African food takes the slow road to trendinessAfrican food takes the slow road to trendiness

Teff, baobob and piri-piri are likely completely foreign to most American diners, but if some chefs and restaurateurs have anything to say about it, these African ingredients may soon become a part of the American culinary lexicon, and, someday, menus everywhere.

“Food is such a phenomenon, every culture mentioned. But you just don’t see African cuisine, yet its influence is everywhere,” said chef, restaurateur and cookbook author Pierre Thiam. “African cuisine is a big unknown, but we believe it’s the next frontier.”

Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam, a champion of African cuisine. Photo: Evan Sung

Thiam isn’t alone in his belief that Sub-Saharan African cuisine will one day be on the tip of American tongues.

“More and more restaurants are opening up, and more and more Sub-Saharan African ingredients are being known to consumers,” said Kimberly Egan, CEO and principal of CCD Innovation, a San Francisco-based food and beverage product development agency. “These ingredients are going to get some traction. We think it’s going to take hold.”

Thiam, a native of Dakar, Senegal, has been showcasing African cuisine since shortly after he arrived in New York City in the 1980s. First, by infusing African influences in menus at a number of downtown restaurants where he worked, and then, in the early 2000s, by opening two of his own African eateries in Brooklyn, N.Y.: Yolele in Fort Greene and Le Grand-Dakar in Clinton Hill, where he served items such as black-eyed pea fritters, and a peanut-and-vegetable stew from Mali.

In mid-August, Thiam is participating in the first-ever NYC African Food Festival at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and later this year he will open a yet-to-be-named African small bites and street food-focused restaurant in Harlem.

Additionally, two years ago Thiam took a group of top chefs on a trip to Senegal to share the cuisine of his native country that is still having ripple effects.

Chef Anita Lo was among those on the trip and brought back some selim peppers which she then used to create a dish of roasted beets with cashew purée and selim pepper vinaigrette for the menu at her New York City restaurant, Annisa.

Inspired by a trip to Senegal, chef Anita Lo created this dish of roasted beets and cashew puree with a vinaigrette made with the African selim pepper. Photo: John Keon

“I find it exciting to discover new ingredients,” said Lo. “The selim pepper is nice, slightly earthy, blackish pepper. It’s one of the ingredients they put into their coffee over there.”

Over the years Lo has also used other African ingredients, such as baobob fruit, on her menu, and she says she has had some piri-piri peppers, the African bird’s eye chile, for a long time that she thought about using in a Zimbabwean recipe that almost made it into her upcoming cookbook, which is slated for release in 2017.

Lo says she can imagine using other African ingredients, including teff, one of Africa’s many grains, but that “things percolate for a long time before they end up on a menu.”

Piri-piri is one ingredient that has already begun to take hold in the U.S., thanks in part to the team behind Nando’s, a global South African-meets-Portuguese casual-dining chain with 1,200 restaurants in 28 different countries, including 33 locations in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Nando’s is known as the piri-piri chicken people, for its signature dish of flame-grilled chicken in a sauce made from the spicy African pepper.

“Flamed grilled piri-piri chicken is the authentic way South African street food is done,” said Sepanta Bagherpour, Nando’s marketing vice president. “We’ve made it simple and, quite frankly, sexy. It’s not conceived by a bunch of venture capitalists. That authenticity plays a big role in it.”

“Food is such a phenomenon, every culture mentioned. But you just don’t see African cuisine, yet its influence is everywhere,” said Pierre Thiam. Photo: Evan Sung

Nando’s, which opened its first U.S. location in Chicago, in 2008, has plans to expand to a third, yet-to-be disclosed market in the near future. The chain has also bottled a number of piri-piri sauces that are now available in the restaurants and at select retailers nationwide.

Also serving piri piri is John Manion, chef and owner of La Sirena Clandestina, a Latin-local restaurant in Chicago. Manion makes a piri-piri sauce that he uses in various ways on his menu. His latest dish with the spicy pepper is piri-piri chicken thighs, made with chicken marinated overnight in a piri piri sauce and served on top of romesco and summer panzanella. He’s also made smoked ribs with piri-piri jelly, and grilled asparagus with piri-piri hollandaise and linguiça breadcrumbs.

Despite the continued emergence of this cuisine and its unique ingredients, the experts at CCD Innovation say diners shouldn’t expect Sub-Saharan African to become the next Thai food just yet. Currently the company places Sub-Saharan African ingredients at Stage 1 of its Five Stage Trend Mapping process, with Stage 1 being when fine dining chefs and adventurous eaters pick it up and Stage 5 when the ingredient or cuisine is mainstream.

“[But] I’d definitely say it’s emerging,” said Egan.