine of Gourdet’s heritage to his adopted hometown. It’s now scheduled to debut in summer 2022. Kann will bring something new to Portland’s dining scene.
“In Portland, [they only have] a food cart and another Haitian woman who does cooking classes and catering; it’s a very small community here,” said Gourdet, the son of Haitian immigrants. “When I think about what I wanted my first owned concept to be, I knew I wanted it to be something personal and dive into my heritage and feature different foods from people of color throughout the world.”
Kann’s menu will be divided into three parts: the first will feature “untouched” traditional Haitian dishes, the second will feature dishes inspired by Haitian cuisine like short ribs marinated in epis (Haitian seasoning made with peppers, garlic, and herbs), and the third section will showcase local Portland ingredients and meld them with Gourdet’s own cooking heritage.
“One of the most important things about food is trying to understand where these ingredients come from,” he said. “Oftentimes, it may be a brutal story of how an ingredient was brought over by slaves or indentured servants.”
Another important aspect to Gourdet is a commitment to racial and gender equity. In an interview with the New York Times, he addressed accusations that he had not done enough to stop a culture of harassment and discrimination at his Departure restaurant, and did not credit a pastry chef for her ideas.
Though he has denied these accusations, Gourdet listened, and when opening his own restaurant, he wanted to start from scratch with an equitable culture. His employees are so far 90% Black, indigenous or people of color, 75% womenx (including one nonbinary employee), and all employees other than managers receive the same salary.
“I wanted to tackle these issues head on,” Gourdet said.
— Joanna Fantozzi
In the heart of a downtown Minneapolis industrial site on a patch of parkland on the banks of the Mississippi River, chef Sean Sherman is preparing to revive the spirit of the region’s indigenous people.
Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota and originally from South Dakota, has long been known for his work cooking, educating the world about native foods and working to preserve indigenous food systems across the U.S.
He wrote the James Beard Award-winning cookbook “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen,” and founded the company The Sioux Chef offering catering and educational programs in Minneapolis.
His mission is to revitalize Native American cuisine and the ingredients that represent a culture and a world before colonialization.
More recently he co-founded the nonprofit the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, or NATIFS, to educate the world on localizing food systems. A flagship of the nonprofit is the Indigenous Food Lab, which serves as a culinary training center to “generate wealth and improve health” of native communities.
This spring, Sherman and NATIFS co-founder Dana Thompson are scheduled to open the restaurant concept Owamni by The Sioux Chef at Water Works Park, a new project being created by the city’s park and recreation board and the Minneapolis Parks Foundation.
The riverfront park on the Owamni Yamni — or Place of Whirlpools — was a sacred site of peace and wellbeing for the Dakota and Anishinaabe people for millennia, Thompson said in a statement.
In a video outlining the project, Sherman said. “I think it’s going to be really important to be able to have an indigenous-focused restaurant, so it really will be first for Minneapolis to showcase a beautiful way to create a modern indigenous food place that’s going to be welcoming, healthy and also just gorgeous.”
—Lisa Jennings
