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Abeokuta, Ogun

7.1557° N, 3.3451° E

FoodFood

Jollof, and the argument that will not be settled

The rice dish that every West African country claims, cooked over wood, at scale, for a crowd.

Words Tobi Adeyemi

5 min read

A large pan of Nigerian jollof rice.
Photograph: Kambai Akau / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

About Abeokuta

The name means 'under the rock', and it is literal: Egba refugees settled beneath Olumo in the 1830s because the outcrop could be defended. The rock is still the centre of the town in every sense. Abeokuta produced an unusual concentration of people who changed the country — and the Ogun river below it has been the town's boundary and its laundry for two centuries.

Everything from Abeokuta

Party jollof is not the same dish as home jollof and pretending otherwise is the source of most bad jollof takes. The difference is the fire.

A domestic gas ring cannot put enough heat under a pot that size, and it cannot produce the layer at the bottom that catches and smokes the whole thing from underneath. This is why the rice at a wedding tastes like something you cannot reproduce at home. You cannot reproduce it at home.

A street food vendor serving a customer.
Photograph: Dophonkovi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

As for whose is best, the question is asked in bad faith and answered in worse, and the correct response is to keep eating and decline to adjudicate.

Who reported this

Tobi Adeyemi

Food editor · Ibadan

Writes about what people actually eat rather than what a restaurant would like them to. Particularly interested in market days and the economics of a single dish.

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