On a summer’s late-afternoon at Skylight, a rooftop bar in East London’s Tobacco Dock, the young, fashionably underdressed, mostly white clientele whoops and toots along as Asake’s “Basquiat” pumps from speakers strategically placed across multiple floors. A mere three years ago, this scene—unremarkable today—would have been unimaginable. Like the rest of London, this corner of Wapping, a small, otherwise-quiet riverside community that’s slowly gentrified over the last two decades, is soundtracked by Afrobeats. Across all the city’s boroughs—on the streets, in its restaurants, cafes, and clubs—you are more likely to encounter the bombastic, pidgin-infused sounds of urban-nigeria-gone-global than any other type of music. 

Once mostly confined to South London, the influence of Nigerians—a group that for decades presented as a single strand in the city’s urban migrant fabric—is seemingly everywhere. Laying confident claim to this new presence, young people of Nigerian heritage are making an indelible cultural mark across London—and the globe—as contemporary Nigerian culture, from fashion to art and literature, proves increasingly ubiquitous. While Afrobeats has so far grabbed the limelight, the most exciting, stealthy facet of popular Nigerian culture is the emergence of the country’s cuisine across London’s fine dining map.

The most accomplished example of this development can be found three miles downriver from Wapping in Temple. Launched in 2017 by co-owners Iré Hassan-Odukale and chef Jeremy Chan, two-Michelin-starred Ikoyi is not a Nigerian restaurant per se. Melding seasonal British ingredients and Nigerian spices, a surprising range of hybrid creations make up the restaurant’s ten-course, GBP300 per person menu (excluding drinks). Featuring riffs on Nigerian staples like Jollof Rice (“smoked, served with grilled lobster & lobster custard”) and Moi Moi (“served with a custom-aged caviar selected for Ikoyi”), the names may sound familiar, but what appears on your plate is entirely unexpected. The portions are just right, the plating delicate and easy on the eye, and the colours vibrant. The punters—well-dressed and ready to fork out for the hefty bill attached to dining in one of the world’s top 50 restaurants—speak in hushed tones. One eats seriously here, with music played at just the right volume to allow for quiet marvelling at how unexpectedly clever each dish is and wry speculation over what one’s mama would think should she ever find out you paid three hundred quid for Jollof Rice. Elevated fare. It’s pricey but worth it—even if only as a once-off experience.

With its bright atmosphere and loose attitude, Chuku’s could not be more different from Ikoyi. Located a few minutes from North London’s Tottenham Green between a Turkish restaurant that offers everything from lamb kebabs to seafood, and a “community interest legal firm” whose services range from family, criminal and commercial law to housing advice, Chuku’s tapas-style menu is your mama’s Nigerian reconfigured for newcomers. Here, sharing small plates from the 20-dish vegan, meat and fish menu is encouraged. While the idea quickly draws fire from Nigerians who are generally adamant that their famed “party rice” is the only authentic (and best) variant, the Quinoa Jollof rice is an unexpected stand-out. The delicious chicken Ata Din Din is so spicy it will leave you in tears. The average price of a dish at Chuku’s is a mere eight to nine pounds. Tables are filled with young, recovering party-goers who come for Sunday brunch, heads bobbing to a playlist that, similar to the ease with which one samples between small plates without skipping a beat, jumps from King Sunny Ade and Fela Kuti to Black Sheriff and Shallipopi.

Where Ikoyi is at the business-like cutting edge of adventurous fine dining, Chuku’s (founded by brother and sister duo Emeka and Ifeyinwa Frederick) is experimenting with but not rocking the boat. Their adaptation of tapas-style eating while mostly keeping the tastes unmistakably, authentically Nigerian is their biggest strength. The Frederick siblings’ fun, relaxed take on the food of their homeland (whose expansiveness, regional variations and complexity can be intimidating) is a great way to introduce this cuisine to the uninitiated.

