Since 2019
Built for the food we grew up on.
Alata is a buka, not a restaurant pretending to be French. Here is how it started.
The Beginning
Ibadan → Lagos → London
Yoruba · Buka
Canning Town, E16
“Alata” — the Yoruba word for one who sells pepper. Bold, essential, made for the people.
Chef Taiwo Adeyemi was born in Ibadan and raised between Lagos and London. His first kitchen was his grandmother’s on Lagos Island — crayfish, scotch bonnet, locust beans, jollof cooked over firewood every Saturday with the whole compound around it.
After fifteen years working in London kitchens, he opened Alata on Beckton Road in 2019. The idea was simple: a Nigerian restaurant where you could sit down, eat proper food, and feel at home — without dressing up or spending a fortune. No fusion. No watered-down spice for nervous palates. Just Nigerian food, cooked the way it has always deserved to be.
“I want every guest — Nigerian or not — to taste something true.”
— Chef Taiwo
The Centre of the Menu
Why abula is at the centre.
Most Nigerian restaurants in London lead with jollof. We lead with abula. Partly because it is the food Taiwo grew up on — Yoruba food, buka food, the soups his grandmother made. Partly because it deserves more room than London has given it. Amala, gbegiri and ewedu, made properly, do not need to be elevated or reinvented. They need to be cooked the right way, by people who know how. That is the whole job.
In the Kitchen
Three rules in the kitchen.
01
No shortcuts.
The pepper base is ground from scratch every morning. The amala is mixed by hand. The soups are simmered the way they should be, not rushed.
02
No fusion.
Nigerian food is already complete. It does not need French technique to be respected.
03
No fuss.
Come as you are. Nigerian food has always been communal — at Alata, everybody eats at the same table.
The People Behind the Fire
Meet the Team
Chef Taiwo Adeyemi
Head Chef & Founder
Born in Ibadan, raised between Lagos and London. Fifteen years cooking across London before coming back to the food that shaped him.
Kemi
Head of Swallows & Soups
Her egusi has a cult following, and she is the reason the amala is the way it is.
As Seen In
Time Out London
The Guardian
Evening Standard
Vogue UK
Eater London