Ayo Balogun
Radio Kwara
A 20-year veteran of the restaurant industry, Ayo Balogun has worked everywhere from a Michelin-starred Indian restaurant to an Italian deli making fresh mozzarella. He serves American food at his popular Brooklyn cafe, The Bureau, and offered similar fare at his now closed Trade Union... READ MORE
A 20-year veteran of the restaurant industry, Ayo Balogun has worked everywhere from a Michelin-starred Indian restaurant to an Italian deli making fresh mozzarella. He serves American food at his popular Brooklyn cafe, The Bureau, and offered similar fare at his now closed Trade Union Diner. While he’d flirted with the idea of opening a place dedicated to his native Nigerian cuisine, he shied away from it because he thought there needed to be more education about the diversity of Nigerian Cuisine. Beginning in 2015 Ayo hosted a series of Nigerian pop-up dinners called IYA EBA — a Yoruba name for women who sell eba, a Nigerian staple food made from pounded cassava flour — this proved immensely popular. Ayo opened the aptly named Dept of Culture, where he prepares elegant, flavorful four-course meals based on the regional cooking that he grew up with in Nigeria’s Kwara State. “It’s important for us to tell our stories from our own perspective,” says Ayo, “We should celebrate the similarities we have through food.
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