“You can’t be what you don’t see”: the Nigerian chef changing the way we think about Michelin stars

We meet the winner of the best new chef award at the inaugural UK’s Top New Restaurant Awards, Adejoké Bakare, at her restaurant, Chishuru, in London’s Fitzrovia. The Nigerian-born chef’s usually cheery face is a picture of concentrated solemnity amid a hiss of steam in the open kitchen. Though it’s lunchtime on a weekday, Chishuru is buzzing with diners, as word of this restaurant has spread since January when Bakare was awarded a Michelin star, the first Black woman to achieve such an accolade. “There’s been an increase in customers for now,” she says, “and an increase in the uptake of people experiencing how a Michelin-starred restaurant should look and feel like.”

Through her cuisine, which she describes as a “contemporary take on regional cuisine in Nigeria and across West Africa”, Bakare has introduced an unfamiliar flavour profile to a Michelin scene unhabituated to scotch bonnets, bean cakes, okra and spinach stews. She is unique in more ways than one – Black women Michelin-star chefs may be a rarity but so too are self-taught ones. Bakare has never received formal training. After first learning how to cook from her grandmother, she soon knocked up meals for her family. “I started off experimenting on my siblings and my dad. My dad is a great sport,” she chuckles. “I started collecting cookbooks when I was 10 years old. I would see some things and try them out and go, ‘taste that’. It informed how I cooked and evolved from there, basically.”

However, until just five years ago, cooking remained just a hobby. When Bakare moved to Britain 20 years ago, she studied microbiology at university before holding jobs in health and safety and at a London property company. Being a high-end restaurateur was not on the agenda, but her innate talent inevitably levitated her in that direction. The journey began when she held her first supper club for friends and family at Well Street Kitchen in Hackney. Events like these went down so well that Bakare began entertaining thoughts of a career in food, but she was initially reticent. On a friend’s recommendation, she entered the amateur section of the Brixton Kitchen competition in 2019 where the judges, impressed by her fusion of West African flavours, declared her the winner. Fusion is the key word here: Bakare is what you might call ‘all-Nigerian’ – raised in the northern city of Kaduna by a Yoruba mother from the south west and an Igbo father from the east of the country. This exposure to three distinct cultures and cuisines informs the cosmopolitanism she brings to her food, which is also inspired by broader West African recipes outside of Nigeria. That’s why she labels her dishes as ‘West African’ rather than anything location-specific.

Bakare’s prize for winning the Brixton Kitchen competition was a six-month residency in Brixton Village. It led to her opening the original Chishuru in that same market in 2020. A hit with diners, Chishuru quickly outgrew its site, especially after the Observer’s food critic Jay Rayner gave it a glowing review, and the National Restaurant Awards included it in its list of top 100 UK restaurants. While hunting for roomier premises, Bakare made the agonising decision to temporarily shut up shop in 2022. In the meantime, she did residencies at places such as Carousel, Quality Wines, 180 The Strand and the Globe Tavern in Borough Market. Then in 2023, following a crowdfunding campaign, Bakare opened Chishuru at its current site on Great Titchfield Street, joining Akoko in a fresh wave of high-end African eateries planting their flags in central London. Chishuru’s interiors revel in an African aesthetic, the rough-plaster ochre walls reminiscent of traditional adobe and casting a warm, peachy glow in the evenings. An eye-catching, fire-orange lamp by South African designer Mash.T hangs prominently by the front window, and the chair seats are enveloped in African-print upholstery by British-Nigerian designer Eva Sonaike.

Was it difficult transitioning from supper club amateur to restaurateur with sous chefs? Bakare laughs: “It’s been a very steep learning curve, I have to say. It’s changed from me being in the kitchen doing my own thing to now having to relay my vision, and how I want things done, to somebody else; communicating it in such a way that they can run with it. It’s been a very steep learning curve, yes.” Keen to avoid the mistakes commonly made when restaurants balloon in popularity, she’s kept a limit on bookings. “We want to focus more on service and taking care of the guests, so we have prioritised service over getting in more people.”

Chishuru’s set menu includes starters like the homely and pepper soup broth (punters’ favourite), its belly-warming saltiness offset by the sweet corn tofu chunks. There’s moi moi (bean pudding) which comes with a super-delicious duck liver and duck egg sauce; the Sinasir, a fermented and beautifully crispy crab cake, is full of natural sweetness. And the mains include a smokey, melt-in-the-mouth guinea fowl with taro root and a sauce made from ehuru (African nutmeg) and uziza (a spicy leaf). This is folksy yet exploratory cuisine – just don’t ever call it ‘elevated’. Bakare closes her eyes in disdain at the word. “It’s not ‘elevated’. Maybe I’ve made it more accessible to people [but] when you say ‘elevated’ it connotes all sorts of things that, for me, are not quite positive, especially when it comes to African food. I’m quite positive African food can hold its own, especially with all the young chefs coming up. Loads of people in my DMs are saying it’s almost as if it has validated the cuisine itself. You can’t be what you don’t see. For them, seeing African food done this way…opens them up to being more creative about African food, and we don’t have to layer it with other cuisines to give it validation. We can be ourselves authentically and be accepted as that.”