West African

Marcus Oyelaran

Chef de Cuisine

Brooklyn, NY

Nigerian-American cooking that does not apologise for itself. I run the kitchen at Ìsàlẹ̀ in Bed-Stuy, where we build a nightly tasting menu around West African pantry staples — egusi, iru, smoked catfish, scotch bonnet — using technique I picked up in French kitchens in Manhattan. I came up through fine dining and spent four years wondering why nothing on those menus looked like the food I grew up eating. Ìsàlẹ̀ is the answer to that question.