Introducing the new London restaurant Ikoyi and it’s take on the food of Nigeria and Sierra Leone. There’s more to it than jollof rice (although that’s a good place to start) .

Every cuisine has its own signature and West African food is no different. At its heart is jollof – a rice-based dish, made with tomato paste and spices, which is not only hearty and delicious, but thoroughly adaptable. According to Mr Iré Hassan-Odukale, co-founder of new West-African inspired eatery Ikoyi, there is no one true version of jollof rice. “You go to 10 households in Lagos and each one will have a different version,” he says. Ikoyi’s own jollof comes with smoked bone marrow – a twist on the format that head chef Mr Jeremy Chan says makes it more “intense… it has many layers of flavour”. It’s with such innovations and interpretations that Messrs Hassan-Odukale and Chan are hoping to bring West African food to the gourmands of the newly redeveloped St James’s Market in London, where Ikoyi opened last month.

Messrs Hassan-Odukale and Chan are childhood friends – growing up together in west London, they had always discussed opening a restaurant together. In creating Ikoyi, they were inspired by Mr Hassan-Odukale’s Nigerian-Sierra Leonean roots. “West African ingredients gave us a new context to explore,” says Mr Chan, whose previous work includes stints at Noma and Hibiscus. “We work with farmers we can relate to, we get coffee from Cameroon, we get peppercorns from Sierra Leone, these ingredients ignite our imagination.”

The time is ripe for such exploration, because interest in West African food seems to be on the rise. The growing popularity of street food has allowed agile vendors such as Chalé! Let’s Eat to introduce jollof and kelewele (a spicy friend plantain dish) to new audiences. Supper clubs such as Jason’s Little Kitchen have allowed a wider public to taste dishes that, in West African culture, are typically cooked and enjoyed in private, at home. Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant in Brixton, launched by Ms Zoe Adjonyoh after the success of her own supper club, will be opening a permanent space next year. And now: Ikoyi. Mr Hassan-Odukale puts the phenomenon down to the wide diaspora of West Africans in London now, from an emerging class of super-rich who have come to the British capital for its schools, real estate and culture to younger people of West African extraction who are showing growing interest in the cuisine of their parents. Mr Chan adds that it’s now the norm for West African ingredients to be stocked in in British supermarkets. “You can buy plantain, okra, fermented fish, cassava,” he says. “The Nigerian kitchen is now accessible.”

Of course, what Messrs Hassan-Odukale and Chan are offering up is not an authentic Nigerian experience, per se – rather, they are using classic flavours and dishes as a starting point for culinary invention. This is the kind of thing that got Mr Jamie Oliver into trouble when he proposed his own jollof, and British-West-African Twitter users decried its inauthenticity, resulting in the hashtag #jollofgate. But Mr Chan says what is different at Ikoyi is that they are looking at traditional West African food from a new objective standpoint. “We are flipping it on its head,” he says. Mr Hassan-Odukale says what really sets Ikoyi apart is how the menu reflects this contemporary reading of West African food – it’s about deliberately breaking with tradition in terms of the look, feel and taste and creating something fresh and inventive.

As an example of how its done, Mr Chan took us through three of his favourite dishes at Ikoyi – scroll down to discover them.

This is Ikoyi’s interpretation of the classic West African spicy grilled meat dish, which has origins with the nomadic herdsmen of the region. There is no one single recipe for the dish, but it usually involves a mix of chilli, peanuts and spices that are used to flavour the meat before grilling it. Ikoyi’s recipe uses more than 20 spices and blade beef from quality UK suppliers. “We slow cook it, then barbecue it, and it’s served medium-rare with a brown butter sauce and a side dish of onions and the best tomatoes from Calabria,” says Mr Chan.

According to Mr Chan, this dish is all about the sauce – a twist on a West African sesame-based recipe that is typically served with meat. In the Ikoyi version, Mr Chan employs benne, a specific type of young sesame that is grown throughout Nigeria and now cultivated by the California-based Anson Mills. “We roast the seeds with cashews,” says Mr Chan, “using these to thicken a reduced roast chicken broth, which is finally emulsified with caramelised onions and lemongrass, coconut, fresh scotch bonnet chillies, smoked, dried crayfish, toasted curry spices, dried peppercorns and a lot of fresh lemon juice.” Needless to say, this all packs quite a punch. “We serve the sauce silky and smooth,” says Mr Chan. “It has a big hit to the back of the throat but the nuttiness of the benne is lengthened by our ‘secret ingredient’ of truffle. It’s sweet, fiery, acidic and nutty, balancing the juicy chicken perfectly.”

Zobo is a traditional Nigerian dessert drink made from the dried leaves of the roselle plant, a type of hibiscus native to West Africa. It has a sour taste and is usually served cold. To create this Ikoyi dessert however, zobo is used as a poaching liquid to flavour slices of papaya, which are then served up with alligator pepper – a west African spice with a sharp, zesty taste – and tangy buttermilk.