Lottie Hanwell is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. She has a degree in English Literature and Spanish, and spends a lot of time thinking, researching and writing about developments in society and culture. On her weekends, she likes to run, read and make a mess in the kitchen.

In today’s hyper-connected globe, the meaning of national identity is no longer rigid, and we’re seeing a dissolution of cultural borders as we travel through our devices. This shift in mentality is happening against a turbulent geopolitical backdrop as countries prioritise regional allies.

Border Reorder

Diverse representation is an expectation, but as individuals no longer allow themselves to be defined in singular terms, there's mounting pressure on brands to understand and sensitively reflect how the intersections between race, gender, class, and ability impact people's everyday lives.

Collective Equity

British cuisine may be stereotypically associated with fish and chips, apple crumble, and toad in the hole, but the nation’s palate is, in reality, much more complex – particularly among younger generations, who are showing a preference for healthier and more internationally-inspired diets. Research has found that traditional dishes from around the UK – such as Welsh rarebit, black pudding, and gammon – are falling out of favour with Gen Yers and Zers, with 46% of 18- to 29-year-olds claiming they sound ‘stuffy’ and ‘old-fashioned’. 

Daily Express

 But while young people are fond of foods such as sushi, curry, tacos, and paella, dishes native to the African continent are absent from their list of favourite meals. Restaurateur, musician, and cookbook author Yetti Tabai is on a mission to change this reality and put African cuisines on the British culinary map.

While originally training as a lawyer, Tabai began her culinary career cooking and distributing Nigerian dishes on Just Eat, with her inventive recipes, which blend African culinary traditions with native British ingredients, quickly finding success on the delivery platform. After four years, she progressed to opening Yetti’s Kitchen, an Afro-British restaurant that now operates out of two Manchester locations. “Caribbean cooks did a great job of introducing jerk chicken, rice, and peas to British cuisine as soon as they arrived in the UK, but the promotion of African cuisine has been a slower process,” says Tabai. “While Nigerian restaurants have long existed in the UK, the cuisine has had little reach outside of the community – until now.” 

Interview with Yetti Tabai conducted by the author

“From London’s African Fashion Week to the success of African musicians and Google putting jollof rice as its doodle in November 2022, people are waking up to the incredible richness and diversity of African culture. It’s changing lives – and it’s changing palates, too,” Tabai adds. However, there’s still a way to go before African cuisines get their due recognition in British food culture. One of Tabai’s key areas of emphasis is addressing the lack of representation of African ingredients, dishes, and people in the vegan scene: “Nobody ever thinks about African food through the lens of veganism because it has just never been part of the conversation.” 

cookbook, which features a collection of plant-based recipes inspired by the ingredients and culinary traditions of ‘Mother Africa’. So, how is African gastronomy shaping the British food scene, and how can brands help spotlight the diaspora’s culinary stars? Canvas8 sat down with Tabai to understand more about the intricacies of Afro-British cooking.

The fact that curry is a national dish highlights how British food culture – and British culture, in general – has been enriched by its multiple diasporas. However, while African 

, and artists have helped shape the cultural mainstream, African culinary traditions have been slower to receive their due recognition. Restaurants serving food from African and Caribbean nations were glaringly absent from 

 Top 100 UK restaurant list in 2020, and research from Vice found that of 109 UK restaurant reviews published in national newspapers between January 2019 and January 2020, none of them were Black-owned businesses. 

Vittles | Substack

Vice

 Upon opening her first restaurant in Salford in 2018, Tabai experienced first-hand the public’s lack of familiarity with Nigerian cuisine. “For the first two years, nobody came through the door. They didn’t know what Nigerian food was,” she says. “I had to change to include Caribbean items on the menu to attract patrons, and then people came in for the Caribbean food and came back to try the rest of the menu.” 

However, the past decade has seen significant changes in people’s tastes. For example, West African restaurant Ikoyi was awarded a Michelin star in 2018, becoming the first starred African restaurant in the UK. The London restaurant has since been listed among the world’s 50 best restaurants, bringing dishes such as smoked jollof rice and plantain-smoked kelp to the world of fine dining. 

50 Best

 Critic and food writer Jimi Famurewa notes that African food is having an overdue moment in London, with eateries such as Nigerian restaurant Pitanga creating dishes that reflect the interstices of British and West African identity – for example, its take on the full English breakfast combines pork sausages and bacon with scotch-bonnet and tomato scrambled egg, akara, and Agege bread. 