On Berners Street in Fitzrovia, a couple of blocks from Enish, (another) five-star restaurant, is Akoko. Recently awarded a Michelin Star, Akoko was founded by 45-year-old restaurateur Aji Akokomi and is helmed by Chef Ayo Adeyemi. It might be the most ambitious of the lot. It’s not cheap, but neither is it Ikoyi-level wallet-emptying. “We want to change the perception of African food as we know it,” Akokomi told daily newspaper The Standard after opening in 2020. By melding the tastes and flavours of Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria—the three West African nations whose citizens have been involved in online flame wars over whose Jollof Rice is the best—Akokomi and his head chef Adeyemi are making the case for the West African region as a food culture that is richer than most people realise in terms of the varieties of ingredients, spices and flavours, and the combinations therein that make the region’s tastes unique. Akoko manages the highwire act of balancing the fun and bombast of Chuku’s while retaining the elegance and refinement of Ikoyi. The food is as experimental as it is adventurous, with clever cocktails such as a Whisky Highball with goat milk and egusi seeds, an Old Fashioned whose ingredients include plantain and butter, and a Negroni made with cocoa and dates. At half the cost of a meal at Ikoyi, the tasting menu dishes contain a surprising array of umami flavours: the Senegalese lamb dish Dibi. A Jollof rice combining the best elements of the Senegalese, Ghanaian, and Nigerian varieties of the classic, served with lamb and Shito, a hot, Ghanaian black pepper sauce. Etor, another Ghanaian dish, sits next to the Moi Moi, the flavours exquisitely melded together to create a genuinely refreshing, bold West African eating experience. 

Ikoyi, Akoko, Enish and Chuku’s are in no way fully representative of the Nigerian food culture that has emerged to compete at the top-end of the city’s food scene (there is also Akara; opened in late-2023, Akokomi’s newest venture plays with Nigerian and Brazilian flavours. Chishuru, another high flier, recently got awarded a Michelin Star. These are highbrow outliers in an exciting, fast-changing African food world whose recognition is long overdue and accessibility has grown apace. 

 I recently have taken to ordering Nigerian ready-made meals from the many catering services cooking to order for delivery. Afrisian, the brainchild of Shola Judun, has become a favourite. Each order delivered via courier arrives in an environmentally friendly, recyclable, cooled box with heating and storage instructions and a meticulously detailed list of ingredients alongside the dish’s history. Based in London, Afrisian delivers all over the UK. Visiting American friends in a tiny countryside village recently, I was taken aback when they offered some Efo Riro, Egusi and Jollof rice for dinner. Multiple other services of this kind, founded and operated by young British-Nigerian entrepreneurs, are active across London.

Meanwhile, seemingly filling a post-Brexit gap, Nigerian food stands have become a standard feature at weekly markets across the city. A noticeable effect of the 2016 referendum has been the absence of the many traders from Spain, France, Italy and other European countries who used to drive to London every week to conduct business in markets across the city. In an unexpected twist, young food entrepreneurs, many Nigerian, are seizing the opportunity.

One such pair can be found every Monday to Saturday, between 11am and 2 pm. Doing a brisk business at Spitalfields Market in East London, Two Nigerian Boys only offers four dishes—Jollof rice with either chicken, lamb, beef or spinach. It’s a no-frills affair, costing about eight pounds per plate. Their motto: “WE cook, YOU eat, and everyone is HAPPY!!!” is as direct and straightforward as the food they serve. Local office workers of all stripes descend on the stand daily, and most days, by 13:20, the two Nigerian “boys” are packing up. After months of getting to the stall just as they sold out, I unexpectedly wandered past on a recent Saturday, and to my surprise, there they were, two men happily chatting away as they waited for the next client. As they prepared my order, I jokingly asked when they would open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. “It’s been on the cards, but I like how things are right now,” one said. “As things stand, we get to finish work by three every day, and a restaurant would be all-consuming, and I still want to enjoy my life,” he concluded with a smile. 

I arrived home with two styrofoam containers, one with a portion of joloff and beef stew, another, a spinach with plantain stew. At £8 per portion (one for extras), this might well be the best Nigerian food I have tasted in London. The Jollof is smokey, each grain well-coated with a red sauce that has all manner of complex flavours, with tender, melt-in-your-mouth portions of beef. The vegetarian spinach stew with plantain option is just as good. Sitting on my porch, as I hungrily devoured the meal, I wondered whether, by keeping things simple, the Two Nigerian Boys might be onto something. 

Chishiru, by chef Adejoké Bakare, who, by winning a 2024 Michelin Star was, overnight, catapulted into being a must-visit restaurant, seems to be aggressively pushing back against the pressure and attention such an accolade brings. As it always did, the Fitzrovia restaurant’s website still features the chef’s cooking philosophy and all the other regular marketing info one would expect, but since the Michelin star, the reservations page now prominently features one unmissable, brash notice, clearly directed at trophy-eaters inundating the restaurant with demands and expectations of an experience in line with what a Michelin star supposedly telegraphs: “Chishuru is not a fine dining restaurant. Yes we have a Michelin star but our style is relaxed and homely, we play music, and some of our customers can get loud—that’s who we are”, it says..

Perhaps drawing fashionable crowds like that at Tobacco Dock singing along to “Basquiat” is not always a good thing. Not every good song needs to be a hit, nor every musician, Asake.