A plate that travels — from Lagos to the Limmat.
Afro-Swiss Soul Food is not fusion for the sake of novelty. It is a quiet, deliberate conversation between two kitchens that already live inside one man — Richard Grob, born in Lagos in 1969, at home in Baden since 1988.
The winning menu on SRF's ‘Mini Chuchi, dini Chuchi' told the whole story on one plate: crispy plantains, tomatoes and Kefen, chicken wings, lamb chops with okra. West-African warmth, Swiss precision, and a balance the jury remembered long after the dishes were cleared.
“The best of both worlds — the two that unite within me.”
There is no shock, no over-spicing, no exotic performance. ‘It would be far too sharp and exotic for the Swiss palate,' Richard says of the Egusi soups of his childhood. Instead he seeks the culinary middle — the same middle he found between Lagos and Baden, between mechanical engineering and IT, between his Nigerian roots and his Swiss papers.
What lands on the table is neither African nor Swiss. It is a third place, born in one biography and shared with five other guests each month around a single long table in the Römerquartier. A boarding pass to somewhere new — the same somewhere, gently different each time.
