To celebrate the positives in Igbo cuisines, a former governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, and his guests led diners from Igboland and other regions of the country to celebrate a reinvention of authentic Nigerian cuisines in the maiden edition of themed SSI Ethnic Saturday Night.
The theme for the maiden edition was Igbo Amaka. The event was at Southern Sun Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos.
At the event, a number of indigenous Igbo cuisines which hitherto may not have been seen on the dining table of any branded international hotel were on display. Many of the guests, who turned out for the themed dinner in full traditional regalia, were excited by the local culinary offering. There was also an Igbo cultural troupe to entertain the audience with local music.
The Executive Chef of the hotel, Stanley Mwangi, Food and Beverage Team, said the hotel was researching into Nigerian cuisines to bring these authentic local cuisines back to the dining tables of the hotel’s guests.
He said: “For us to be able to reach a notch higher, we do several trainings. Most of them are actually online. The last training was on innovation and development. As a facilitator on that particular topic, I challenged them that why didn’t we do region-based cuisines on a Saturday.
“We brainstormed and then decided to start with the Igbo Night. Consequently, we are going to the Yoruba Night which is the next one on September 29. After the Yoruba Night, we will have Calabar, South South and Northerners’ nights. We are looking at regional foods in order to bring them to the people, doing actually home style foods.
“We researched into old Nigerian recipes that people had stopped doing and we were all surprised because we did not think that from one region, we could get a whole buffet, or even more than a buffet. I am sure when we do the next one, we would not do the same food. We will do different foods.
“It was interesting to realize that from one region people have different foods. What we did from that particular Igbo region was that we took a few dishes from each sub-region and we talked to the old people.
“We did trials on Sunday and we asked them what we had not done right and in most of the cases, we were almost getting there, but you will still be told one or two things. It was very interesting for us because it was research that we doing.
“The class had done very well. We had a meeting every Monday. We started planning this one month ago. Every Monday, we would bring a few people who were in the class from the region, that is, the Igbo nation, and brainstormed. That was how we planned it.”
Asked what informed the decision for the ethnic themed night, Mwangi said: “We had people who had been asking about some few dishes which we did not understand. We started brainstorming on the fact that we had got clients who were asking.“
Mwangi said after celebrating the themed nights of different regions of the country on a monthly basis, the hotel would be adding some these authentic local cuisines into the daily menu of the hotels for those who would want to have them.
“We want to have some of the authentic meals in our menu . We want to be sure that we are able to prepare them authentically. That is the reason why we chose Saturday and Sunday for the trials. So, in most of the cases, you have different authentic meals on Sunday in the brunch and Saturday is when we want to do the themed night.
“Initially, we wanted to start with once in a month so that we could get some bearing because it was quite some brainstorming and research. We don’t want to just serve the normal common food that everybody gets. So, at the end of the day, we would definitely have an authentic menu for everyday. It is something we are really looking forward to,”he said.
Mwangi, from Kenya, has been in Nigeria in the last nine years and talked about the culture and local cuisines of the country.
“Nigeria is very dynamic in food and culture. Through our search, we realized that even though we had been here for quite some time, almost nine years, we realized that there is quite a lot that we’ve not really tried out.
“It was an eye opener that from the diverse food and culture, we can create several themes almost every other week from different regions. It is very wide. It is a very big book that if you start going through , it would probably take almost half of your life. It was a real eye opener and it has given us a totally new direction from what we initially though we are getting into.”