When Lynda Ndukwe established a small eatery beneath a canopy across from the Chinese embassy in Abuja 18 years ago, with the modest dream of securing a livelihood for herself and her seven children, little did she know that her roadside eatery would provide her children with ample prospects to flourish in a culinary future, to the point of breaking and remaking history.
At exactly 7:47 a.m. on Monday, May 15, 2023, her first daughter, Hilda Baci (birth name Hilda Effiong Bassey), clocked 87 hours and 46 minutes, breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest uninterrupted stretch spent cooking.
The record was previously held by Lala Tondon, an Indian chef who set the record in September 2019 after cooking for 87 hours and 45 minutes. But Hilda, cooking through 100 dishes from 55 recipes, had set out to set her own record, aiming for a 96-hour milestone. A crowd of teeming supporters formed a carnival of some sort at Amore Gardens, the venue of the record-breaking ceremony, waiting patiently for the clock to tick down to hour 96.
But as that milestone approached, Hilda decided to extend her record-setting time to 100 hours. At exactly 7:59 PM, she had set a new world record, obliterating the previous record by almost 13 hours. The crowd went berserk, and fireworks lit the night sky above the cooking tents and spread out across the garden.
As she packed up her cooking gear, her mother, Lynda, who had been there for the grand finale, was escorted out by a team of security agents who had to barricade them from the cheering crowd. Back in Abuja, Hilda’s sister, Princess Bassey, was surrounded by friends of the family, leading the celebrations at home.
But the road to the Guinness World Record attempt did not start last week, or even a year ago.
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Greatness has an incubation period during which one’s environment harmonises with unwavering dedication, strategic foresight, rigorous preparation, familial legacies, and very possibly, luck.
Hilda’s Guinness World Record attempt has been years in the making.
Born in Calabar to parents of Akwa Ibom origin and raised in Abuja, Hilda Baci is from a family steeped in rich Nigerian food and culture. She’s part of a big family, the second of seven children. She has one older brother, Gilbert, and five younger siblings—Princess following immediately after her. The last three are triplets. Her mother owns the popular Calabar Pot franchise in Abuja, and it was upon this foundation that Hilda would build her restaurant business years later.
Like many Nigerian food businesses, Calabar Pot began from modest origins. Lynda, the matriarch of the Bassey family, used to run a Mama Put in Area 10, Abuja, somewhere directly opposite the Chinese embassy. The setup wasn’t complex; she had just a small canopy, a few tables, and coolers of food containing mostly southern Nigerian cuisines. Her motivation for owning a Mama Put was simple: poverty. She had to provide for her young children and she did just that in the way she knew how to — by cooking. The food was great and the location was strategic, so the meals were always sold out before they were done.
On Fridays, Hilda’s mother made ekpang nkukwo, a dish native to Akwa Ibom and Cross River states made with freshly grated cocoyam wrapped in cocoyam leaves and cooked with a unique fragrant gravy full of meat, leaves, and seafood.
“She made two large batches in massive [iron] pots and the food was always gone before it was ready,” Princess tells me in a Whatsapp voice note. “Have you ever heard that sort of thing before? People from offices would call and order ten, fifteen plates. It was wild. People that worked for the United Nations and embassies would leave their offices to come and queue for her food. That was when I knew my mother could cook!”
The proceeds from the small business were enough for Lynda to see her young children through school. “People thought my father was a senator when I was in boarding school,” Princess recalls. “When [my mother] showed up at my school with provisions, she brought enough to feed 10 people. We didn’t have much but she made sure we didn’t lack.”
Having also established herself as a chef of repute, Princess now oversees operations at Calabar Pot restaurant in Abuja where she cooks all the meals because her mother is in Lagos. “I cook everything. I’m always busy. Doing that and running the Instagram page is a lot of work,” she says.
Princess took over the Calabar Pot Instagram page post-COVID-19 and grew it from just over 100 followers to over 100,000 followers. At the time of writing this, the Instagram account has grown to over 255,000 followers, further amped by the virality of Hilda’s record-breaking exploits. Hilda’s world record attempt has brought all the things she deeply values to the enthusiastic attention of Nigerians who are constantly searching for something to believe in within today’s Nigeria. Her enormous feat has had a snowball effect on everything associated with her; her social media pages have ballooned by over 1000%, and her mother’s business page has grown by over 140%.
