300 Meat Pies and a Michelin Star with Joké Bakare

Joké Bakare on Nigerian Food, Michelin Stars and West African Hospitality

Chef Joké Bakare joins Lecker for a live recording at the Festival of Encounters in Brixton - the same neighbourhood where she first emerged from the tube in 1999 to encounter the bright lights of Brixton. From selling 300-400 meat pies every Sunday outside her church to becoming the first Black female Michelin-starred chef in the UK, Joké's journey is one of persistence, community, and staying true to the food she grew up with.

We talk about growing up in a multi-ethnic Nigerian household where food was a celebration of Yoruba and Igbo cultures, the specific ripeness of plantain that matters more than most people realise, and why she refuses to call her cooking "elevated."

Many thanks to Van Gogh House for including Lecker in the 2025 Festival of Encounters programme! Special thanks to Anna Bromwich and Elysia Krishnadasan Torrens for all their work putting it together. And thanks to everyone who came to the event. 

About Joké Bakare: Joké Bakare is a Nigerian chef and founder of Chishuru Restaurant in Fitzrovia, London. She started her business with a food van outside her church in Southeast London, won a competition for a popup residency in Brixton Village, and in 2024 became the first Black female Michelin-starred chef in the UK.

Find her: Instagram @jokebakare / @chishuru / chishuru.com

Related Lecker episodes:
Permission to Write with Melissa Thompson - on navigating a violent colonial legacy in the food of your heritage
Matooke Goes With Everything - on the significance and specificity of sourcing ingredients

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Full transcript available below

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions

Lecker25_JokeBakare_v1

[00:00:00] Lucy: This is Lecker, I'm Lucy Dearlove. This episode was recorded live at the Festival of Encounters, curated by Van Gogh house taking place at venues in and around Brixton, south London. I was so pleased that my guest for this episode said yes. To doing this event with me because she was the first person who came to mind when I was asked to be part of the festival.

[00:00:36] So here's a brief intro, and this is also the loosely the same introduction that the guest at the event heard. Um, Anna from Van Gogh House kind of introduces both before we start the conversation. So here we go. Joké Bakare is a Nigerian chef. And founder of Chishuru Restaurant in Fitzrovia. She started her business with a van outside her church in southeast London, then won a competition to win a three month restaurant popup in Brixton Village.

[00:01:06] Joké is the first black female Michelin starred chef in the uk. I was so excited to talk to Joké for lots of reasons that I'm going to get into. So I really hope you enjoy our conversation. Okay, let's get into it. Let

[00:01:30] thanks so much, Anna. Thanks so much, Anna. We decided on these stools on advice from, uh, Joké's business partner, Matt, and we're gonna see how it goes. Uh, thank you so much for coming all of you to this live podcast recording. Um, this is Lecker. I'm Lucy Dearlove. And to tell you a little bit about Leer if you don't know it already.

[00:01:52] So I am really interested in, I guess like stories of Cook, how we cook, how we eat. And what happens in our homes and kitchens to make that happen. Um, I'm interested in the things that maybe don't get documented within private life and domestic life. Things not always considered worthy of headline, but I think they're the most interesting things about food culture often.

[00:02:13] Um, that is, all of that is to say that I'm slightly out of my comfort zone today because I don't often interview chef. Let alone chefs of Joké's, uh, caliber and profile. Um, but I, as soon as the festival approached me to do this event, I thought of no one else apart from Joké because I wanted the event to feel connected to Brixton.

[00:02:33] And as we'll get into that is very much the case. Um, and also just anyone who has eaten Joké's food or been to her restaurants will understand how special she is as a chef and as somebody who understands. Kind of hospitality and food in general. Um, also, this is a very exciting moment for me. I've recorded in many places over the years in countless home kitchens on barges and community centers.

[00:02:55] I've actually never done a live podcast. So thank you very much to all of you for coming. Um, okay. So as I mentioned, Jo was top of my list for this event and Anna's given us a lovely bio introduction, so I won't reiterate. Okay. But I think I really want to kind of. Emphasize the timeline of the last few years of your career Joké, because, so 2019 you won a competition to, after, you know, having moved to the UK from Nigeria in the late nineties, I believe, early two thousands.

[00:03:25] Uh, late, late 99. I moved in late 99. Yeah, nine. And then we're gonna maybe come back to some of the, those years in between. Okay. Okay. But then in 2019, you won a competition. The prize of, which was a residency in Brixton Market. Yeah. And flash forward five years and you're getting a Michelin star. So that's kind of the timeline we are dealing with.

[00:03:49] It's unusual, to say the least, I would say also, this is the Festival of Encounters. So I really wanted this conversation to kind of encompass the encounters of your life and how people, places, and ingredients and encounters with those things have shaped your cooking and your love of food. I don't wanna start right at the beginning.

[00:04:09] Okay. But maybe we are going quite far back. Okay. So I would love to know where your love of food started Joké. So maybe tell us a bit about what you ate growing up and who cooked it. 

[00:04:21] Joké: I grew up in the multi-ethnic family. Um, my dad was Yoruba from the western part of the country. My mom was able, from the east.

[00:04:30] And if you are West African, Nigerian, you know, anything that, that, and I grew up, grew up in the north, so the food we had in the family growing up on our table was very, very multi-ethnic. So we had the twist on all the common foods that you normally have. And I was fortunate that my dad was, was such a love of food.

[00:04:51] My grandfather was also a love of food. And I, I kind of got, I kind of got my, my love from food for food from them. And yeah, they, they encouraged me to be curious. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

[00:05:03] Lucy: And in terms of, could you tell us a bit about the differences between Igbo and Yoruba food? Yoruba food generally? Just for the uninitiated, what are we talking about in terms of those food cultures?

[00:05:13] Joké: People? Food is more, uh, I would say. Spiced and Yoruba food is more spicy. Uh, Igbo food is more filled with aromatics and herbs and, and Yoruba food is very, you'd say very, it's plainer. It's more focused on d ingredients themselves and fermented condiments. In the north, the food is much more. Likened to northern North African food or Middle Eastern food because of the connection with, uh, religion and, and trade spice trade.

