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00:00This is my first time in Nigeria. I'm ashamed to admit why the hell I haven't been here early
00:04I don't know, but it is my first time and I'm immediately in love
00:21My great friend Baba, the bigger hater dude, who's brought me over here. We sat, his sister I knew very well
00:27She said you've got to come to Lagos. I'm like what?
00:29It's funny because before I came here from UK, I said I'm going to Lagos. Everyone was like, oh man be so careful
00:35It's really dangerous, you know
00:37Every city has dangerous parts
00:40Nobody going to any city London, Lagos, Paris, Rio
00:44You don't go to certain parts with big watches, you know, you're just sensible and this is a joyous city
00:51It's absolutely, it has totally the wrong reputation. I've been looked, the people I've been looked after beautifully
00:57Eaten well, been happy, had drinks. It's lovely. So they've got it totally wrong. I hope this isn't the last time
01:05I absolutely love it here and I'll be going back to my country and saying what the hell are you talking about? Get to Lagos now
01:10It's fantastic
01:14In London, there's a big Nigerian community down in Peckham, so you can go and get
01:21Decent Nigerian, so jollof and pepper soup and suya and all those sort of things
01:25But really I wanted to come to the home, to where it really is, the proper home and where the Lagos
01:32That's you know, that's the best. So I have tried a lot of it, but I'm eating my way around
01:39She's a good cook, you know, she doesn't cook so much now, but yes she did
01:42I mean she also has a roast chicken. The English love their roasts, you know roast chicken, roast beef
01:47That's one of the few things that we're famed for. So yeah, she was a good home cook
01:51She brought, you know, my dad worked so she cooked for all of us, you know, every day
01:55It was, you know, not anymore, but what she still does at Christmas a bit, you know, maybe scrambled eggs or something, but very good cook
02:05Restaurant critic, you know, you go, I go looking for good things
02:08I don't want to go, the language of hate is much richer than the language of like and love
02:14So occasionally if a restaurant's really bad, yes, you're honest and say this is appalling
02:18But it's a hard world, the restaurant world, you know, people put their whole lives, they're working incredible hours, putting all their life savings
02:26To have one sort of stuck-up idiot like me coming in on a bad night and saying, you know, I don't, it's not fair
02:32So yes, you look for good and you know, you can't compare the cooking of say Jean-Christophe Novelli
02:38Who's here, you know, proper Michelin, very grand French cooking to perhaps a Szechuan hot pot
02:45So I'd like to judge everything
02:48Do they taste good, you know, first of all, but also a restaurant's not just about the food, restaurant's about the service
02:53It's about the atmosphere, you know, a great restaurant is made up of many many things
02:57So you've got to judge it not just for the food, but would you go back? That's the most important thing
03:03I
03:05Don't like trends in food because trends are by their nature
03:09Ephemeral, they don't last long trends. What I want is consistent good cooking
03:14So yes, you know, there have been trends, but I mean at the moment what's big in London is very high-end West African food
03:21So you take jollof or you take the pepper soup, the souya
03:26And make it into fine dining, so Michelin-starred and that's huge restaurants like Akoyi
03:32That is really really big. We didn't know much as a country about West African food, especially Nigerian food
03:38And you'd have to go and find it, you know in the communities where lots of Nigerians, now it's hit the mainstream
03:44Everyone's like, oh wow, this is the best food, you know, so the idea is a trend
03:48I don't want any food to be a trend. I want it to be good all the time
03:53So I try to avoid trends and just go to, you know, new restaurants open, great, but I try to avoid trends
03:59I don't like trends, but also I like the way, you know, that classic dishes should be done if you're gonna do
04:04I don't know
04:06A classic Italian or French dish, do it right. Don't put cream in the carbonara. You can, you know, I'm not saying you can't do it, but
04:13There are certain traditional
04:15Culinary traditions that should be respected and preserved
04:19British food
04:21The problem with British food is that people across the world, and I'll talk about this when I'm doing the Masterclass, you say British food
04:27is ugh, fish and chips, ugh
04:29boring, no spice
04:31British food is very much about good ingredients. We have quite a lot of rain, so we have good grass, which means we have very good sheep
04:38Cows, pigs that don't really eat grass, but they vary a bit. We also have very good cheese
04:43We have good dairy, so we have very, very good produce
04:46And we don't, we're not like the Thais or the Mexicans or the French
04:52We don't use lots of different sauces, but there are traditional herbs and spices we use, but it's quite plain food
04:59It doesn't have to be boring food, you know, a beautiful
05:02rib of beef
05:03Roasted, you know, and so it's still pink in the middle, sliced very thin with a rich intense gravy, roast potatoes crisp
05:11Crisp and golden on the outside and fluffy on the inside, lots of vegetables, you think of smoked salmon, you think of
05:18You know, just all of our great fish, crab, crab salads
05:21It doesn't trouble up because the ingredients are very seasonal and they have to be very fresh and the very best
05:27So you don't see many British restaurants in Lagos, for example, or New York or anywhere, but it is unfairly maligned
05:34There was a time when we lost touch with our food culture for, you know, a mixture of many, many things
05:41And people came over and it was dull and it was institutional and it was turgid, it was grey, but really
05:47There's always been good food in this country and you'll find it at home, but it's about ingredients and it's about traditional recipes
05:56Yes
05:57Very, well, this dish I'm cooking today is a hybridization
06:00I don't want to tell you, you know, an English dish, shepherd's pie or cottage pie
06:04With Nigerian spices and that makes it, but know these restaurants like Ikoyi, Ikoyi is in the West End of London
06:11One of the chefs is of Nigerian descent, his father's Nigerian, I think both, anyway
06:17So what he's doing is using Nigerian spicing with French technique. So it's fascinating
06:22It's really, really, you should go and it's, it's like two Michelin stars, very, very posh, amazing