Michael in America
Interview by Tunde Wey
Photography courtesy of Michael Elégbèdé
Michael Elégbèdé is a Nigerian-born fine-dining chef based in Lagos.
He left for the United States at 13 and, after 13 years there, he bought a one-way ticket back home. He currently owns and operates ÌTÀN Test Kitchen in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Tunde Wey: How long were you away before you came back home (to Nigeria)?
Michael Elégbèdé: 13 years.
That was recently?
That was four years ago. I went through a point in my career where I had to ask myself the question of what it is that I wanted to stand for. I was going to open a restaurant in New York as a Nigerian chef. And at that point, [I had] not been to Nigeria, even for a visit, in 13 years. I bought a one-way ticket. And, really, what I knew as a Nigerian chef was Yoruba food. It wasn't really Nigerian food. So I wanted more. To be honest, I think the reality of America at the time didn't make anything better. There wasn’t this feeling like I had a place. I think there was a little trauma that came with working in predominantly white kitchens and the reality that [I] succumbed to in that space. I felt like I needed to be back home. It started as this point to prove Nigerian food can be good on a global scale and on a global platform, and it turned into a journey of finding myself again in my own country. Because, really, growing up in Nigeria, we never really traveled around the country. As a Lagosian, you don't go to Akwa Ibom and Kano and Cross Rivers. So I started doing that, driven by food and cooking, in these rural areas. It made me realize how much we needed to know more about our food here first, before the rest of the world.
What kept you from going back home, though? Was it visa issues? Because that's what kept me, and I didn't have a green card until last year.
It was more so my parents weren't going, they weren't visiting. When I started college, I had no immediate family to come to visit in Nigeria. Even now, my parents are in America. My brother is in America. I'm the only one of my nuclear family here. So I have uncles and aunties and cousins who I barely speak to. So there was really nothing tying me to Nigeria. And my formative years weren't here, so I had no really close friends here either to need to come home to.
So how old were you when you moved to the U.S.?
I was 12 going on 13.
Really? You still kept all your thick accent.
Yes, I feel like in the four years that I came back, there was almost like a purposeful reintegration of my accent. Sometimes it sounds very weirdly discombobulated. What does it mean for me to speak in my truest form in Nigeria? It's not pushing to sound like this idealistic accent of what it means to be Nigerian, because I don't think I necessarily sound very Nigerian. But we all adapt. It's coded, right? When you've been in a community for a very long time, you begin to adapt the way things are connotated.
You go back for the first time and then how long did you spend that first time?
It was the one-way ticket.
Oh.
I'm that type of person.
And then you've been there since?
Well, obviously I travel.
So you think of yourself as Nigerian, right?
I think of myself as Nigerian-American. It's one of those things that took me a while to negotiate in my self awareness and self identity. In America, one of the things that kept me grounded, is being able to almost fall back on my identity as a Nigerian while growing up as an American. Going to America challenged my reality as a Black person. You never really questioned your identity and race, right? [when] you live in a Black country. And then coming back to Nigeria after spending so much time in America, [I] questioned my identity as a Nigerian. I realized the reason that I'm able to be so passionate and so willing to challenge the norm of Nigerian food, and this strong notion of identity as a Black man and as a Nigerian, is not because I'm Nigerian, it's because I'm also American.
But what makes you an American?
I think I'm American because I had an American experience in my formative years and it structured the way I think, and the way I challenged things, and the way I approached things, and the way I see myself, subconsciously and consciously. I think experiencing reality as a Black man in America is also very different from being Nigerian in Nigeria. That American-ness about my identity [is because I used to] live in the reality of America and [grew] up with that mentality, with that social structure, with that political structure.
I'm curious about how having an American experience makes you American. Is it because you had an American experience in your formative years?
Yeah.
Experiencing a place doesn't necessarily make you feel like you're from that place. So maybe the question is, why were your first 12 years not your formative, and your latter 13 years your formative years?
I felt like the years that I spent in America were the years where I came to consciousness of who I was, what I want to do in my life, what path I wanted to take. Philosophically, how I identified myself. So those facets I felt, built the structures around what I presume as my formative years. [But] you're right in the sense that when I was in America, [I felt] this dissociation [with American] culture. [It made me realize], how different I was from the rest, even people that looked like me. It made me hold onto this identity that I wasn't American. Even though I have American citizenship, it didn't really make me feel American, just because culturally, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving like Americans would. We still predominantly ate Nigerian food. A lot of the things that culturally connotes one as an American, didn't really have [resonance] to who I was and who I identified and represented myself as in America.
I'm just trying to get the timeline right. So when you were in America, from the time you were 12 until the time you were 25, you felt out of place. You didn't feel American, right?
Yeah. Not in the very patriotic America. No, I didn't.
Well then when you moved to Nigeria you realized how American you were.
Exactly because of the dissonance.
Give me an example of your American side in conflict or in tension with your Nigerian side. Something that represents this Americanness in Nigeria.
In this specific upbringing that I had in America, I was able to acquire the tools to always challenge the norm and feel like my voice mattered. Knowing that if I put all my effort into it, if I put all my mind into it, for some reason, I would be heard, which is something that unfortunately Nigeria has almost tried to strip away from its people.
For instance, look at protests in Nigeria. We don't know how to protest in Nigeria and that is part of it. That lack of belief that your voice matters. Doing that in Nigeria and also having people behind you to say, ‘Yes. His protest matters and that's something that should be challenged. Those are norms that should be challenged.’ It's very rare.
That understanding [relates] to exactly what I do with interpreting our food in a creative way. I've heard people come to me and say, ‘[Why do] you want to serve to white people?’ And I'm like, ‘No. I don't want to serve it to white people. I want to serve it to you. And I want to serve it to you in a way that I think is interesting and different, but still we can have fun with our food.‘ It's like, ‘Eh, but you have French training. You have American training. Why don't you do American food and French food?’ I'm like, ‘Because I love Nigerian food.’ The love I have for Nigerian food is why I'm able to use it as a drive for my inspiration.
So why are the values that you embody right now, these values of protest, of having your voice matter, of community, of challenging the status quo, why do you quantify those values as American values?
I'm not saying they're not Nigerian values. I'm saying that my experience of growing up where I learnt those experiences, how I grew up, gave me those experiences. When I got [back] to Nigeria, I was able to use those tools that I learned. Many of them were from my parents, to challenge the norm that I came into in Nigeria.
Right, right.
Me challenging what I saw and what was going on in the systems that I was surrounded by, forced me to challenge and let my voice be heard and create a louder voice [which I could direct at] the injustice that I saw around me.
