The best in-joke of third season comes in “White Fashion”, its sixth episode, when Darius (Lakeith Stanfield), the Nigerian-American stoned philosopher, requests jollof for lunch from a white woman tapped into London’s hospitality industry. She is caught off guard by the request, and innocently asks Darius, “It’s Ghanaian, right?” Darius is wrong-footed, offended, and immediately, defensively responds, “No. No.
Who told you that?” eyes darting around conspiratorially. The episode was written by the Nigerian-American artist , who is referencing an ages-old internecine tongue in cheek cultural debate between two proud nations over who makes the best version of the dish that has become a staple of West African cuisine. In Greenpoint, on November 9th, a small sliver of the diaspora once again converged in an indoor gym to celebrate their respective cultures, and wage another battle in a forever war.
The anxieties expressed by that episode of , that jollof could one day be colonized (likely responding to ), appropriated and perverted by the American palate, is both funny, and somewhat alarmist, because it happened generations ago. Like red beans and rice and gumbo- other West African dishes that exist as American adaptations in New Orleans- jollof is the ancestor of jambalaya (and perhaps, Spain’s paella and Trinidad’s pilau). It is infinitely adaptable rib sticking soul food, a baked rice dish that actually has its roots in Senegal, where it was known as Thieb.
