Atoke: What’s the Deal with Nigerian Restaurants Abroad?

On Friday, my friend and I decided to go hunting for a taste of Nigeria. He wanted to eat Asaro very badly and the only place to get Nigerian food was out on the West side of the city.

“Do you have a particular restaurant in mind? Or where exactly are we driving to?” I asked, strapping up my seat belt with one hand, and pulling up the Maps app with the other hand.

“Nowhere in particular; when we get to that area I’m sure we’ll see loads of them.“

3 hours later, we walked out of a Nigerian ‘restaurant’ with a pack of pounded yam and egusi soup. Neither of us had the excited thrill of satisfaction which we would have expected after such a long night. We were just tired and wanted to go home.

We visited at least 5 restaurants and the common factors of a Nigerian restaurant hit us in the face.

• Bad service – discourteous and rude staff
• Dirty curtains and tattered table cloths
• Raggedy looking plastic chairs
• Dark and dinghy interiors
• Unavailability of  the food listed on the menu.

Although I wasn’t terribly surprised, it was sorely disappointing. Time and time again, I have the hope that I’d find a Nigerian restaurant that will gladden my heart and make my palate sing. Convinced that I haven’t travelled wide enough, I nurse the hope that a Nigerian restaurant exists somewhere outside of Nigeria, that will make us proud of Nigerian cuisine. However, it appears that we are only able to duplicate Nigeria everywhere we go. {I wrote about it here, last year}

So let’s talk about some of the problems that plague majority of Nigerian restaurants. The first thing I can think of is the absence of the culture of excellence.

What is that thing that makes you strive for more? Be more? Do better? Be the best? Nigerian restaurants in diaspora seem to lack it. I can’t think of any reason why tattered curtains will grace your restaurant space for weeks, months and years. Is it that nobody noticed that the blinds are broken and dusty? Surely someone noticed; just that nobody cares.

Maybe someone did notice and they thought, “let us just manage it like that.” We need to learn to do better than ‘just manage’. If it’s cracking, or peeling, or breaking… fix it before it gets so bad.

A business in the food and hospitality industry has to put a premium on aesthetics. It’s not enough to serve sweet jollof rice; if it’s served in what looks like a pig sty; then it will take an incredible amount of hunger and starvation to get the client to come back.

Another problem that haunts Nigerian restaurants is good service. We can be incredibly rude as a people. We don’t believe in respecting one another, and mostly don’t believe that respect is reciprocal. If I respect you enough to walk into your store to patronise you, then there should be an equal measure of respect from the point of service.
Tacky, unprofessional and tardy service are the markers of a Nigerian business (home and abroad)

Anyway, I got tired of bellyaching about this issue by myself, and I decided to ask a few friends about their experiences in Nigerian restaurants abroad. The first thing Jummai asked me, in the most incredulous tone, was: “why are they always so dark?” I was still laughing at the absurdity of the truth in her question when she responded that it was probably because the staff were undocumented and they didn’t need patrons being able to identify them in public.

Funny, but might be true.

My other friend, (who has asked to be identified as Duke Idris of Hertfordshire) said:
“Naija restaurants are set up to cater to Nigerians  – that’s their problem. They don’t seem to want to diversify. They may open with the best of intentions to be professional, but after a while they realise that to make money they have to be Nigerian – that means packing in as many tables as possible because Nigerians will not book in advance. They will turn up with their extended family and expect a table. The crowd that will be your bread and butter will expect to shout at your waiters and be lousy.  The ‘posher’ Nigerian restaurant critics only come once in a while, you aren’t going to make money off them. So you ditch the professional staff and just get by on the slimmest margin.”

He pretty much summed it up for me. Although it made me sad, I’m afraid that unless we change the fact that we are comfortable accepting mediocrity, we might never get to the level of having internationally recognised Nigerian restaurants.

I want a Nigerian restaurant I can proudly take my foreign colleagues to. I don’t want to cringe at the bad service, smelly toilets, or the cracked plates. I want to explain the beauty of the flavours in the Egusi and the Asaro, and I want to do it without smelling the Okporoko in the dining area.

And because I’m taking this very personally… please let me know what you have noticed about Nigerian restaurants abroad. What are the things you feel are lacking? What can be done to make them better? Have you been to any Nigerian restaurant that impressed you with their service?

I’d like to put together a team of project managers to work with restaurant business owners who are interested in revamping their business. It’s not enough to have a couple of chairs, good food, sell drinks, and then call yourself a restaurant. I will help you manage a team of creative and business minded people to take your restaurant to the next level.

After all, people like Dooney’s Kitchen, AfroLems, 1QFood Platter and Lohis Creation are working very hard to make food look good on social media. We need to step things up.