Ozoz Sokoh Kitchen Butterfly
Love Letter to Lagos
January 11, 2020
With Love Letter to Lagos Ozoz Sokoh, also known as Kitchen Butterfly, brings the lovely Agbalumo to the Treehouse. Agbalumo, the African star apple is her portal into a world of possibility, setting new directions for Nigerian cuisine beyond the known and accepted.
Ozoz Sokoh is a food explorer and exploration geologist passionate about food in its entirety – cooking, eating, dreaming, writing and photographing it, especially on her blog, Kitchen Butterfly. A ‘Traveller by plate’, she uses foodways--the social, cultural and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food--to explore the world because ‘Food is more than eating’.
In 2013, she coined the phrase The #NewNigerianKitchen - her philosophy and practice celebrating and documenting all aspects of Nigerian cuisine from classic recipes to reinventing and representing Nigerian food, unearthing history, sharing techniques, using old ingredients in new ways, focusing on in-season produce, monitoring trends and more. She has created a number of novel documents - Nigeria's first-ever seasonal produce calendar, one of a handful on the continent; guide to Nigerian tastes and flavours, and others.
Sokoh featured on Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown Lagos episode, and her work has been profiled on CNN African Voices and Food 52.
She makes her home in Lagos, Nigeria but dreams of rain-drenched or sun-streaked mornings on the couch, good book in hand and a pot of tea in New York, Nairobi, Tokyo, Paris and Edinburgh. She believes Nigerian food was, is and always will be worth celebrating. Viva la vida Naija food.
