Houston’s thriving West African food scene
One day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled off the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple food throughout West Africa. Made from root vegetables or steamed grains – in this case, yams – that are pounded and hydrated until soft and slightly chewy, reminiscent of raised bread dough, they fall under the pan-African category known as “swallow,” in which they are most often served. As a starchy accompaniment to soup or stew. This wasn’t my first time eating fufu. Confidently, I tore off a small piece and began rolling it between my palms. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me. “Unh-unh. Mm-hmm. What do we do?”
The voice belonged to Kavachi Okigbo, a Houston native whose mother, Margaret, a Nigerian immigrant, had opened Safari in 1994. Checking, then checking again, I was after “traditional Traditional Nigerian dishes, ordered by Lee Okigbo, co-author of the 2021 book “The Art of Fufu,” and she carried the dishes from the kitchen herself. There was a meaty circle of ground snail, which was wrapped in fried onions and peppers, and required a sharp knife to cut; AbachaGrated cassava mixed with palm oil and chunks of fish. And the fufu that came with a bowl of nsalaa thick, fragrant soup filled with various offal and cuts of beef and goat meat.
Okigbo gave me an amused look before correcting my fufu. She explained that I had to use only one hand to tear off a piece, roll it between my fingers, and then flatten it into a ladle to dip into the soup. I followed her instructions, but when I raised my hand to my mouth, I saw in her look that my guardianship was far from over. “Now let me see whether you chew it or swallow it,” she said. I froze, and swallowed. I realized that “swallow” was a literal term.
I had arrived in Houston the day after the election, and headed straight from George Bush Intercontinental Airport to another restaurant, a brand new one, called ChopnBlok. To some extent, this is a novelty, being the first West African restaurant in Montrose, a historic gay neighborhood that is home to a bustling dining and nightlife scene, as well as the Rothko Chapel. But ChopnBlok’s arrival there reflects a decades-long evolution in Houston’s remarkably diverse makeup. Since the 1980s – partly because local universities have recruited students and staff from Nigeria and neighboring countries – West Africa’s population has grown slowly for many years and then explosively in the past decade. According to census data, the number of people of Nigerian descent living in the Houston metropolitan area more than doubled between 2010 and 2022, from more than twenty thousand to nearly fifty-three thousand. When a Nigerian teenager considers going to college in the United States, one Houstonian told me, “The question is: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Harvard?”
In the early 1990s, opening a Nigerian restaurant made Margaret Okigbo a pioneer. In the years since, dozens of other businesses have followed, mostly in and around Alief, an area in southwest Houston that borders the city’s Asia Town and includes the Little Africa district. On a short tour that included wholesale company Bukky Enterprises, which imports goods from all over West Africa, and Suya Hut — a small restaurant that specializes in exceptional grilled meats, as the Hausa people do it, marinated with a mixture of ground peanuts and spices — Okigbo emphasized We’ve barely scratched the surface. In October, Houston City Hall held an exhibit commemorating “notable Houston Nigerians,” including rapper Tobi Nwigwe; Sion Adigun, a biomechanist who competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympics; and Ope Amosu, the thirty-seven-year-old owner and chef of ChopnBlok.
Amuso, who was born in London and raised in Houston, opened the first ChopnBlok location in 2021, as a fast food kiosk at Post, a food court in a converted mail sorting facility near downtown Houston. Armed with an MBA, but little restaurant experience—save for a six-month stint as a chef at a Chipotle restaurant, while working full-time in oil and gas—he wanted to do for West African food what he had seen restaurateurs do for countless others. Other cuisines: Make them more accessible to everyone.
The new, expanded outpost in Montrose is approaching this goal with greater ambition. In the elegant dining room, filled with gorgeous wallpaper, textiles, and artwork, I met Jaylen Marcil, the restaurant’s publicist, who ordered a full set of the menu while we waited for Amuso to finish his meeting at the bar. The “chips and dip,” a bowl of silky, salty “Liberian greens” served with banana chips, was surprisingly delicious, as was the “reimagined” Scotch egg, made with ground turkey and a hard-boiled egg filling. By the time I had tasted a main course called “Black Star”, which featured grilled prawns, Ghanaian style waakye Rice (so named after the sweet, dried sorghum leaves with which it is seasoned), and Yasa The curry—an homage to the Senegalese dressing made with mustard and caramelized onions—I’d imagine moving within walking distance.
