• Michael Gebert
  • Tunde Wey

If you’ve traveled outside the prosperous west, you’ve met the kind of entrepreneur that emerging economies tend to produce—the cabdriver who’s also a travel agent, a caterer, a handyman, a schoolteacher . . .

Tunde Wey: We started (revolver) about a year ago. Neither of us had any sort of restaurant ownership experience. [Peter] had worked in restaurants going to college, I hadn’t really worked in any restaurants, though my first job ever, when I was 18 or 19, was at Wendy’s. That was a seminal experience—my wrist skills at flipping burgers are amazing.

Do people know how to eat Nigerian food when you serve it?

And then I realized that I’m not trying to appeal to everybody, I’m just trying to get people comfortable with things that are new. In the last couple of dinners, I haven’t served quote-unquote barbecue, I just served the side dishes, which have always been the focus, even when we served the grilled meats. I don’t want to use any sort of trick language to get you in the door. I just want to be as explicit as possible with the food, the music, the atmosphere, that this is what it is, it’s Nigerian food, give it a try.

I’m serving jollof rice, which after spending time in New Orleans, is really like a jambalaya. I’m serving a goat pepper soup, with three or four kinds of peppers, I guess the closest thing to that would be like a gumbo minus the seafood. I’m doing fried plantains and egusi stew. I’m doing asun, which is like peppered goat meat, and then I’m doing something called frijon, which is not really very popular but I had it a lot growing up. It’s black beans with coconut. It’s a holiday dish, we used to have it on Good Friday when I was growing up.

And it’s another thing about being a trained chef—I understand that if you’re cooking French food, that training is required. But the best cooks that I know are my mother, my aunt, my father. They had a little training, but that doesn’t diminish the amount of work and expertise that they possess. There’s a lot of effort that goes into food like this. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge that gets passed down, that you should pay a premium for. I’m not trying to sensationalize the food, I’m not trying to make modern cuisine out of it on a white plate, deconstructed plantains. This is how the food tastes, and it should be respected as what it is.