
A Closer Look at Dept of Culture’s Deeply Personal Nigerian Tasting Menu
For Ayo Balogun, the chef and owner of Brooklyn restaurants Dept of Culture and Radio Kwara, the intention was never to start a formal restaurant — it was about continuing the story of his culture. What began as a “COVID project” beginning in January 2021, is now a critically acclaimed restaurant known for its Nigerian tasting menu and communal dining experience.
Balogun is a familiar face in his neighborhood in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, having come to the States from Nigeria in the early nineties, and he’s witnessed a tremendous amount of change, and gentrification, ever since. Inside the white walls of Dept of Culture, the only decor that lines are framed photographs that capture life back in his country of Nigeria: They depict his family members from Nigeria, including a portrait of his grandfather wearing the same watch that Balogun often wears today.
Beyond the $85 per person tasting menu, everything inside of the small eatery is designed to learn and converse with the people around you, from the communal wooden table that seats less than 10 people to a tiny kitchen in the background with a countertop space he likes to reserve for locals passing by and wanting to stop in.
“There is beauty in the heritage I come from. There is beauty in the place where everyone is from,” says Balogun. “[I feel] we need to celebrate that.”
From day one at Dept of Culture, Balogun’s goal was simple: to serve the food from his culture with the same dignity and grace that his family did for him growing up. His philosophy was that while the foods may not always be familiar to everyone, it is something all cultures share in common.
“Food is that one thing we share as a people. We may not be from the same region or share the same religion, but we all need to eat,” he adds.
Balogun says it was important to him to present the food of his upbringing in an elevated way rather than a simple takeout operation. The intimate seating setup encourages conversation and dialogue on the dishes, and the dishes make the distinction of highlighting Nigerian cuisine, as opposed to treating African cuisine as a monolith.
“If you take injera [from Ethiopia] to where I grew up [in Nigeria], no one would know what to do with it,” he explains. “Africa is such a broad place. Food is so different to everyone [so] it doesn’t make sense to say [lump it together] as African cuisine.”
Here’s how Balogun honors his cultural heritage in five dishes.
1. Fish Pepper Soup with Cilantro Ashoké
“It’s one of those dishes you have in beer parlors in Nigeria. It’s usually really spicy. We cook it with a pepper called odo. It is spicy, but the heat doesn’t stay for a long time.
“If you have ever seen images of African women carrying heavy things on their heads, there is a cloth in Yoruba called ashoké, and it’s a cloth that they use to balance the things on their heads. We like to imagine the cilantro [in the dish] as an ashoké; it’s what carries the broth in the pepper soup. We alternate between red snapper and swordfish as the fish, but we are doing red snapper right now.”


2. Goat Meat Pepper Soup
“Our dishes show Nigerian culinary sensitivity in a way that, even though we might be serving food from one part of the country, it speaks for almost all the others. Every part of the country has pepper soup. If you go to parts of the east, they use a lot of fish for it. If you go to the north, there’s a lot of goat and beef. It’s just a different expression.
“Goat meat pepper soup is something people have when they come home from work before they cook dinner. The base of our soup has onions, ginger, saint leaf, and goat. We use this pepper called rodo, which is akin to habanero.”


3. Wara Ti Abe
“[This] is a sauce [where] we use four different kinds of pepper and tomatoes, wing ginger, thyme, and rosemary to cook it. It’s not too spicy … it depends on how we cook the cheese. The cheese we serve is called wara. Wara is a fresh cow’s milk cheese. It has a mild taste and squeaky texture. It was brought to Kwara State by the nomadic people who pass through the region on their travels. Most other parts of Nigeria don’t know about the cheese we make in this region. They don’t know about the cheese.”
4. Okele
“Okele is a Yourba word used to describe the various starches that accompany soup or stew. It is also called ‘swallow.’ It can be made from cassava, pounded yam, yam skins, semolina, wheat meal, plantain, and even oatmeal. Different kinds of swallow are served all over Nigeria.
We are serving it as pounded yam with okra. The okra has smoked fish and tilapia, so it has two different fish. When we cook the okra, we cook it with fermented lotus beans. It is what people used before stock cubes. It has a very interesting smell; we use it to balance [the taste].”


5. Dodo Ice Cream
“Ice cream is something I ate a lot of as a teenager, and it is something I would eat with dodo, which is fried plantains. So, we caramelized the plantains with pepper and sugar, and then we served it with ice cream as dessert.”
Dept of Culture is open Thursday to Saturday, with seatings at 6 and 8:30 p.m.
Resy contributing editor Tae Yoon contributed to this article.