Jimi Famurewa reviews Chuku's: A rousing expression of cultural pride

In the heart of Tottenham, Jimi Famurewa finds Nigerian food being done loud and proud at Chuku’s
Improvement: reopened Chuku's is better than it was pre-lockdown
Adam Scott
Jimi Famurewa @jimfam24 September 2020

It has been, for most of us, very much a year of grudging postponements; of deferred 70th birthday blowouts, thrice rescheduled weddings and cancelled Glastonbury trips; a period in which our clogged, wildly hypothetical 2021 social calendars represent a need for emotional closure as much as a yearning to make good on plans complicated by a pandemic.

And, for me — if we set aside the fact that my wife and I are due to take our eldest for a Covid-era day at Legoland whenever those words stop sounding like nervous breakdowns waiting to happen — the post-lockdown activity that has loomed largest in my mind is a return trip to Chuku’s in Tottenham. Partly this is a sense of unfinished business. I first visited this place (a crowdfunded permanent home for siblings Emeka and Ifeyinwa Frederick’s acclaimed ‘Nigerian tapas’ pop-up) back in early March, not long after it had opened and mere weeks before everywhere closed. The broadly positive review I wrote had to be hurled in the giant dustbin of Freshly Redundant Pre-Pandemic Content so I felt I owed them, basically. And not just because this summer has crystallised the importance of celebrating genuinely good black-owned food businesses.

But here’s the thing: I’m actually pretty glad that I got to have a second crack at it. Because, simply put, the Fredericks (who chose to fine tune their offering during lockdown rather than pivot to takeaway) now preside over a significantly better restaurant than the one they opened in spring. Boldly conceived, buoyantly atmospheric and packing a new fire-breathing flavouring oomph it signals, to my mind, a levelling-up moment for Nigerian-inspired hospitality in the capital. And did I mention that it’s really, really fun? My wife and I took our friends Charlie and Emily there and after a quick temperature gun to the cranium the four of us settled into a giddying Saturday night scene of packed tables subdivided by ad hoc plastic screens and the party-ready sway of Afrobeats blaring from the stereo.

Fine tuned: the reopened Chukus signals a levelling-up moment for Nigerian-inspired hospitality 
Brian Dandridge

The food from an expansive sharing-plates menu matched the exuberant mood. A log-pile of cassava fries came trickled with a nicely rowdy fried pepper sauce; adalu (stewed beans) balanced subtle nuttiness with a mellow bloom of spice; dodo brought soft-fried plantain, smartly flecked in coconut; and the caramel kuli kuli chicken wings — plump, hot and bound in a dense, dark candied glaze that brought to mind a kind of carnivorous toffee apple — were revelatory.

But it’s the egusi bowl that I’m in complete awe of: a striking tricolore of spinach, tomato and egusi (melon seed) stews studded with creamy pounded yam dumplings and balancing aesthetic elegance with a fireworks display of deftly conjured flavour. If you order one per person I can guarantee it still won’t be enough.

Not everything else sparkled (the signature jollof quinoa struck me as a strangely dry, needless reboot of the unimprovable rice-based original; plantain waffles were limp and highly skippable) but it truly didn’t matter. The twin hit of well-made, fruit-forward cocktails and vigorously applied Scotch bonnet had given us all a dopamine buzz that lasted until we stepped out into the mild autumn night, plastered with grins. (Side note: I can confirm that the chilli sweats is not a great look at a time when people are wary of the feverish.)

For British-Nigerians like me, Chuku’s is a rousing expression of cultural pride that gets you up on your feet, calling for a bottle of palm wine and belting out Fela Kuti. But for many more it will simply be a very good restaurant. A place that inaugurates a love for West African cuisine’s powder-keg spicing and meets an uncertain, fearful moment with inventiveness, joy and an irrepressible burst of warmth.

Chuku’s

1 Plantain crisps £2.50

1 Adalu £5.50

2 Jollof quinoa £9.50

2 Dodo £9

3 Egusi bowl £22.50

2 Caramel kuli kuli chicken £14.50

1 Casava £4.7

2 Plantain waffles £14

2 The Obi cocktail £16

2 Mango Colada cocktail £1

1 Star beer £6.75

Total £121

274 High Road, Tottenham, N15 (chukuslondon.co.uk)

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