[00:05:54] So it, it, it is as, it's quite different wherever you are in the country. Yeah. What was your favorite dish that your dad. Oh my God. Uh, he had two, uh, one was, uh, spin because we love leafy green. Mm-hmm. Leafy green, uh, um, um, vegetables. And he would make a soup called a four. And his was always, it was filled with the smell of the iru, fermented iru, and, and it was spicy and it was it with his own.

[00:06:30] There was much more emphasis on the vegetables themselves than the sauce that went with it. So it's like a one pot thing, but it takes a bit of skill to be able to get that thin. Right. And he had. Another thing was agu. His AGU was, was topnotch. Yeah. 

[00:06:46] Lucy: So this is a high bar. When you learned to cook, was that who taught you to cook your dad?

[00:06:51] Joké: I, so growing up it wasn't, oh, come and see how I put this, how I put that. It was just, you see him doing stuff and you are around there and you kind of, I just picked it up by osmosis in a way. 

[00:07:03] Lucy: Okay. And was there anyone else in your life kind of cooking around you that was really influential? When did you start, did you cook at home?

[00:07:09] Is that something you started doing? 

[00:07:12] Joké: Uh, so I grew up with loads of uncles and aunties and cousins and living with us. And if they're older, they will do. Uh, they will cook if my mom is not around. 'cause my mom had the business of her own and my dad was, um, moving around because of postings. He was in the army.

[00:07:29] Uh, so I didn't get a chance to, but there was a time when all everybody was in. Uh, school and I decided I was eight years old. I decided I was gonna make, uh, lunch for myself and my family and my siblings, and I made a mess of it. I poured down the sink. I was trying to make amah, my nephew calls it brown jelly till today.

[00:07:53] Um, so I was trying to make Amah and I went and it had lumps because it, it was a skill for you to turn it. It's like making shoe patsu pastry. You have to turn it so that there's no lumps. And for my small hands, I thought this, just put the flour, I noticed them doing it, and it was lumpy. Pour it down.

[00:08:11] Okay. At the end of it, I finished almost, um, a box of flour and I thought, and the thin that would've gotten me into trouble was blocking the drains. I managed not to block the drains, and my mom actually showed me how to make Kamala. 

[00:08:28] Lucy: So what, what is a mother, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the dish. Tell us about it.

[00:08:31] Um. 

[00:08:33] Joké: It's a stiffened, carbon hydrate, and it's made from a root fetch. So it's made from yams, from fermented yams, and we always make our own flour ourselves. So with my mom would buy yams and we'd cut it and ferment it and dry and ground it. And your ours was really, really nice because she, she didn't believe in you buying from outside.

[00:08:54] But if you buy from the shops, it's usually the pill. So it was using the whole, the whole tuber itself. So it's either you use the tuber itself or you use the pill, or you use a mix of both. 

[00:09:08] Lucy: Am I right in thinking you also had a love of cookbooks that died early? Oh my God, yes. Tell us about that. 

[00:09:13] Joké: That was a thing from my grandfather.

[00:09:15] He was very curious about things and he moved around and he, he wasn't very educated, but he likes books. And I got my taste of collecting from a friend, well, from him. But the first book I got was a friend of mine was traveling to the UK from, uh, Nigeria. And she just went, oh, what do you want me to get for you?

[00:09:37] And I said, oh, just get me an, get me a book. And she brought back with her Margaret Patterns, uh, encyclopedia cookery, the blue one. It was, I still have it. She got it from me. I think I was in 10 11. Oh my gosh. Yes. And it just transported me. I opened it up and he had, with these pages of photographs of food that was so foreign to me.

[00:10:00] Yeah. And I thought, oh my God. And it was, um, the first one was an OD and it was sev for me 'cause I didn't know how to pronounce it. And I had, there was a, um, uh, crepe crepes. And my first thing that I cooked from there was a crepe. It was shit. But my dad loved it. He said, oh my God, this is, so, he said, oh, you are such cooking foreign food.

[00:10:29] So that was my very first cookbook and I've been collecting cookbooks ever since, since I was, uh, 10 11. 

[00:10:35] Lucy: Yeah, that's quite a strong start. 10 11 with Margaret Margarite. Paton. 

[00:10:39] Joké: What came after that? How do you top that? Um, I know,

[00:10:45] I think it was, um, it was, uh, the, no, that was further down. There was a very, it's popular and, and I think iconic till today, Mrs. Williams cookbook. It was called Oh Book of Cookery. It was, um, written by an expat, uh, living in Nigeria at that time. It was used in schools after a while. But Mrs. Williams cookery book.

[00:11:07] Yeah. 

[00:11:08] Lucy: And, and so that's interesting. It was, that was Nigerian food as documented by an expat? Yes, I was. Was that different from what you were experiencing at home? It 

[00:11:16] Joké: was very different because I, I think, I think with anything, uh, if you come to a place. I found out when I opened the restaurant was you had to interact with the environment, um, and with the food that you find there to be able to produce something that you're used to.

[00:11:33] I think that's what she tried to do and that was what I was trying to do when 

[00:11:37] Lucy: I opened. Yeah. Well, before we get to that, you also must have had a similar experience when you moved to the uk, right? Which was long before you opened the restaurant. Can you remember what the first thing you ate? On arriving in late 1999 was, 

[00:11:52] Joké: um, so I was just telling somebody this and I, I, it's, I just forgotten about it completely.

[00:11:58] Uh, when my mom came to meet me at, I think Heathrow, we used the Piccadilly line. I've forgotten where we changed over to. The, uh, Victoria line and came out at Brixton. So Brixton was the first, because I lived up the road I lived in, um, I lived on Code Harbor Lane, just Code Harbor Lane and my, um, yeah, we got.

[00:12:25] Bright light of, what's the name of the, the big shop? The soup. The department store. Oh yeah. Mo's Mo's. I can Molly's the light bright. I'm like, oh my God. And my mom, uh, bought some spice and pepper and we went home and we had pepper soup with yams. Probably soup with yams. That was the very first meal that she cooked for me when I got to, when I got to London.