 Yetti’s Kitchen takes a similar approach, with the spirit of Manchester reflected throughout its culinary creations. “We do a great job of infusing Afro-British food with everything Manchester,” says Tabai. “Our honey and rum chicken tenders, for example, update a British dish – chicken tenders – with African rum and honey, which represents the Manchester bee.” 

Yet despite the growing acclaim for Afro-British cuisine, Tabai highlights the need for African food to show up across more of British society – not just in restaurants or ‘world’ aisles of supermarkets but also in schools, offices, cinemas, and airlines. “Every October, for Black History Month, we typically get requests to introduce African cuisine in the canteens of local schools,” says Tabai. “But isn’t there so much we could do to promote our diverse and delicious culinary traditions all year round?” 

 With 31% of people surveyed by Waitrose expressing a desire to try new cuisines, there’s a clear opportunity for brands to help celebrate and extend African cooking to more corners of British life. 

Waitrose

When asked to picture a typical vegan, most people (and search engines) generate images of White, wealthy, able-bodied women – someone like Ella Woodward, of 

 fame, who helped mainstream vegan diets in the 2010s. But vegan diets have been practised in ancient cultures across the world long before the term ‘vegan’ was coined by animal rights activist Donald Watson in 1944. 

Atmos

 The origins of veganism hark back to the ancient Dharmic tradition throughout western Asia, with followers of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism adhering to diets based on nonviolence. Different ethnicities and religions have adopted their own forms of veganism independently. Eating organic, locally grown, and plant-based foods – known as ‘ital’ foods – is a tenet of Rastafarianism, which is practised in Caribbean countries and diasporas around the world. Likewise, Ethiopian Orthodox Christians traditionally go vegan on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the Nation of Islam promotes vegan and vegetarian diets. 

In spite of its ancient, non-White, and global nature, the Western, pro-animal-rights interpretation of veganism dominates mainstream media perceptions of the diet. Tabai highlights that the veganism inherent in much of African cooking has been invisible from writing on the subject. “Every time you see a blog post or vegan content on Pinterest, you know what to expect,” she says. “You can expect vegan French or American food, but nobody was ever talking about African food.” This is at odds with her experience of African cuisine as a child growing up in Nigeria. “Literally all of my favourite treats and staple dishes as a child were vegan – kale chips, coconut candy, mango chunks.” The difference, she points out, was that these foods weren’t labelled as vegan. 

, was an exercise in putting African cooking on the map for a demographic of consumers that she views as incredibly open and receptive to new cuisines. “I love the vegan community. They love trying out new stuff. If they hear there's a pop-up shop or new vegan cafe down the road, they’re going to support it,” she says. “In order to boost the inclusivity of vegan cuisine, we just need to get away from the conventional. It starts with an overhaul of the way that we conceptualise and present vegan cuisine.” 

African cuisines aren’t just having a moment of recognition in London, with Tabai suggesting that food from the continent is flourishing across the UK in urban hubs. Her decision to open restaurants in two separate Manchester locations – Eccles in Salford and Printworks in the city centre – was motivated by the sense of opportunity she saw in the city’s less saturated food scene. “There’s a place for everyone in Manchester,” she says. “If you find your niche, you will find your audience because people are open to and excited by new additions to the food scene. In an overcrowded market like London, it’s harder to be seen.” 

It’s also important to acknowledge that culinary traditions are not solely formed in restaurant kitchens. From community centres to domestic kitchens and places of worship, oft-overlooked venues play an arguably outsized role in the upkeep and maintenance of any food culture. Platforming African cuisines is, therefore, not simply a question of celebrating chefs from the African diaspora across the UK but also championing the home cooks and community members who form the backbone of culinary traditions.

This is an angle taken by food writer Jonathan Nunn in a collection of essays titled

, which explores the places and faces of the city’s ‘other’ food centres, specifically those that evade the gaze of food critics – be they ‘ethnic’ supermarkets that sell everyday ingredients or housing estate chippies. “Food is a really interesting portal into culture, and people, and parts of the city you might not normally engage with,” he told 

. “And restaurants aren’t the only way to access that food culture.” 

The Guardian

 There’s food for thought here for brands about how the true representation of diverse food cultures doesn’t stop at ingredients, flavours, and textures. It extends to the people, customs, and rituals that orbit each dish.

