African Food With Diverse Tastes Bridging Gaps Among Cultures

Over the last three I have enjoyed stocks cuisine but what I missed was cuisine from Africa.

Then the owner of Afrolicious Nancy Kinyua enters who is running the restaurant since November 2021-whose chief objective is to spread the food and culture of Africa across the world.

With highly enthusiastic passion and inspiring motivations, she has taken on a prodigious task. Africa as the second largest continent of the world comprising of 54 countries has no corner which has not been badly affected by migration or colonization. It is nonsensical to imply that there is a singular “African cuisine”, but there are diverse cuisines, tastes, and flavours, this multiplicity in food gave Kinyua a motivation to form a plan.

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Her birthplace is Kenya, where she grew up constantly helping her parents’ restaurants. She came to Canada and Hamilton to pursue economic studies. She came to Toronto driven by the desire of taste similar to that of the home where restaurants offered cuisine as Nigerian, Somali or Ethiopian which were not perfect enough to be compared with Kenyan memories.

Meanwhile, Kinyua was eager for cooking and entertaining at home. And for that, she began to cook for others and this passion led her to a catering company and finally, she started to find a place for restaurants. She succeeded in it. Her restaurant is pretty well decorated, with light-filled rooms with welcoming vibes, fascinating music, and décor. Kinyua offers a carefully chosen menu that offers dishes from many countries/regions. She invites the guests to taste and enjoy the flavors of African what she calls a “Pan-African” dining experience.

She has hired classically hire chef, Nicholas Chenje, who is from Zimbabwe, who feels pleasure to share his family experience of food with customers. Both are fully aware of the fact that spice blends differ across the continent. Whereas North is associated with black pepper while West Africa employs Moroccan spices. East Africa uses what the Kinyua calls the bronze spices which reflect the taste of Indian influence-cumin, turmeric, coriander, and cardamom.  Some dishes are very spicy while some are not.

Asked by someone, “what is the uniquely best thing you can cook?” Kinyua pushes back to the expectations foreigners have from her. Her ultimate goal is to prepare the food with authentic flavors to satisfy the expectations of everyone. The most extraordinary menu item is Bunny Chew: hollowed-out bread with curry. These according to Kinyua, are the popular South African street foods mostly enjoyed by Indian migrants working in coal mines.

They feel at home to have dinners with African roots. The menu explains in detail each food item with unfamiliar terminology and Kinyua is willing to offer services as a food guide.

Afrolicious is a popular and licensed restaurant offering takeout and continues to provide food-related services, mostly from African roots. It is serving as a bridge between different cultures in terms of food harmony and by offering diverse foods from different regions.