[00:12:49] So that must have lessened the 

[00:12:50] Lucy: shock slightly of arriving in this new city. No, but 

[00:12:54] Joké: it was, I was excited. It was like. Things bustling. And you saw people that didn't look different from you, so you didn't have the shock until Yeah, yeah. 

[00:13:05] Lucy: Bit later. And were you, did you continue cooking when you arrived in London?

[00:13:10] Did your mom let you? No. 

[00:13:13] Joké: No. With most, most, uh. People with ethnic from ethnic homes, the matriarch always has a set way she cooks and you don't mess with her kitchen if she, if this is how she wants it. And my mom is very particular. It has to be just so, so whenever she's in the kitchen, you are just a helper.

[00:13:33] And just even till now, I'm just a helper, if she cooks. So, no, you're not messing with my mom's kitchen at 

[00:13:41] Lucy: all. It's good to know your place, I suppose, no matter what you do outside of that kitchen. And so when did you sort of start exploring your new environment in London By cooking and eating? It must have been a bit later on.

[00:13:55] Joké: Yeah. But I do remember when we used to go, if we had family birthdays and things, it was eight oh five that we'd go to. But then when we moved away from, uh, Southeast and went to East London, there were some really nice places that you could go to in East London. Then there were like, holy Nigerian, I think we were one of the first ones that started having our places like the Nigerian community, where you'd go and it's like a pub or whatever, and then you have, um, um.

[00:14:25] Versions of Nigerian food. But the thing that I'll remember and, and it's such a shame that they've closed now, but they've been there forever, was this Cameroonian restaurant at the top of Clapton, a road in Clapton, and years gone by and they made the best. Fish. So they had the form of like fish and chips.

[00:14:46] So it's either you have a potato chips or you have yam chips with fish that was grilled and they grill it in such a way whereby it had like a really lovely, crispy exterior, but inside was still quite moist and served with this chili sauce that will blow your mind. It will be so hot. You know, this kind of, have you eaten anything so hot that your ears.

[00:15:09] You can feel like, it's like in the, in the cartoon cartoons, an hour body experience where yes, where there's smoke coming out your ears, there's a tingling at the back of your nap and your eyes are watering and it's so painful, but it's so delicious that you can't help yourself and you're going back for more and you are waiting, right?

[00:15:27] That wave and go stand and you go again. That was what was Sounds 

[00:15:33] Lucy: incredible. 

[00:15:33] Joké: It it was, it was. And then the next you come out, you are happy. Your mouth is on fire, but your, your head it's, it's opened you up. Really? It was called Bon Al or something like that. It was a Cameroon in place. In Clapton. I dunno when they closed, but they were going for a long time.

[00:15:52] Mm-hmm. Yeah. That sounds amazing. I'm sad they've closed. 

[00:15:56] Lucy: And, um, you've talked about how kind of central ingredients were to the foods you're eating at home. You know, the leafy greens that you mentioned that your dad made and, and your mum being very particular about the root vegetables she was using for, for the other dish you mentioned.

[00:16:09] How did that work in this new city? Do you remember there being ingredients you couldn't get hold of 

[00:16:15] Joké: Before I opened the restaurants? Yes. And for most. Immigrants. It was a thing whereby you'd get somebody, you're coming back home, okay? So get another suitcase, pack this, this, this, that, that and the other.

[00:16:28] And can you go to that person and bring this specific, um, fermented thing and go get raffish from that specific person? Mama still does that. And were able to get those things in until the rise of, um, people in the community having groceries and whatever. It was Mainly, we mainly relied on people coming back.

[00:16:49] To the country and bring in stuff with them. Yeah. 

[00:16:52] Lucy: Mm. But then you noticed a shift of things becoming more widely available. Yeah, 

[00:16:56] Joké: I think because a lot of us, when we first moved here, you wanted to do, you wanted to do like proper jobs. You wanted to be a doctor, you wanted be a lawyer. And nobody thought, um, having an ery war or bakery was the thing.

[00:17:11] And I think, uh, savvy people, entrepreneurial people saw that. There was a market for it and some people were doing it. They could, they had other jobs and they had that as a side job. And that helped, helped a lot of us, helped a lot of us, um, becoming rooted to the communities that we found ourselves. 

[00:17:28] Lucy: Hmm.

[00:17:29] Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. That is smart. But then it was a long time before you did that yourself. Yeah. So you were doing, what were the proper jobs that you were doing in the interim? Oh, God, please. 

[00:17:41] Joké: I just had to find a way. I, I, I did a couple of things that I just, and after a while I just became, uh, drudge.

[00:17:50] That you go in every time, and it wasn't really what I wanted to do, but at at, at the back of my mind, I had this thing, I wanted to have a restaurant, but I didn't know how to go about it until I decided, okay, this is it. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do this. Yeah. 

[00:18:05] Lucy: Well, we will get onto that, um, because I really want to sort of talk to you more about that, that that gradually evolving process of opening to Shiru.

[00:18:13] But let's come back to South London because that's where we are. That's where this festival is taking place. And you've mentioned that Brixton was the first place you kind of emerged from the underground network up into the bright lights. Yeah. What, like, what makes Brixton such a special place to you?

[00:18:27] Do you still, does it still occupy that place for you now when you shop for the restaurant? 

[00:18:33] Joké: I, I still shop from Brixton. Mm-hmm. I still, most of the, like the suppliers that I, um, I connected with when I had the restaurant, we still get a lot of our stuff from there. 

[00:18:43] Lucy: Why do you think it's a special place?

[00:18:45] Like, what makes it that, what makes you, you know, keeping going back there? It has changed. There changed. It has changed 

[00:18:49] Joké: from when. When we first moved, uh, to the uk, it changed really much. Then you had a mix of Afro-Caribbean and African shops, and now a majority of the things that we get are from say, Peckham and stuff like that.

[00:19:06] Okay. But they're still a part of, uh, the West Africa, the West African community. In, in Brixton. 

