What we have been up to.
One rolling page of tours, events and everything in between: the team’s running diary of life around the table. Newest first, always with photos, occasionally with crumbs.
A food event to remember, and a full table.
Once in a while we take the spirit of the Saturday tour and pour it into something bigger. This month it was a community food event here in Peckham, and it turned into everything we hope for when we say jẹká jẹun: come, let’s eat.
The Teju’s Street Food truck anchored the day, turning out puff puff, fried yam, asaro and plates of jollof faster than the queue could grow, which is saying something, because the queue for seconds never quite ended.
What made it, though, was the table. One long stretch of guests who mostly arrived as strangers: neighbours, first-timers who had been meaning to try Nigerian food for years, and diaspora families comparing every plate to somebody’s aunty’s version, which is the highest form of quality control we know. Plates were passed both ways, pepper tolerance was tested and respected, and by mid-afternoon nobody was sitting where they started.
Events like this only work because of the makers who cook for them. To everyone who fired a grill, pressed a juice or fried one more round of puff puff when we asked nicely: thank you. You are the reason people leave planning their next visit before they have finished their first plate.
And the Saturdays rolled on around it. Tours kept selling out through July, which we do not take for granted for a second. If you have been waiting for a sign to book, consider the empty puff puff trays our closing argument. Find your date on the dates page, and come hungry.