Beyond the whitewashing of the vegan diet

The historical lack of Black and Brown faces in media portrayals of veganism has led to misconceptions surrounding the type of people that follow this diet. However, as Tabai outlines, vegan foods were eaten by people in Africa for hundreds of years before they became known as ‘vegan’. “I’d say 70% of what we eat in our continent of Africa is actually vegan or vegetarian. Most people in Africa don’t have the luxury of eating meat or fish, so they come up with ingenious ways to make the most of the plant-based ingredients available to them,” she says. 

 The presentation of core vegan ingredients in Western supermarkets, restaurants, and food media can often overlook this cultural heritage, repackaging them as ‘vegan products’ or ‘superfoods’. 

Brooke Kato | Medium

 Ensuring that the origins of popular vegan foods are clearly detailed and supporting the communities involved in their cultivation are important steps towards overcoming the whitewashing of veganism. For example, South African food start-up Local Village Foods is working to inspire pride in indigenous African ingredients such as raw cacao, raw honey, bambara groundnut, and tiger nuts, sourcing 90% of its ingredients from small-scale producers across Nigeria, Malawi, and Benin. 

The Local Village

In 2014, Jamie Oliver published a recipe for jollof rice on his website that was swiftly ridiculed and rejected by the West African community on Twitter for its inclusion of ingredients such as vine tomatoes, coriander, and lemon. The debacle, which became known as ‘#jollofgate’, has become a well-cited example of cultural appropriation in the world of food writing and recipe creation. 

The Independent

 Brands seeking to represent the culinary traditions of British diasporas may find a more receptive audience by focusing on partnership rather than imitation. This means letting members of these communities tell their stories, write their recipes, and present their dishes on their terms. Tabai says that pop-ups are a great avenue for large brands, such as supermarkets, to celebrate diasporic food culture: “It’d be truly great to see more supermarkets offer pop-ups, allowing members of the African community to celebrate their culinary creations.” 

 Cross-cultural collaborations provide another way to spotlight diasporic ingredients in a way that acknowledges how different cuisines can influence the dominant food culture. For example, 

 collaborated with Mexican spice mix Tajín to create a new product that reflects the evolving nature of American cultural identity.

People are hungry for produce and ingredients that reflect the UK’s diverse food culture – in early 2022, Sainsbury’s reported that its sales of ‘world food products’ had increased by 25% since 2019. 

The Grocer

 However, Tabai highlights that the representation of African produce and ingredients is severely lacking at UK supermarkets. “When you go into the world foods section of the UK’s main supermarkets, the African food section is limited to noodles, cans of coconut milk, and probably some kidney beans,” she says. “Where are the African foods in the vegan aisle or among the gluten-free products?” 

 Sainsbury’s has responded to this demand for increased diversity by adding over 350 products to its world foods offering. 

 Yet there’s a more fundamental question to be asked about why, in supermarkets patronised by the full ethnic spectrum of the British population, international products and groceries should be segregated at all. Rather than othering the ingredients favoured by the nation’s many diasporas in one catch-all aisle, there’s an argument that these foods should be integrated into the rest of the store. While they might originate overseas, these ingredients, flavours, and textures are fundamental to the patchwork of cultures, ethnicities, and traditions that make up British cuisine.

 of 18- to 29-year-olds claim that traditional British dishes such as Welsh rarebit, black pudding, and gammon sound ‘stuffy’ and ‘old-fashioned’ 

 of people in the UK say they’re eager to try new cuisines

In early 2022, Sainsbury’s reported that its sales of ‘world food products’ had increased by 

Long ignored by the culinary establishment, African cooking is slowly gaining traction across Britain, partly thanks to restaurants that fuse cuisines

Mainstream depictions of veganism often associate the diet with White, middle-class individuals, but plant-based eating has long been practised in cultures worldwide

Food cultures are about more than just the ingredients and flavours, with the associated people, rituals, and spaces also informing culinary traditions

Yetti Tabai is a British-Nigerian restaurateur, cookbook author, and musician. Originally training as a lawyer, Tabai began her foray into cooking by distributing her home cooking on Just Eat. In 2018, she opened Yetti’s Kitchen, an Afro-British restaurant that now operates out of two Manchester locations. She is also the author of 

, a cookbook that highlights the intersections of African and vegan cuisines.

United Kingdom

Eating and Drinking

Though African diasporas have had an immeasurable influence on British culture, continental cuisine has been relatively absent from the public eye. Canvas8 spoke to restaurateur Yetti Tabai about the need for greater representation and celebration of African cooking within the British food scene.

Border Reorder

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