[00:19:13] Lucy: Are there specific things that you come back to buy in Brixton? So what, 

[00:19:16] Joké: what are the things you're buying in Brixton for the restaurant? Oh my God. So the case in point, planting, plantain, case in point, planting.

[00:19:29] When we first moved to Fitz Rover, it was such a pal lava to get honestly. So we went back to getting planted and it had to be just so, it had to be a certain ki, a certain ripeness, a certain, uh, depending if you want to fry, it has to be. A certain type of ripeness if you want to boil. It's, and not a lot of people realize that the suppliers that we were buying things from, the other suppliers think that when you say plantain, they didn't know.

[00:19:57] Mm-hmm. They'll give you some will give you like really green planting or just not good quality. Planting and planting for West Africans in some dishes is as integral as, as. Rice to to the Japanese. Do you understand? To It was very important. So for the supplies that I had in Brixton knew this is the type of planting that they want.

[00:20:23] There was a time that I was coming myself and I'd feel it and a goat. See, have you seen this? This is what I want next week. For a while it was, it was like that. You go make sure and then if you leave them, they go back to their ways. But now we've kind of, we've kind of found a middle ground. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:41] And it's just plantain. It might, it just feels like it's, when you hear it, you just think, Ugh. It's just one ingredient. But that is like, um. What am I saying? It's just like an emblem of all the other things that we use that people did not understand. 

[00:20:55] Lucy: Mm-hmm. And has that been, have you found that, as, you know, obviously you've, you've made this shift now to fitzrovia, like with that shift, and maybe, I dunno, maybe in the a, a restaurant that cooks, for example, French food, might be able to then find other suppliers that would deliver there easily.

[00:21:09] Has it been the case that you're still relying on kind of your original networks? For those ingredients. I mean, you mentioned with plantain that that's the case. 

[00:21:17] Joké: Yes, it is. It is still, it's still that way. I was speaking to Agie from a Coco, uh, not too long ago, and, and what both of us have just realized is because it's so hard, and what we have just done was get the people to be able to supply a set thing and then we.

[00:21:34] Pay for delivery and sometimes the amount of money you pay for delivery is so much that you need to be sure you have everything you need. For me, I get my things from Brixton, I get from, uh, Peckham, I get from Dolson, I get from Dham, Heath way from shops. And he too, he, that's what he does. And for us, because we are the first ones doing this and we are doing that work of trying to pick, make the suppliers aware that there is a demand for this, there is a market for this.

[00:22:02] If you look and you're able to source good quality ones, we will be able to buy off of you. It's still a discussion. That's an ongoing discussion. 

[00:22:10] Lucy: I mean, all of these kind of very specific logistical issues must have been sort of unimaginable. Unimaginable to you when you first started thinking about opening a restaurant.

[00:22:18] I mean, you've mentioned you had this idea in the back of your head when you were working on the jobs in London for a long time before it ever kind of came to fruition. When was the first time you thought it might actually become a reality? Oh. 

[00:22:34] Joké: Because the thing is, I've, I've had it in my head for so long.

[00:22:39] It's always been percolating, so I, there was no time when I went, okay, now this is it. 

[00:22:43] Lucy: Mm. 

[00:22:44] Joké: Because I've done one or two things that just kept me on this, on this. Path to opening. Uh, I've done bits and pieces. I have ventured out and done stuff. It didn't work out, but still continued. So I wouldn't say I had like a specific light bulb moment that went, yes, this is what we are gonna do.

[00:23:03] I would say even doing, even going on the competition and winning, it still wasn't set in stone because Yeah. Brixton market just did its own thing for a long time before. Before 2020, so yeah, it wasn't even then, it wasn't set in stone, as I said. Yeah, yeah. I had to keep pushing and pushing until it, it didn't eventually happened.

[00:23:27] Lucy: And the other things you were doing along the way that you mentioned, what, what were those things you, I think supper clubs, right? Or popups? Yes. And cooking outside your church. 

[00:23:35] Joké: The first one was actually cooking outside my church. Like every Sunday. It was. There was an opportunity to feed these people that come to church and I reached out to the pastor and I went, yeah, I could, I could get a food van in place if we, and that that was okay.

[00:23:49] It was, it just, um, it suited like a need that I had then to, for this part of me. And for years it kept, it, it went, it kept going. Every Sunday or when they had something special, I would do it. And after a while I thought, oh, I wanted to do something a bit more than once a week. Okay. And I did supper clubs, not a lot because it was such a lot of work.

[00:24:16] Oh my God. The logistics of having to carry your stuff to the place and cook and clear, and you had to get there at this time and you had to leave at this time. It was, it was, yeah, it was a headache. Uh, I did that for a few, uh, a few times and then I started thinking, I need, really need to get a place that's a bit more, uh, stable than this.

[00:24:36] And then Brixton market thing came up. Yeah. 

[00:24:39] Lucy: And what about the food that you were serving? What's been the evolution of that? So what were you making at the, the, the place at the van at your church? 

[00:24:45] Joké: Oh, I was making meat pies. I was making Nigerian meat pies at that. Oh my God. I'm getting PTSD from, from talking about it.

[00:24:56] It was, I would make three, 400 pies. Oh my gosh. On the Saturdays. I didn't have a Saturday for years. I would make three, 400 pies Saturday nights through Sunday morning. Get, get it there, cook, um, bake it and sell. And the way the people go, oh, this is a space small for one pound 50. And I'm going, Hey, I've been standing for about 20 hours on my feet.

[00:25:23] Uh, need to appreciate this, 

[00:25:26] Lucy: but it's extraordinary. You were selling that many, I mean, that's incredible. Yes. 

[00:25:29] Joké: Three 

[00:25:30] Lucy: or 400 a week. Yes. 

[00:25:31] Joké: Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was, it was good. But when you count, when you think about all the other things that you, that you have to take into account for doing a business, it wasn't really well taught true, because for me it had to be a certain, I had to get a certain kind of flower.

[00:25:53] I had to get, uh, a certain, well, the mince was fine. I had to get a certain kind of potatoes and had to do a certain kind of butter to be able to give me that crumbly crust that I wanted because I grew up eating. I, ah, there's one thing, I was talking to somebody recently about how when you move from one place and come to another, you kind of.

