A New Pop-Up Aims To Introduce Chicagoans To Nigerian Food
By Melissa McEwen in Food on Oct 29, 2014 4:30PM
“There was a gap between my personal preferences and what I was cooking” says Tunde Wey, who courted controversy in Detroit at one time for serving tasting menus in a neighborhood with a rough reputation. Now he’s cooking what he describes as “simple good food,” the kind of food his family has been making for a long time in Nigeria where Wey was born.
A few months ago he sold his interest in the fancy pop-up and set out to visit his brother in New Orleans. Inspired by the region’s own rich food history, he got the notion to cook up the food he remembered so fondly for a larger audience. “Starches, leafy vegetables, onions, tomatoes rice stew— it’s similar to Cajun in a way. It’s "good shit," he says.
Soon he found himself wanting to take this cuisine to other cities, as a pop-up called Lagos. “I kept going,” Wey says. “I don’t know when I’m going to stop.”
The menu is unapologetic in its richness of ingredients from the animal kingdoms of land and sea. “I think about vegetarian and non-vegetarian. I talked to my aunt and mother. I’ll make it the way it’s made.” The menu includes goat as its centerpiece meat, which Wey says was inspired by dinners he had at a family friend’s house during the Islamic festival of Eid. The rest of the dishes are other favorites from his background such as jollof rice and fried plantains.
Wey contends price of the meal, like at his previous pop-ups, may be controversial to some. "People don't question a $40 Italian meal, but when it's non-European, they expect it to be dirt cheap. It takes a lot of work. It's affordable, but the price reflects that work."
The pop-up comes to Chicago this weekend— one on Saturday, which is already sold out, and the other on Sunday at Ampersand (419 W Superior St. at Kinmont). Wey wants Chicagoans to try Nigerian food because by and large “they haven’t tried it. Come and enjoy some.”
Tickets are available on Ampersand's website for $65 a person.