Being the world’s first Nigerian tapas restaurant is a badge Chuku’s wears proudly. But it wasn’t always a smooth journey for founders Ifeyinwa and Emeka Frederick, a brother-sister duo who started the restaurant as a pop-up in 2016.
‘We completely underestimated how popular we’d be,’ says Ifey.
It was the middle of winter in Hackney Wick, and Ifey and Emeka were hosting one of their first ever pop-ups. The queue was growing, and every plate had to be collected from a kitchen hatch outside.
‘A lot of things sounded alright on paper, but on the night it was completely impractical to go all the way outside to collect food from the kitchen hatch and come all the way back down,’ Ifey tells me.
Emeka wasn’t just a waiter. He was also the man on the door, telling customers how long they’d have to wait. The rest of the team were friends and family, volunteering with no hospitality experience.
‘We were in our early 20s,’ she says. ‘We would be so proud to see what we achieved today.’
They took the joy of a Nigerian hall party, where you might pick a little of this and a little of that from an array of dishes like moi moi and ayamase, and turned it into a relaxed dining experience.
Before Chuku’s was born as a pop-up in 2016, Emeka was working in the City as a strategy consultant and Ifey was in France, working as a teaching assistant.
‘We planned everything over Skype,’ Ifey tells me. ‘It was at this cute little space in Hackney Wick called Grow Hackney.’
While running the pop-ups, Emeka worked at Honest Burgers and Ifey at Yard Sale Pizza. They took those lessons into Chuku’s, and have since collaborated with both restaurants.
‘London’s hospitality sector is so open arms,’ Ifey says. Plenty of restaurateurs offered advice along the way. ‘Some of them literally opened their business up to us and let us do trial shifts.’
They officially opened their restaurant in Tottenham in 2016. On the menu you can find twists on traditional Nigerian dishes, like jollof quinoa and plantain waffles. It’s come a long way since the pop-up days.
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In 2023, Beyoncé’s BeyGOOD foundation gave Chuku’s £8,000, and Chuku’s was even given a shout out on her Renaissance tour.
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This year Chuku’s celebrates its tenth anniversary. From the beginning, it’s been about more than the food. The siblings set out to celebrate Nigerian culture in its entirety. Even the cutlery tins on the tables are each given a Nigerian name.
‘We set up to give people the chance to experience Nigeria without needing their passport,’ Ifey says. ‘To give them a taste of Nigerian culture, but also to celebrate community.’
The restaurant has a sharing plate concept. ‘When you’re literally sharing food, you have to have a slightly more involved conversation. It’s why the tables in the restaurant are quite close together.’
The same thinking runs through their Afrobeats & Lit brunch, where a book swap gets strangers talking. They set out to make chatting to new people feel normal. ‘We thought, we can do something with this space to make people’s day a bit better.’
Their recent venture was a pop-up at Boxhall, bringing Nigerian food to the City lunch crowd. And they do corporate catering too. ‘It’s such a joy to see people enjoying jollof on their lunch break,’ Ifey says.
‘Back in the day, jollof was something you might have brought in a Tupperware. Now you’ve got a whole office eating it and saying, “I love this.” One guest said they never thought they’d see the day their office ate jollof.’
Over the next five years, they’d love to open a second site and become the lunch choice for more City companies, plus asking the question: ‘If we threw out the rulebook, what could Nigerian food look like?’
Ifey and Emeka want to stay true to where they started, immersing the city in Nigeria’s rich culture and inviting them to celebrate it together.
‘We want to continue to showcase the culture in a way that makes them proud and continue to do Nigeria proud,’ Ifey says.