[00:26:13] Fan stay in like a time warp. Mm. You have a taste of what you had growing up and, and that doesn't ever change, but it food evolves. The people that are coming from there after you've left have moved on of doing something else. But I had in my head that vision of Mr. Big pies that I had growing up that I wanted to recreate, and I went.

[00:26:34] Through different iterations and I finally got it and I went, this is too much. I'm not doing it anymore. 

[00:26:41] Lucy: Onto the next, onto the next. And so the first kind of incarnation of Chiru, was it always a really clear vision of how, how you wanted the menu to look, how you wanted the restaurant to look? That first restaurant that you opened in Market Row as a result of winning the competition, was that a clear vision that you had or was it trying something out as well?

[00:27:01] Joké: No, it was. It'd always been what I wanted to do because I then, I kind of appreciated the fact that I grew up in this multi-ethnic household and our food was a, was a melding of everywhere we came from, and I really appreciated that. And I wanted to share my af Nigerian friends that come to the restaurant, oh, to my house.

[00:27:21] When I cook, we go, oh, uh, this is, I know this, but this is really different. Your own take on it is quite different. And you should share this with people. So I thought, yes, it was, it was a celebration of, um, I don't wanna say Nigerian culture, I wanna say celebration of West African culture. Mm. Okay. And I had that in mind, and I had, because by this time I'd eaten, I loved food so much and I knew that to be able to connect with the, with other communities here, I had to present it in such a way whereby people can interact with it.

[00:27:54] So I knew. We, we, we don't have to do a one part thing because it is, it is possible. It's not. Uh, making it different? Um, no, not elevating it, but it, or making it that it is approachable. 

[00:28:09] Lucy: Mm. 

[00:28:10] Joké: And also making people that are from the, where I come from to see that, oh yeah, you could think about the food in this way, which is slightly different from what you thought about it growing up.

[00:28:22] Lucy: Yeah. There's a familiarity, but it doesn't have to be exactly the same as what they do. No, it, it hasn't, 

[00:28:26] Joké: it doesn't have to be like you slavishly following a thing. 

[00:28:33] Lucy: And so you then went from, you know, wanting to do cooking in a bit more of a fixed location way to getting what you wanted. How did it feel at that point when you first opened that kind of initial incarnation of the restaurant?

[00:28:46] Joké: Oh my God. Uh, because at this time it was. It was such a lot that have gone on in the background for me opening that it was just, okay, people just come and it was a middle of a pandemic. A lot of things has happened. So September, 2020, September, 2020, I think on the eighth I think it was. A lot of things had happened then, and you just thought, please, people come.

[00:29:12] We had the, um, help out to eat out thin and all of that, and we couldn't benefit from it because we opened later. But seeing all of that and hoping that people would still come out because it, it was such a, it was such an uncertain time, wasn't it? 

[00:29:28] Lucy: Yeah. I mean, truly a wild time to first restaurant. 

[00:29:33] Joké: But I think they're appointed time.

[00:29:35] I, I keep saying to people that if I think if I hadn't opened them because of what has happened was what kept me going. Mm. Like. Who would've thought that something had hap would happen that will close down the worlds. Mm. For months. The whole world for months on end. Mm-hmm. And you think if that can happen, this can happen.

[00:29:56] And yeah. So I think that's what gave me the, you know, the push to go, you know what, anything can happen. 

[00:30:03] Lucy: Yeah. So, yeah. And what was kind of the encounters that you had with people, like in that early, in those early days in the restaurant? Was it what you expected? Like how were people responding to the food you were cooking?

[00:30:14] It was 

[00:30:14] Joké: really, I would, yeah, really, if I say surprising, then it means I, I didn't have faith in the food. No, but it was really. Heartening, heartening is the word I wanna use that people able to connect with this. We see what it is that I'm going, and at the same time we go, oh my God, we, we didn't know that we are living adjacent to this all, all along.

[00:30:37] And you've made us, uh, aware of this. It's almost like we brought the food. Away from the margins and bringing it into collective awareness. So I just felt really proud. I wanna say, yeah, I wanna say proud to be part of that movement, to go, okay, it's not just your mom and pop shop anymore. We can do something whereby it's a melding of the different things that we see here that makes it.

[00:31:04] Uh, makes it something slightly different, but at the same time real. Mm. 

[00:31:10] Lucy: Yeah. And what was it like? I mean, I feel like we had a conversation about this the first time we met, but I also used to work in a cafe in Brixton in Market Row, and I find, and this was, you know, going back 10, 15 years, but it's such a specific community, even among the business owners.

[00:31:23] How did you find that? What was kind of going on around you in the market at that time? 

[00:31:28] Joké: Oh gosh. The, uh, it's like a community we had, you knew everybody. People were very friendly. You knew. Yeah. You knew everybody. It, it was nice. Mm-hmm. It was nice. Mm. It was a really lovely, warm, uh, community and everybody, as I said, everybody helped each other out.

[00:31:46] Lucy: Yeah. And then so how did that feel moving from that kind of almost more close knit environment to Fitzrovia, which feels like suddenly a whole different ballgame. Right. What was it like suddenly being in this completely different setting, which is maybe less of a community? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:32:02] Joké: Yeah, true. I, I, we, I tried, I really, really tried to stay in Brixton, but we couldn't find a place in the market then, and we found a place in Central. We wanted to be able to do lunchtime trade. We didn't have lunchtime trade in Brixton, and that was hard. And I wanted not to be open seven days a week. I wanted to be open five days a week.

[00:32:30] And it just made business sense. And the price that we were quoted in Brixton was just slightly, and I mean, slightly less than we found when we moved. Wow. Because the site we went to wasn't, nobody really wanted it. It wasn't, and we wanted something bigger. And it, it just kind of happened. It happened, yeah.

[00:32:51] Lucy: And how has it changed, I guess, the, the people that are eating with you, does it, does the, do you feel like the restaurant has a different feel now you're in Fitzrovia. 

