It’s a difficult feat for any restaurateur to pull off. Intrepid diners constantly want to be surprised by the novel, to boast that they are eating cutting-edge, boundary-pushing cuisine. The sub-Saharan African dining scene, especially at the high-end, has been long-neglected in London. It also provides a fertile ground for experimentation, where even more seasoned and sceptical diners such as your reviewer can be impressed. Look no further than Akoko.
The venue – which is easy to miss unless you’re looking for it – was opened on Berners Street in one of the brief windows of normality during the pandemic. With the world fortuitously having left the COVID era behind, Akoko has truly found its feet. Getting a booking there now is increasingly hard. Diners are not given a choice on arrival. They are to put their faith in the hands of head chef Aji Akokomi. For a mere £120, it’s a tasting menu or nothing. There’s no place to hide with a gambit such as this. The metaphor is apt since the open kitchen at the back of this minimally furnished venue (think concrete walls with a sparse African decorations) allows guests to see the chefs at work.
To the credit of Akoko each dish was meticulously explained to us by our servers, who were more than happy to engage in conversation and respond to the geeky queries of your reviewer and his dining comrade. Such is the passion of the team at Akoko that ahead of the jollof rice dish being brought to our table, we were left with a small booklet explaining its significance in West African culinary culture.
Onto the food. Akokomi and his team draw on influences from across West Africa. While much of the emphasis is on dishes from Nigeria and Ghana, both Gambia and Senegal received referencing over the course of our meal. Things started slowly. This was not to fault the presentation of either of our amuse-bouche offerings. Both a piece of truffled chicken mousse and an oyster perched on a serving of Gambian stew were delights to behold, but neither offered a discernibly novel taste experience. The latter stew was more reminiscent of red pepper purée than anything else, as my dining comrade astutely highlighted.
Fortunately for Akoko – and like all good tasting menus should – the subsequent dishes grew in stature and built to a crescendo. Monkfish in a green vatapá sauce topped by a slice of hen of the woods mushroom, was probably the stand-out offering on the menu, although it was closely rivalled by the two meat options. Sandwiched between, we selected an optional extra dish of tatale (Ghanian plantain pancakes) accompanied by caviar served atop a goat cashew cream. Decadent and not cheap, but worth it. In terms of the meats, the much-vaunted jollof rice (apparently from a family recipe) lifted our piece of lamb, but the Suya skewer of ox tongue was a superb piece of culinary execution, full of flavour and impact. After this peak, the sweeter dishes were more mundane and showed fewer evident African influences.
The full Akoko experience takes almost three hours, but time seemed to pass quickly. At no stage were we rushed. There is ample time to savour both the food and the novelties of the drinks list (both alcoholic and soft). The potential shown here should hopefully pave the way for more venues with similar ambitions to consider opening.