Amuso, who has the build of a cartoon bear and a cheerful demeanor — he played football at Truman State University in Missouri, where his brothers nicknamed him “Chef Homeboy,” because of his barbecue skills — smiled sheepishly as he pulled up a chair to join us. “I think we’re blessed with good tastes,” he said modestly, when I asked him if his family was obsessed with food when he was growing up. Moreover, he said the secret to his success was the wisdom of “home cooks,” that is, a cottage industry, in West Africa and throughout the diaspora, carried out by (mostly) women who specialize in one dish – jollof rice, and egusi soup. -And supply it for parties and events. In his spare time, Amuso would shadow home cooks in Houston, including one of his cousins, and study their techniques before developing his own recipes.
The chips and dip were inspired by one of Amosu’s favorite Nigerian dishes, a spinach-based stew called efo riroWhich he likes to eat with bananas, and through his travels in Liberia on the West African coast, which was founded in the early nineteenth century to be a refuge for people who were enslaved in America. Amoso consists of finely chopped cabbage and cabbage — brought back to Liberia by Africans returning — plus peppers, onions and spices, and is cooked relatively briefly, to preserve the bright color of the greens, with a little baking soda to tenderize them.
Almost everything on ChopnBlok’s menu references not only West Africa but also the Black American South. Amoso’s Smoked Jollof Jambalaya is a fusion of the Louisiana staple and its West African predecessor. Black Star elements, each rooted in old-world recipes, come together to resemble Southern-style shrimp and gravy over grains.
In 2023, Amosu organized a food festival called Chopped & Stewd — a nod to the locally born, remix-heavy music genre known as Chopped & Stew — celebrating the many Houstonians who have West African ancestry. “There are a lot of conversations emerging within the community about black heritage,” said Marcel, the publicist, whose grandparents moved from Louisiana to Houston before she was born, and who speaks with a slight Texas accent. “Just like black people do truly Know where they come from? And I, no, know where my ancestors came from. I am a descendant of slaves, and that is enough. But sometimes, from an American perspective, you can feel a sense of division about who might go back to the African continent, and so it’s great to see it all coming together.
On my last morning in the city, I met Amosu and Marcel at Breakfast Club, a daily brunch restaurant downtown. The “K” in Klub is a reference to Kappa Alpha Psi, the black fraternity; Owner Marcus Davis was a member of the college. Since its opening in 2001, the place has become a nexus of black culture in Houston, a stop on any politician’s election campaign, drawing lines down the block, even on weekdays. We were joined by Davis, two of Amosu’s mentors, restaurateur Benji Leavitt and Chris Shepherd, chef and founder of Southern Smoke, an organization that supports food and beverage workers, and Kayla Stewart, a Houston-born food writer.
“I don’t know that I realized how black Houston was until I left grad school,” said Stewart, who is black, eating huge plates of fried catfish with eggs, grits and biscuits. “You have the West African and Caribbean diaspora and black people here who integrate naturally, and I think that’s why places like Obi are able to thrive.”
The conversation turned to the Michelin Guide, which was finally arriving in Texas; The surveyed restaurants will be announced the following week. No one at the table was invited to the party, or seemed particularly concerned about who would make the menu. It seemed foolish to try to define Houston’s sprawling dining scene too narrowly. Miles of malls offer exciting eats from around the world: taco shops; Faint palaces. Indian and Pakistani banquet halls. Vietnamese restaurants that specialize in banh mi, or pho, or borrow Cajun traditions such as crawfish boils. Earlier in my trip, I had eaten grilled lamb over broken vermicelli from a Senegalese food truck, while sitting in an old office chair in an abandoned, trash-strewn parking lot.
In the wake of the election, being in Houston has been a surprisingly exciting and hopeful experience. After decades of living in the United States, Amosu was finally in the process of obtaining his citizenship; The day before, he had gone for his interview. Within a few months, he will be able to call himself an American, perhaps secondary to his identity as a Houstonian. “It has become a haven for our community,” he said in his hometown. “With more numbers, we are able to amplify our voice and embed ourselves in the fabric of the city.” “And I am Nigerian, and we know how to make noise,” he added. ♦