[00:32:59] Joké: Um, no. I think the people that used to come when I was in Brixton came in the early days before we got the star, and there was still a, well, because when we were in Brixton was 45 pounds, obviously we had to take into account that we are paying higher rents and all of that, and it was 65.

[00:33:21] Obviously you get a lot, a couple of people that will kick off against it, but we do realize that we still have people who come to us that may come into us from Brixton. So yes, we still kept a part of that. The only shift in how people viewed us was when we got the star and people thought that. We'll be one thing and we're not.

[00:33:43] Mm. Uh, in the early days a lot of people thought that you will be like a traditional, uh, Michelin star place where everybody was like, uptight and everything, and not everywhere's, uptight, sorry. But a lot of people felt that it had to be, there had to be a couple of things that we ticked off to be termed Michelin start place.

[00:34:06] We didn't have white tablecloths. We had, we had an amazing front of house person that greeted you. And, um, we were different. Mm-hmm. We were not that kind of place. We're very laid back. We didn't take ourselves too seriously. It was all about our, the kind of hospitality we gave when we were in Brixton and, yeah.

[00:34:30] Lucy: Well, I, that was, that was moving on to my next question. You know, as we mentioned in the intro, 2024 saw you get the Michelin star, um, as the first black woman in Britain to do so, which is an, an incredible achievement, but it's also sad that it kind of took this long, right? It's a bit of a double-edged sword.

[00:34:47] How did it feel to get that? Was it a shock? 

[00:34:50] Joké: Oh gosh, it was because we didn't know. We got this invitation and it was, it was like a week or two weeks before, two weeks before, and it says, so this is before the ceremony. Before the ceremony. I just said, oh, you're invited to the Michelin ceremony, Manchester.

[00:35:07] And I thought, oh, okay, because we are just opened. So they're trying to get loads of like new restaurants in. Oh, that's nice. And that's nice. We have a, yeah, we drink, we drink champagne and, and you know, hop knob with the rest of them and, and I said to Matt, I went. What do you, do? You think we won? He said, oh, come on.

[00:35:30] Don't be ridiculous. Of course not. I went, oh, okay. They, they didn't say anything, so we are gonna go. We went and, and I saw my friend Charlie from Alice, and I went, Hey man, well done. So it means you won. Oh, oh, we don't know what's going on. And he went, oh, there might be something in there for you. And I thought, are you sure I'll get away?

[00:35:52] And that was how it was. We just, just patted him on the back and. The, the ceremony people did not make it easy as well. They'd call like 15, 16 other people and all men, uh, all white, apart from Ayo. And then they went, okay, and this is the class of, um, 2024, the new one star, da da da da. Can we get the head of this to come on before everybody comes on stage and takes a picture?

[00:36:20] And, and he comes on and he goes, ah, before we have a picture, we have one last thing. And it is, it was like, it was like a game show thing. Like, ha ha, you wore it. Oh my god. And, and then he went. And the, the, the other Michelin is for the, the West African food. She and I just jumped up initially, I went Fuck and know, and then me and Matt just looked at each other initially we're thinking, okay, this is, Matt was going, okay, we look like NTIs just such a good, and, and I thought, you know what?

[00:36:57] Don't worry. We are just gonna have the shopping. All gonna go home tonight if we have to. And then that came up and then I just jumped. And if you'd seen videos of me, it was like I was going around and going, okay, where should I go? Somebody was just like, moving me about because I was in shock. Shock.

[00:37:15] Lucy: Yeah. 

[00:37:16] Joké: Yeah. Because we never planned it. We never, we never went, okay, we're gonna get this place and we're gonna do this and do that. And people that opened up at that time, you'd see a restaurant that wants to get Michelin, you know, you see all the things they do, they tick all those boxes and we went, we're not even aware of it because Yeah, we had enough on your plate.

[00:37:37] Yeah, it was, yes. And yeah, it was, it. Quiet and then we got, we just sat down all through the, after the ceremony, just sat down, just looking at each other, looking like, okay, that happened now did it. Okay. It did happen. 

[00:37:52] Lucy: It's really funny to hear this story 'cause I've seen the video of you going on stage and kind of accepting the jacket and you look, you look cool as a cucumber.

[00:37:59] Did I? Yeah. Oh my God. So it was obviously all internalized before you got on stage. And what about after that? I mean, how do you kind of then go back to what you were doing before? Did it feel really different after that happened? 

[00:38:14] Joké: Oh, yes, it did. Um, we, the first couple of weeks we, we got people that knew us or people that wanted to try it coming and it was really nice.

[00:38:24] But then we started getting people from. That had a set mind of how we're supposed to be, and we were not like that. Mm-hmm. And there was a period where I thought, okay, do we do this? And we did. And I went, this is, it's like putting on a jacket that wasn't yours. And it quickly, we changed. We had, oh, some people who would come and go, oh my God.

[00:38:46] You could see it on their face. Oh, how did these people get, look, they know, no, this didn't do this, didn't do that. And you could see them go and there was nothing you could do that could change their mind because we were not that, look, we didn't look it at all. And we didn't aspire to look like that. We just we're just ourselves and we were like, this is what we are cooking.

[00:39:07] It was, yeah. 

[00:39:08] Lucy: So what did you try and then swiftly go back on? 

[00:39:11] Joké: Oh God, we tried to do many these, which wasn't it, it wa we are trying to celebrate our culture and one thing I've noticed is. People that were colonized. We look at everything that we do, our food, especially through the, the lens of the people that colonized us.

[00:39:33] And you try and no matter how I see it in like some Asian food, whereby it is the level of skill and everything, but you still see them trying to look at the, their food through the lens, through the French astronomic lens. And I think that's what I was doing. Uh, try, okay, this is what it is, this is what is accepted.

[00:39:54] Okay, let's look at it through this. But then it felt, it felt really false. 

[00:39:59] Lucy: It's just, it's just everywhere though, isn't it? The language of the kitchen is, you know, so much of it is rooted in that kind of like colonial legacy, often French language as well. Yeah. Yeah. So it did you, did that feel like a tension for a while and then you kind of broke free of it again?

