These 3 Award-winning Chefs Are Redefining African Food — and Introducing a Whole New Audience to Its Rich and Diverse Flavors

Meet the chefs who are bringing African food to the global stage.

From the aromatic coffee of the Ethiopian highlands to the spicy coconut curries of the Swahili Coast, African cuisines are numerous and diverse — and the world is taking note.

We spoke to three award-winning chefs about the ingredients, traditions, and places that inspire them.

Dieuveil Malonga: Meza Malonga

Before opening his Afro-fusion restaurant, Meza Malonga, in Kigali, Rwanda, Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga traveled to 48 African countries to scout ingredients and recipes. Much of his time was spent in villages; he believes the secret to African cuisine lies with its grandmothers. (In fact, Malonga’s grandmother ran a small restaurant in Linzolo, just outside Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.)

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Malonga did his culinary training in Germany, but he wanted to return to his roots. Meza Malonga’s tasting menu is designed around the restaurant’s three-acre farm. That might include bread made from yam and fonio (an ancient grain), beef served with eggplant tartare, or a palm oil and sweet-potato purée.

Malonga also operates an online community, Chefs in Africa, that helps more than 4,000 aspiring chefs and culinary professionals connect and find jobs with hotels, restaurants, producers, and purveyors. Next summer, he’ll open a food innovation lab, training school, and farm in Musanze, a city in the foothills of Rwanda’s Virunga Massif.

Ultimately, Malonga wants to elevate African cuisine to the global level. “Food doesn’t have borders,” Malonga says. “Food is education, food is sharing.”

Fatmata Binta: Dine on a Mat

Chef Fatmata Binta grew up in Sierra Leone, where she learned the cooking customs of the Fulani, a nomadic tribe. After fleeing violence during the civil war in the 1990s, Binta’s family relocated from Freetown, the capital, to a small village in neighboring Guinea. “Everything was done from scratch,” Binta says. “We farmed, we composted. It makes you value food so much.”

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Today, Binta, who lives in Accra, Ghana, runs a nomadic restaurant, Dine on a Mat. The restaurant honors the Fulani practice of communal meals: guests sit outside in makeshift restaurants set on rooftops, under shady trees, or on sprawling lawns, listening to storytelling and musical recitals. A five-course meal of traditional foods — like Moringa, hibiscus, millet, dried shrimp, and dawa dawa (locust beans) — is served in hollowed-out calabash bowls. Binta has also opened pop-ups of Dine on a Mat throughout the U.S. and Europe, and her pioneering concept earned her the prestigious 2022 Basque Culinary World Prize. Binta was the first African chef to win. “It’s a labor of love,” she says.

Jan Hendrik: Klein Jan

Sunday lunch was a “celebrated event,” says Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen, better known as Jan Hendrik, who grew up on a farm in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. “Our feasts were always created from humble ingredients but made with care.”

The chef took these lessons abroad to Nice, France, where he opened his first restaurant, Jan, in 2013. In just three years, he became the first South African chef with a Michelin-starred restaurant. Nostalgia found its way into dishes like his signature dessert: a meringue shell filled with sago (palm starch) pudding and served with an orange-flower custard.

For his most recent act, Hendrik went back to the source. Inspired by the underexplored plains of the Kalahari Desert, he opened Klein Jan at Tswalu Kalahari, South Africa’s biggest private wildlife reserve, in 2021. The menu reflects the region’s harsh, dry climate and features native ingredients like tsama melons, balsam pear, and preserved pumpkins, while using techniques like curing to increase the food’s shelf life. “My heritage is so important to me,” Hendrik says. “It will always be like a golden thread throughout my journey.”

Bring a Taste of Africa Into Your Kitchen

Want to try African recipes at home? Pick up chef, writer, and food stylist Yewande Komolafe’s new book, My Everyday Lagos: Nigerian Cooking at Home and in the Diaspora. Komolafe takes readers on a culinary tour of the Nigerian capital, with ideas for everyday dishes like yam fritters, plus celebratory meals such as braised goat leg in obe, a red-pepper sauce.

A version of this story first appeared in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Yes Chef!"

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