How Successful Kenyan Chef Made It Big In Lagos

Southern Sun Hotel was setup in Ikoyi in 2009, Alex and his team took did an in depth researches and experimented on approaching authentic Nigerian cuisines from various angles which is now paying dividends that is witnessed every Sunday during Sunday Brunch hours.

This has made Southern Sun Ikoyi Hotel dining, a one stop choice for all families, friends and associations.

In this interview with JIMOH BABATUNDE, he shares his thoughts on food culture in Nigeria and what foreigners enjoy eating among others. Excerpts:

Mr. Alex Mwaura is a Kenyan national with over 28 years experience in the hospitality industry as a chef.  Trained as an apprentice in the famous Kenya Utalii College in Kenya, Alex Mwaura has been a member of the opening team which has opened five Southern Sun hotels in various countries.

When we arrive Lagos we had a serious cultural shock because everything was 100 percent new out of the Nigerian food. Whatever we were seeing were completely new and we made sure we first of all understand the culture and food. The best way to do that was to do a proper research on Nigerian food. Basically, it is not available anywhere else but in Nigeria. We ended up looking for elderly people who understand the meals from different perspectives because we realised that the younger generation we had was so much into buying ready-made food than doing the actual cooking. So we decided to go to people who understand the real cooking and that is why we ended up having original recipes. These recipes have helped us to be consistent and we are developing them as time goes on, and adding new traits to it.

Our chefs go one on one with the guest inside the restaurants, and this has really helped us. My way of running the kitchen is making it interactive with the clients and you are able to get direct feedback from the clients. And by doing this, you are also able to introduce new dishes to the clients and to give them a trial. One of the things we are doing is that when we have a buffet, we make a few dishes out of our continental food and pass around for tasting, this has also paid dividends because people come back to say there is one dish I tasted one Sunday and I will like to have it for a meal. This has also boosted our clientele a lot.

It’s hard to recommend Nigerian food to Kenyans because they don’t eat pepper. It is an additive used in very small quantity. The pepper that we know is the green chillies, and rarely find anybody having one piece in a meal. Mostly it comes as a big shock for a Kenyan when he visit Nigeria.

Popular meals you will find most of them eating is chicken and chips. Later after a while, you find them appreciating other meals like the pepper soup, bitter leaf soup and so on.

But one of the most popular meals that any Kenyan will come here and enjoy is Suya. Kenyans have a culture of eating meat any time, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

To them, Suya is much more closer to what they are used to having. From the North, we also have Tuwo Masa, which is a stable food in Kenya. It is called Ugali, it is an everyday meal with meat in Kenya. On the type of Nigerian food foreigners go for

The first thing most people even western guests start with is Suya because they can recognize the meal. One thing about food is you first of all eat with your eyes before you taste the food. So, it becomes very possible for someone to make a direct choice of what to eat by just looking at it. You can easily identify what Suya is by mere looking at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JIMOH BABATUNDE