[00:40:13] Joké: Yes, it was, it was, I just thought, no, let's, let's just be ourselves. And what we just needed to do was just to constantly set bar for ourselves and just improve that. And, but at the same time, be the back of my mind, just be rooted to say, um, how true to the culture is this? How true to the food is this?

[00:40:34] And, and we, I have used different ingredients just to create different flavor profile and change the food a bit, added a different dimension to it. But always at the back of my mind, it had to still be rooted to where it came from. Had to still be rooted in the food of the, of the region. Yeah. 

[00:40:54] Lucy: Mm-hmm. And ultimately you get to be the final judge of that, I feel, in this case.

[00:40:59] Joké: Yeah. But more than anything I wanted to be, be true to it. Because even with us, we are not writing about our food as much. Before, but now thank God that people writing more about it. 

[00:41:11] Lucy: Mm-hmm. Uh, 

[00:41:11] Joké: we're not documenting it and I just felt this responsibility to, if people come after me to cook it. Let us have a yardstick.

[00:41:21] Lucy: Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:22] Joké: Yeah. 

[00:41:22] Lucy: And 'cause I've, I've heard you say in interviews before that you really, you, you find that when people use the word elevated around your food, you, you don't like that and you kind of put, I've heard you push back on it and I'm interested to know what is it about that phrasing or that kind of framing of your food as jarring and how, how would you like people to talk about it instead?

[00:41:40] Joké: When you, when you use the terminology elevated, then it connotes that the food itself is, um. It, it has no, has no value the way it is. It needs to be raised up, I guess, to the application. It needs up. Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't need to be raised up. And that's the reason why. And because obviously with what we are doing, there's techniques and skills that that goes into it, and I think that should be celebrated as well.

[00:42:08] Uh, it could be something different. I can acknowledge that, but for you to say whatever we are doing is elevated, it's not, it's just we're cooking foods in such a way to be accessible to people here, to the community that I'm a part of, to my adopted land. So that is what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to, the food on its own, it's, uh, sophisticated enough so it doesn't need somebody else to come and say, oh, I'm, I'm.

[00:42:35] Bringing it up from this low level to this. No, no. 

[00:42:40] Lucy: I love that you used kind of the, the idea of the white tablecloth as a kind of, um, like shorthand for what is often the expected kind of both aesthetic and atmosphere of a Michelin starred restaurant. And I think anyone who's been to Chiru knows that that is.

[00:42:55] So extremely not the vibe and I, and not only is, you know, the food incredible and like every, the kind of generosity of the way things are served to you is wonderful. There's also just this incredible atmosphere. It's true hospitality and the kind of every sense of the word was that, is that really important to you as well as the food, the kind of how people come in and feel in the space.

[00:43:18] Joké: It's been one thing. One of the things that I have insisted on when we opened in Brixton, it was that when you come in, we want you to feel the hospitality that you feel in, I believe in the West African home, when you go in, when they believe that they, the guest is king. Hmm. So that's the mindset that, uh, I used to approach the type of hospitality that we provide when people come in.

[00:43:44] Yeah, 

[00:43:44] Lucy: because I think it was really apparent just, you know, your incredible front of house staff that just like every single person is so knowledgeable and so lovely. Like, it's amazing. It is a big part of the kind of training and like, I don't know, how do you kind of instill what you're doing in everyone?

[00:43:59] Or is it more, more of a natural process? 

[00:44:01] Joké: It's more of a natural process, I think because. Most of the guys that we have working with us, the team are just, they're just very enthused about what we are doing and the knowledge that Matre was really good at that as well, just getting them up to speed because sometimes I, I kind of just go off on a tangent when I'm explaining it to them, but he's able to bring it down and be able to break it down for them.

[00:44:26] So, and they, they just really love it. So I, I dunno about other people. I think I, in that aspect, I'm really, really, really blessed to have, um, such a wonderful team working with me. 

[00:44:37] Lucy: Yeah. So you've mentioned how kind of the foods that you are, you, you now serve in the restaurant kind of began for you cooking for friends at home, for guests at home.

[00:44:47] And you've kind of gone from zero to a hundred in that sense. You've gone from cooking, like really as a hobby or as like a love or a side project to being a mission stard chef. How has it changed what you cook at home? Do you cook at home now at all? 

[00:45:01] Joké: Um, I, I do cook at home once in a while because I at the weekends, um, because I, I, anybody that lives alone, it's so hard to cook for yourself.

[00:45:12] It is really hard to cook for yourself. So once in a while I just get, Hey, do you wanna come, come down? Then I go into, I've been told, I go into hostess, hostess mode and I put things out. Yeah. 

[00:45:24] Lucy: Because was cooking at home previously a kind of site of experimentation and, and playing around for you, and it's maybe you have the restaurant for that now.

[00:45:32] Joké: No. Cooking at home for me. I, I, and I say it then was a way that I showed love to the people close to me. Mm. And it was. There is definitely that bit of me that needed that creative outlet, but it was a way of showing love. It was a way of coming together of community for me, and that was what I carried true to the restaurants, especially when we are opening Brixton and, and even now.

[00:45:59] So yeah, I think that was what it is. Yeah. 

[00:46:03] Lucy: What's, what do you cook for yourself when nobody's looking? 

[00:46:05] Joké: Uh, what do I cook for myself when nobody's looking? I do really quick things. I could do a stir fry. I do a nice curry. The thing is I move, it's either between West African food and South Asian food.

[00:46:24] Mm-hmm. That, that's, it depends on how I feel at that time, because in many ways I feel they've got the same flavor profile. Oh, fantastic. It's, I know, it's, I did not realize that until last started. And, uh, a lot of people will go, oh, this, this is very familiar to me, but it's just different. But because I feel we've got the fermented fish, we've got the, the fermented condiments, the spice, the um, aro mats and whatever.

[00:46:51] And if you have the base of that, I think not regardless of what you put on top of it, there will always be that, that thread that is connecting through, through the. The cuisine itself. Mm, 

[00:47:03] Lucy: that's so interesting. So Jackie, you've been called a trailblazer for Nigerian food. There is obviously a very strong and significant Nigerian community in the UK and many food shops, restaurants, cooks, and chefs flying the flag for the country.

