When I first met Chef Kolawole Ajayi, the owner of SUUYAR in London, he was shouting. His shouts had meaning—
"Meat on fire!" meant: Put his marinated beef on the grill.
"Let it go!" meant: Serve the plated meal to the guest.
"Who is working with me directly?!" meant: One of his employees needed to come to him immediately.
But one cry didn't make sense to me: "STOP SLEEPING ON MY DESTINY!"
Chef Kola's destiny is not only to make suya, but to sell it. “My destiny is to draw people from around the world to Peckham, to try my suya,” he told me. He's been grilling the marinated beef, cooked slowly over charcoal, in Peckham since 2018. He learned it from the Hausa—one of the ethnic groups of Nigeria, who invented the dish—over 20 years ago. But Kola’s version is different, modified to bring the best out of British beef, with a "suya pepper" completely his own, mixed on the streets before your eyes. "I'm an Aries," Kola told me. "And Aries is fire sign. And I'm working with fire. I love it."
Watch my latest documentary, on Chef Kolawale Ajayi’s SUUYAR:
As always, below the fold is a behind-the-scenes look at making the video: