Welcome to Deliciously, the newsletter for people who love to eat, drink, and travel. Every Thursday, by 3 p.m., you’ll receive the tastiest stories from Africa’s dining tables. Forward to someone!
If you poll a random group of Nigerians about sushi, their replies are going to range from “Wetin be dat?” to “Ew, raw fish? God forbid!” to “I quite like it”; it is an acquired taste. Nigerians love Japanese culture — well, bits of it. We love PlayStation and anime (*waves in Sharingan*), and our women have a longstanding love affair with kimonos.
But no matter how much we dig Japan in Nigeria, we’re just a tad sceptical about eating raw fish and seaweed. In Nigeria, we like to cook our food. We’re the type of people who boil meat, fry it, and still proceed to cook it again in a pot of soup to make sure that the meat is completely and utterly dead.
Served in rolls on a platter and eaten with chopsticks, very few other meals mark class divides in Nigeria like sushi. But even among adventurous eaters, sushi can be a hard sell. As Nigerian, spicy vegetables have always been our ally, so I imagine that anyone who has eaten proper Yoruba stew can handle its fiery heat. Where we may draw the line is putting raw fish in our mouths. The typical Nigerian sees sushi and thinks this dish is so raw that with a little first-aid, it will be up and ready to swallow Jonah again.
My hot take is that a good amount of the “ew, God forbid!” crowd might eat sushi on a date to save face and pretend that they’re cultured — particularly in expensive restaurants.
In Japan, sushi is just another staple food. In most other countries, it’s exotic. Thanks to the portrayal of sushi in film and TV, the delicate meal has attained celebrity food status all over the world. Sushi is what you and your friends go out to eat after work on a boring day; and unlike, say, pizza, another international celebrity which is cheap, universal, and adaptable, sushi is gourmet — this weird mix of raw fish, vinegared rice, seaweed, and soy sauce that takes incredible skill to prepare.
The next time you ponder the social conundrum of sushi in Nigeria, remember this: the adventure goes beyond the taste of sushi; it’s about courage. It takes courage to step outside your culinary comfort zone.
Picture yourself with friends contemplating a platter of sushi in a quaint Japanese restaurant that has an Oriental vibe going on, down to the green bamboo stilts. It is tucked into a neat corner in the bougie part of town, and all the chefs there are foreign. Your friends order sushi, and when it comes, they dig in. Of course, they don’t know how to use chopsticks, so they use a fork. They also don’t dip their sushi rolls into soy sauce. Are you the friend who embraces the experience or the one who will stop at Jevinik on your way home to buy fufu and egusi for emotional support?
As we celebrate the intersection of cultures and flavours, it’s time to ask yourself: Are you brave enough to embark on a sushi adventure?
You should probably go to a sushi restaurant and find out if you’re brave enough.
While we are at this…
Here are four restaurants we recommend if this newsletter has moved you to brave sushi.
- Slice, Victoria Island: More famous for their amazing bathroom aesthetics (mirror selfies in their bathrooms always slaps), but their sushi slaps even harder than the mirror selfies you went to take at Slice. You can watch our review of their sushi on an old episode of On the Menu here. Hold your money sha.
- Ki Bar, Victoria Island: Closet alcoholics know this place for their great cocktails, and if you’ve read our restaurant deals article, you’ll know why. Contrary to what you might think, alcohol isn’t the main attraction at Ki Bar & Kitchen. Asian cuisine is their speciality — with lots of tasty dishes on the menu, from Dimsum to Thai curries. Sushi is one such meal, and word on the street is it pairs great with cocktails. So the next time you’re at Ki Bar, please try their sushi.
- Shiro, Landmark, Victoria Island: What kind of Asian restaurant would miss with sushi? Definitely not Shiro. Shiro is an all-time favourite Asian restaurant that Lagosians have been savouring meals at for almost a decade. A restaurant with such a lifespan should tell you everything you need to know about how great the food is.
- Ocean Basket, Ikeja: Just like its name suggests, Ocean Basket offers a wide variety of seafood options. Sushi is technically seafood, right? Because sushi is on the menu at Ocean Basket. For mainlanders who are brave enough to experience raw fish as a meal on a budget, here’s somewhere you might want to check out.
