‘Although we must respect the growing, sourcing and innate properties of ingredients, it is how we employ them that communicates who we are’ – Jeremy Chan
Phaidon presents Ikoyi: A Journey through Bold Heat with Recipes, the debut cookbook from the acclaimed chef of two-Michelin-starred restaurant Ikoyi in London.
Included in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022, Ikoyi is one of the most innovative restaurants in the world. Opened in 2017 by childhood friends Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale, Ikoyi builds its own spice-driven cuisine around British micro-seasonality: vegetables slowly grown, sustainable line-caught fish and aged native beef. Chan’s menus harness maximum flavour from meticulously sourced and chosen ingredients.
Ikoyi: A journey through Bold Heat with Recipes tells the story of Chan’s incredibly creative and innovative approach to cooking. With a Canadian mother and Chinese father, Chan grew up between Canada, Hong Kong and England. A natural academic, he has a degree from Princeton University and only became a chef in his twenties, after a chance conversation with his friend Iré Hassan-Odukale.
Iré was born and raised in Lagos in Nigeria. He initially moved to England to attend Sixth Form and University but missed the dishes and tastes from his home country. Using the bold flavours of sub-Saharan Africa as a catalyst, the pair began researching and refining their restaurant concept, and Ikoyi was born.
Since opening in 2017, Ikoyi has distinguished itself for its bold use of flavour, introducing new and original ingredient combinations and presenting them with indefinable style. What has evolved over the past 5 years are a series of new dishes with distinctive international flavour profiles from a kitchen driven solely by Chan’s search for ‘deliciousness’ and a totally objective, creative reaction to often overlooked ingredients in terms of context and culture. What began with the bold flavours of West Africa has continued way beyond, transforming the identity of Ikoyi in the process. The result are menus that surprise the senses with a balance of heat and umami: a cuisine totally unique to themselves and arguably one of the most innovative in the world.
Ikoyi: A Journey through Bold Heat with Recipes features 82 micro-seasonal recipes with beautiful photographs by Maureen Evans and eloquently written narratives by Chan. Recipe chapters, which open with a gallery of plated food shots, include base recipes, snacks, seafood, vegetables, meat, desserts and improvisations. Dish examples include Varieties of Summer Squash; Cull Yaw Cured in Burned Seaweed & Asun Relish; and Brown Butter Apples, Cinnamon Berries, Custard & Rhubarb. The book opens with a substantial introduction covering Chan’s personal history, his journey to becoming a chef and the story of Ikoyi.
A stunning debut monograph from one of London’s (and the world’s) most exciting talents, Ikoyi: A Journey through Bold Heat with Recipes invites readers into Chan’s imaginative cooking, philosophies on food and incredible dishes created from his vast collection of global spices combined with an in-season snapshot of produce from the British landscape and seas. It’s little surprise this unassuming chef is the fearless epitome of a new wave in casting aside a rule book constrained by geographic borders.
