How a Nigerian chef spends his Sundays
Since moving to New York in 1997, Ayo Balogun has eaten his way through Italian deli classics, Indian recipes and nouveau British dishes, dreaming of showcasing the cuisine of his native Nigeria.
A restless restaurateur, 45-year-old Balogun opened three Brooklyn eateries – The Civil Service Café, The Bureau Café and Trade Union Diner – between 2013 and 2022, but his big hit came in 2022 when he opened Dept of Culture near his apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“Our guests feel like they are in someone’s home, like a family,” Mr Balogun said. “That’s the service standard we’re looking for.”
In 2023, Mr. Balogun opened Radio Kwara, where he combines music and food. He will host a pop-up dinner at the New Museum on February 20 and will be one of the chefs at the James Beard Foundation’s Taste America event on February 27.
On Sundays, Mr. Balogun struggles to distance himself from his ever-beeping phone and enjoys spending time with his son, Ola Balogun, 13, and his partner, Naomi Sarah Clark, 41, who is an artist.
LOSING BATTLE I wake up around 6:45 am. I try not to check my email or get caught up in social media, but it’s a battle I’ve been losing for years. At 6:30 I come out of the black hole, get ready and go to my café, The Bureau. It’s open seven days a week and the coffee is good. My plan is to grab a coffee and go to Von King Park and walk a few laps while I check my email, but if there’s a line I’ll jump in and help out for an hour.
PANCAKE CONNOISSEURS Then I meet Ola [who lives with his mother in Greenwich Village]. We have this adventure that we’ve been doing together for years: finding the best pancakes in New York. We either go to a new place we want to try, or to one of our defaults. In Brooklyn we go to Saraghina Caffè for ricotta pancakes. Rule of Thirds in Greenpoint has a really good soufflé pancake, but you have to be in the mood for it. Or we go to East One, in Carroll Gardens, for great malted milk pancakes.
WALK AND TALK Ola and I are going for a walk. We’ve been walking from Brooklyn to Manhattan since he was seven years old. We walk to my new restaurant, Radio Kwara in Clinton Hill. It’s a Nigerian restaurant that’s a buka: a hole in the wall. When I went to the buka as a child, I heard new music there. The Japanese have a listening room. I wanted to marry the listening room with food. The music is very important to the aesthetic of the restaurant. Ola likes to be there and enjoys working on making the tastiest egg sandwiches.
GOING TO ‘WE’ Ola has been in restaurants all his life. I don’t know if it’s that much fun for him to have dinner with me because I keep asking him, “What do you think about that?” I’m thinking of the health department, labor costs, the Ministry of Buildings, but Ola’s ideas are clear and fresh. It’s pretty cool to see his progression. He now says:We should do this,’ and I know he’s interested. Ola is only 13, but when I do a new project, he is one of the people I call.
SHOP CALL There is always something that Ola needs. He plays all sports – basketball, football – and he’ll say, ‘There’s a new shoe. I really want it.” But it costs about $400, and I’ll say, “Who do you think your dad is?” We’ll go window shopping in Williamsburg or buy a gadget from Best Buy to improve Ola’s gaming lineup .
TO THE JUDGE Around 3:00 PM we go to the Bedford-Stuyvesant YMCA Ola’s for training. I should train with him, but I don’t do that very well. I’m dribbling the ball, but then my phone starts ringing and I’m drawn back to my cyber adventures on the phone.
HOT SOUP TIME MACHINE Ola goes back to the West Village and I join Naomi. During the week she lives in Connecticut, but on Sundays she comes to town. She’s going to work in her studio space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, so I’m going there, and then we’re going to an underground Nigerian restaurant in East New York. You press a buzzer, and if you seem like the right person, they let you in. It’s full of old Nigerian men and women, and everyone is aggressively discussing 1960s politics. It’s like you’ve stepped into a time machine. They’re shouting, but they’re having a good time.
We get a take-away order of pepper soup and jollof rice, originally from the Wolof people in Senegal and Gambia. I’ll be honest with you: Nigerians make much better jollof rice every day than the Ghanaians. I can’t imagine what the Senegalese and Gambians are thinking when the Nigerians and Ghanaians are fighting over jollof rice because it’s their food, but the Nigerians are making it much better.
THE ARTIST’S STUDIO We drive to Naomi’s studio and home in Norwalk, Connecticut around six o’clock. Naomi has a new photo every week. It is meditative for me to go to her studio, walk around and look at the paintings. It’s a time when I completely take my brain off work and get lost in the art. Naomi will ask me what I think of the work. I’m really going to give a thoughtful answer, but it might take me all week.
THE GREAT DEBATE Then the real battle begins: we eat the takeaway and we discuss what to watch on TV. I like watching the old British stuff that I hated as a kid. There is a program called ‘Yes Minister’, and then it became ‘Yes, Prime Minister’. It’s like ‘House of Cards’, but from the ’80s. It’s pure adult humor. I didn’t like it at the time, but now I laugh and think, “Oh no, I’m old!”
I know Naomi secretly watches reality shows, but I don’t. Sometimes we land in the middle and watch ‘Grand Designs’, the British show about building a house. I looked at it when I built the Dept of Culture.
PODCASTS UNDER THE STARS Then I go outside to the fire pit. I have this jacket from J. Crew, and I call it my climate control jacket. I’m going to sit outside in the cold under the stars. I love it in the summer, but the colder the better. When it is cold, you hear nothing else. I’m listening to the BBC podcast ‘Thinking Allowed’. It’s just so brilliant. I let my thoughts flow in and write down my ideas before I forget. Sometimes I enjoy it so much that I listen to it twice.
There is such a thing as Yoruba: we have a very oral history. When I was a child, my mother told us stories. It was something we loved, everyone huddled together. I listened to Dick Estell on “Radio Reader” on NPR in the 1990s, long before there were podcasts. I loved it, and wherever I was, I ran home to my apartment in Brooklyn Heights to listen. I try to find a moment for myself to listen to something audio. It’s my turn.
The end of my Sunday is midnight or 1am. It’s a long day.
Sunday Routine readers can follow Ayo Balogun on Instagram @deep culturebk And @radiokwarabk.