The West African disrupter cooking up a storm

The Bear, Boiling Point, Kitchen Nightmares: TV shows and films portray the kitchen environment as a chaotic, intense environment that swallows anyone who sets foot inside it. But one chef has broken the stereotype and is bringing the wonders of West African cuisine to the heart of the nation’s capital. Adejoké (Joké) Bakare, is the UK's first Michelin-starred black female chef and the visionary behind Chishuru.

The restaurant is a stone’s throw from Oxford Circus and is creating ripples far beyond London. A beautiful ornate lampshade stands out as it beckons you in. The name is inspired by a term from the West African language Hausa meaning “the silence that descends on the table when the food arrives”. The restaurant has had rave reviews from professional critics and social media is full of videos and testimonials from satisfied diners.

Unusually, Chishuru is only open for lunch and dinner from Monday to Friday. But Bakare doesn’t do usual. She’s been a chef for just over four years. Some may see this as a flaw but it also may be Bakare’s disruptive superpower. “Sometimes what you know becomes like a barrier to where you want to get to,” she says. “Sometimes the things you don't know just give you that extra push.”

Paice didn’t know much about Bakare or the restaurant before he visited. “I looked at the Google reviews,” he says, “and it was 4.9. I thought, these are unbelievable reviews, what is going on? When I met her, it was immediately obvious that she was very talented. After a couple of months, she started to introduce me to people as Matt, her business partner.” He left his full-time job in the summer of 2024 to open the restaurant’s Fitzrovia location.

The pair’s skills have become complementary. Paice recalls an occasion when they were fitting the restaurant out: “We had no money because we had no investors, and we were running on fumes. The week we opened, she insisted that we needed this £1,500 lampshade from South Africa. I said, ‘Absolutely no way, we can't afford this.’ You can see who won because it’s there…”

Bakare says there’s “method to the madness” and the lampshade was one of the non-negotiables. “I'm kind of easy-going but there are certain things that I would not compromise on,” she says. “We did this on a very tight budget, and I insisted that there has to be a reference point outside. Something that catches your eye when you go past that screams ‘Africa’.”

Negotiation is part of every business partnership, but Paice can’t help but think about how fragile these relationships are. He recalls falling out with an external marketing agency purely because they were getting him and Bakare to disagree with each other. “It's so important to protect that partnership because if the two of us start falling out, don't trust each other or can't rely on backing each other, then it could so easily collapse. It's something you really have to nurture, work on and think about. We have to believe in and trust each other because, without that, we're stuffed.”

A pivotal moment in Bakare’s journey came in 2024 when she earned her Michelin star, only the second black woman in the world to receive the accolade. However, a note on the restaurant’s website reads: “Please note before booking: Chishuru is not a fine dining restaurant. Yes, we have a Michelin star, but our style is relaxed and homely, and we play music.” This was to dispel the Michelin-star chasers who had eaten at a plethora of fine dining establishments and would complain it wasn’t up to expectations.

Bakare tried to make Chishuru’s offering akin to what the masses expect from a Michelin-star establishment for a while but, in another show of disruption, had a realisation. “I called Matt up one day and said this is not me,” she recalls, in a move that Paice backed. Bakare likens it to driving a huge 18-wheeler truck while having a learner’s permit. With other restaurants looking to push the envelope and try something new, she wants to make sure that everything she does is focused on staying the course.