Ikoyi: A Journey Through Bold Heat with Recipes

Through these creative if out of reach recipes, chef Chan offers a behind-the-scenes look at his two Michelin star London restaurant, Ikoyi. The book opens with Chan’s origin story: dissatisfied working in finance, Chan and his best friend, Iré Hassan-Odukale, started a catering business. A year later, they found a space for a restaurant and named it after the neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, where Hassan-Odukale was born, because it “felt instinctively warm and unpretentious.” The recipes, pulled straight from Ikoyi’s kitchens and inspired by spicy West African flavors, can make no such claim. Ambitious cooks will be intrigued by Chan’s unique creations, like smoked jollof rice with crab custard, and blue poppy seed waffles with smoked honey butter and daikon ganache, but even the author admits sourcing ingredients will be “difficult or at times impossible.” In conjunction with each recipe, Chan shares the story behind its inception, and his prose occasionally chafes (“my aim is to express the very essence of the animal or vegetable, rendering it even more itself than it was before it landed on the plate”). Complete with gorgeous photos, this reads more like an advertisement for Ikoyi than anything readers would try to make at home. Still, adventurous foodies will find plenty to enjoy. (Apr.)