Ikoyi: A Journey Through Bold Heat with Recipes

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In a blender, blitz together the whipping cream, milk, crab, egg yolks, ginger, garlic, and Scotch bonnet for 2 minutes.

Against each of the Phaidon-published tome's 40 or so recipes are mini essays that range from 300 to over 1,000 words. Allow them to smoke and burn, but make sure they don’t overcook on the inside, and turn them to ensure they are all evenly blistered. The rice is then dried, rubbed by hand with oil, and cooled before we finish it off by roasting it in hot, aromatic beef fat and our wok hei paste. In our recipe, we burn and smoke the vegetables over the grill until blackened and blistered, before blending them into a broth of roasted chicken, dried mushrooms, spices, condiments, seaweed, and caramelized tomatoes. If you never have the great privilege to experience the extraordinary Ikoyi, then this book gives you an insight into the sheer brilliance and remarkable intelligence of Jeremy Chan.Chan does a fine job of outlining how he and his Nigerian-born front of house counterpart Iré Hassan-Odukale came to launch Ikoyi (the bit about the pair’s early interactions with developers and property agents is particularly illuminating) and the story of the restaurant so far. Ikoyi, named as one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2022, is one of the most original, flavor-driven restaurants of its time.

Born to a Canadian mother and Chinese father, Jeremy grew up between Hong Kong, Canada, and England, experiencing a diverse range of cuisines. He discusses developing (and eventually abandoning) the concept of a Nigerian restaurant with his childhood friend—and Ikoyi’s managing director and cofounder—Iré Hassan-Odukale (the restaurant is named for the neighborhood in Lagos where Hassan-Odukale grew up).He encourages the reader/home cook to learn and adapt the beautiful dishes from the restaurant’s tasting menu - to take components and be inspired. Britain is so small in comparison to America; I can get line-caught fish from the coast, and it just takes four hours for it to get to my door. Chan acknowledges this in the book, declaring that “many of these ingredients will be difficult or at times impossible to procure” but that this challenge represents what it’s like to run a restaurant “with a kitchen comprising of a complex network of supplier and producer relationships”.

I went on to create the greatest defense mechanism I could think of: a powerful jollof broth, a vehicle of umami-laden depth, followed by layers of aroma, smokiness, and an all-out assault on the palate. In the hands of a less erudite chef such an approach could easily have been tedious and self-indulgent, but Chan’s prose is as captivating as his food. If our guests were going to argue over the dish’s authenticity, at least they would be doing it over inarguably delicious spoonfuls of rice.For some reason, most of the cooks at Ikoyi think the rice section is the easiest, but it actually requires a surprising amount of attention to detail to execute an exceptional bowl of rice. What they can do is read the broader, more important messages, which is the philosophy on how to handle meat, source good meat, cook meat, caramelize fish skin, the passion and care with which to handle specific kinds of ingredients.

Since opening in 2017, it has become a culinary destination: impressing diners and critics alike with its bold West African-inspired flavors, innovative combinations of spices with the freshest British ingredients, and striking, textured, minimalist-leaning aesthetics. He insisted we stick with jollof, espousing the open-minded belief that there was no one true authority on the dish.

As chef and cofounder of the two-Michelin-starred London restaurant Ikoyi, Chan is certainly familiar with resisting easy labels.