[00:47:17] But it isn't necessarily, um, respected or celebrated or even just kind of visible in mainstream food culture in the way that it should be. Who would you consider a trailblazer or somebody that. Everybody should know about when it comes to Nigerian food. Ooh. 

[00:47:36] Joké: In the uk, either Yoko? Oh gosh. When it comes to Nigerian food, I would say it, the person that really got me thinking more about food was, um, Zo Soko Kitchen Butterfly.

[00:47:53] Is she, its her Instagram and uh, she's quite knowledgeable about West African food and how it is. And all of that. So she got me into looking more at the food that I ate and, and thinking about it a bit more. But another person that I think got me trying to connect with the food here slightly differently was Sheena Pomelo when she won the Master Chef thing.

[00:48:22] And an African doing that and doing the food that she grew up with, doing it like that for me. It just opened me up even that bit more to go, oh my God. So you could do African food like this. You could be, there could be a starter Maine and a thing, and. Yeah, those, I would say those two women. Also the Nigerian food and, and Shalina African food.

[00:48:49] Yeah. 

[00:48:50] Lucy: And was there anyone, you know, you've mentioned the kind of cookbooks that you were into and, and the people around you in your immediate family. But when you were younger and you were first learning to cook, is there anyone you remember kind of seeing that was a real inspirational influence on you?

[00:49:03] Joké: Um, there's a, we had, I think in the eighties there was this. There was this, um, woman auntie, something auntie went mid or something. I've forgotten her name now. She had the TV program. It was a cook. It was, she was our alpha, our fan credit. I think she was. So this is on Nigerian tv? Yes. She was, was so good.

[00:49:28] Um, and, and she did it, she did Nigerian food with, in, um, I wouldn't say elevated. But you can't, you're not allowed to. Um, but the programmed how, just doing that, which really excited me. But another thing was my grandmother and my paternal grandmother used to have a, used to sell street food, used to make street food not sell, should make it in bulk and then sell it off to people who would sell it.

[00:49:59] So both of them were really kind of pivotal to how I viewed food and how, yeah, 

[00:50:04] Lucy: when I 

[00:50:04] Joké: was growing up. 

[00:50:06] Lucy: Yeah, I see all the different potentials Yes. Of what cooking could bring you. Yeah. Yeah. So final question. Um, the name of your restaurant, Toru means to Eat Silent Silently In Zu. I found this so interesting to learn 'cause it's such a familiar concept to me.

[00:50:21] Like I think anyone who's been at a table when something delicious has been, has been served, there is this silence that descends, but there isn't a word for it in English. Are there any other untreatable words? That you know, that you, uh, that relate to food that you love? 

[00:50:36] Joké: Oh, God. Uh, I should think about it, but it, it, we, we call things with, because of the way they sound in your mouth.

[00:50:45] And I, I'm sure loads of, loads of, uh, languages have that with, um, if, ah, uh, stock fish, we'd call stock fish. Ok. Barocco. And that, that's just means the sound, it makes when it falls. So, so it just be when it falls and, and those kind of things. Yeah. I never really thought about it. And somebody was saying recently about chopping whatever.

[00:51:12] No, I don't, no. We, if we like something, we'd call it twice puff puff instead of puff and, and chin, chin instead of just one. Yeah. 

[00:51:24] Lucy: Mm. 

[00:51:25] Joké: Yeah. What, what 

[00:51:27] Lucy: made you select Chiru was 

[00:51:28] Joké: the 

[00:51:28] Lucy: name. 

[00:51:29] Joké: Um, be Okay. So the restaurants, when I started, when the thoughts came, and this was years before I did the, I, I entered a competition.

[00:51:41] This was like early notice that I had chiru. I wanted all the different parts of me to appear. So my Igbo part, which was in the, uh, logo in CBD logo, which means I'm a person from different waters. There it was different waters, um, from different waters, but one. The Yoruba aspect in the colors and whatever.

[00:52:11] And then the Hauser, which is not a lot of people, if you hear my name 'cause your name, if somebody tells you who, if you say, oh, what's your name? And you tell somebody from Nigeria, know exactly where you come from. If you tell them you so name, they'll know exactly where that is. So I wanted that bit of my.

[00:52:29] Heritage also to show, that's why I, I looked for a thing called a thing that will fit it. Mm. And, uh. In house I did. It was at, it was between ti and hur. Ti means it's so delicious. Ah, it's so delicious that you, you kind of, um, you become flawed and you, you sit, and that's a great one when somebody says ee.

[00:53:00] And, and then, then another person say. A JI means if you say, oh, since he said, oh, can you put a wedge on them so that they don't fall?

[00:53:11] So I just thought it was too much to, um, to explain, but, uh, my, my mind, it's very convoluted. I I'll get there in the end. Um, so, and there was a beans that I like in Hauser, um, in the north, which is like, it's like an zuku beans small, and it. Gives, there's a mouth feel that it gives and we call it a. And then also there was hur, and then I thought, do you know what a Hmm, let me do hur.

[00:53:42] Yeah. 

[00:53:43] Lucy: And the double meanings just secrecy. And the double meaning. Yeah. Yes. 

[00:53:45] Joké: Yes. 

[00:53:46] Lucy: Um, jock, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I can, uh, I can do a little Thank you. Um, yes, please, please clap.

[00:53:58] Thank you all so much for coming. Thank you for coming for this live podcast recording of Lcca. If you've enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. This interview will also be able, uh, be available to listen shortly. And thank you so much to, it's, it's been a pleasure talking to you.

[00:54:14] Thanks for having me. Thank you. Go Toru. If you haven't, it's incredible. Um, other thank you. Thank you to Vango House for having me at the festival. Thank you to Anna and Alicia for organizing this amazing program in particular. And if you stick around, B Wilson is happening next. And then Louis Bassett. Uh, talking about English food later on.

[00:54:33] And that's gonna be great. And thank you so much to all of you for coming as well. Thank you.