According to Princess, she and Hilda were never particularly interested in cooking when they were much younger. They didn’t undergo any special apprenticeships either. They all just knew how to cook when it came down to it. “It was like we had it in our blood,” she said. “We were not exactly chefs at the very beginning,” Princess says, “But we did well enough.”
She recalls the time when they were teenagers and Hilda bungled an okra soup because she circumvented an instruction by their mother, who asked Hilda to cook okra soup without using palm oil. Hilda, who had never witnessed okra being cooked without oil, misunderstood the instruction as suggesting that vegetable oil was the recommended choice. “The soup came out tasty,” Princess says, “But the only problem was that she used vegetable oil.”
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Like her mother, Hilda’s catering career didn’t start out glamorous. She, in fact, only started taking cooking seriously in 2016. Her Instagram food brand, My Food by Hilda Baci, derived its name from her older brother’s food delivery business in Abuja called “My Food”. It was a subscription-based food delivery service where customers paid subscription premiums and got food delivered to their offices daily. Hilda and her older brother Gilbert ran the business together.
“Hilda had a customer, Hamza, who insisted that Hilda made his food herself. It was at that point Hilda started cooking really well,” Princess says.
Before Hilda’s blossoming career as a Guinness World Record-attempting chef cum Nigerian internet and media darling, she moved to Lagos in 2017 foraging through job interviews. Like many unsuccessful job seekers who moved to Lagos to seek better fortune, she struggled. It was during the depth of her despair that she decided to take a chance on what she knew how to do best: cooking. She opened an Instagram page, established her cooking brand, and gained considerable recognition. Once settled in her role as a leading culinary influencer on Instagram, she set her eyes on the Guinness World Record. On the 12th of May, 2023, she walked into her cooking tent at the Amore Gardens to begin her 100-hour record-setting feat.
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Princess doesn’t know when Hilda conceived the idea of breaking the Guinness World Record. She only became aware of it two months before it became public. “I was confused,” she says. “I asked her, ‘Why do you want to put your body through all that stress?’ Even mummy was sceptical. But when Hilda wants to do something, she just goes ahead and does it.”
While Hilda sweated it out in the makeshift tent she spent 100 hours cooking, Princess was having the busiest week of her life, cheering her sister on from Abuja, receiving goodwill messages and well-wishers on the family’s behalf, keeping tabs on the social media campaigns while also tending to the daily running of Calabar Pot.
For Princess, Hilda is much more than just an older sister. “She’s like my hero,” Princess says, “And I’m her biggest fan.” She tells me about the first soup Hilda made that she really liked. It was okra soup, again, but this time she cooked it perfectly.” She tells me the soup tasted quite different from the usual and while she doesn’t remember the recipe, she remembers the taste of that okra soup till today.
While Hilda may have just achieved international prominence with her world record attempt, it’s not her first rodeo. Three years ago, she won the grand prize of $5,000 representing Nigeria in the “Jollof Faceoff” competition held in Lagos where she bested a Ghanaian chef, establishing the supremacy of Nigerian jollof.
“Nobody makes jollof as well as Hilda,” Princess says with effulgent pride. “Nobody.”
On how much their mother influenced Hilda, Princess tells me, “A whole lot. Mummy influenced all of us in the art of cooking and in the business side of things. When you grow up in a home where cooking pays the bills, there are two things you must know how to do: how to cook and how to sell food.”
Guinness has formally recognized Hilda’s attempt, and it is currently under review before it’s confirmed officially.
UPDATED: On the 13th of June, the Guinness World Records formally awarded the record for world’s longest cooking marathon to Hilda Baci.
“Following a thorough review of all the evidence, Guinness World Records can now confirm that Hilda Effiong Bassey, better known as Hilda Baci, has officially broken the record for the longest cooking marathon (individual), with a time of 93 hours 11 minutes,” the organisation announced on their website.
The recorded time recognized by Guinness was 93 hours and 11 minutes, having scraped off 7 hours from Hilda’s 100-hour attempt as a penalty for an extended break that she took.
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