Inside the kitchen at Akwaaba Kitchen

Three generations, one pot

Akwaaba Kitchen opened in a courtyard with two burners and a table. The grandmother cooked, the mother served, and the son did the market run before school. The courtyard is now a 40-seat room and the son is called Chef Ibrahim, but the pot at the back is the same one.

What has not changed

The stock goes on at 6am. Nobody has ever persuaded the house to make it the night before, and the argument is simple: stock that has slept does not taste the same, and the regulars notice before the third service.

What delivery changed

Two things, and neither was planned. First the menu shrank: of 22 dishes, 6 travelled badly, and they came off the online menu without coming off the room's. Second the hours moved: online ordering peaks between 11:30 and 1pm, while the room fills at 1:30. So the kitchen learned to cook in two waves.

In Chef Ibrahim's words

We were told delivery would kill neighbourhood restaurants. What kills us is cooking for people we never see again. So we put the house number on every container, and people ring to say it was good. That did not exist before.

What a restaurant learns from its own numbers

The house looks at 3 things every week: which dishes the same customer orders twice, which dishes are cancelled before they are cooked, and what time the kitchen starts running late. The rest is noise.