Ijeoma: I just gotta go back to the spoon.
I can't eat with forks.
You can't eat rice with forks.
Manny: I'm a fork person.
Ijeoma: Spoon, you get more food.
You just get more. It's just sweeter.
Manny: What's up, guys? My name is Manny,
and today I'm here to answer one question, once and for all:
Which country makes the best jollof rice?
I'm not a jollof expert,
so I'm gonna be meeting up with jollof aficionado
and Nigerian beauty-and-lifestyle blogger Ijeoma Kola.
She'll be taking me to three of New York City's
highest-rated West African restaurants.
OK, so let's get into this debate.
For those who don't know,
jollof rice originated in the Wolof empire
that existed in present-day Senegal and Gambia
between the 1350s and the 1540s.
It's a dish made of rice with a base of tomatoes, peppers,
onions, and various seasonings.
Jollof made its way across West Africa
by way of military expansion and trade.
Today, it's eaten in countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia,
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Cameroon.
Because of this, there's a slight variation
in how the dish is prepared in each country.
Today, you can find many West Africans across the world
lightheartedly debating who makes the best jollof.
It's a debate that has even reached African presidents.
Manny: All right, guys, we're here at our first location.
It's a Nigerian restaurant called Amarachi,
and I'm here with Ijeoma.
Ijeoma: I'm super excited to be here because I'm Nigerian,
so I am excited to try out Amarachi's Nigerian take
on jollof rice.
I'm pretty sure it's going to be the best,
but I'm gonna try my best to be unbiased.
Manny: All right, let's go check this out.
Joseph: Amarachi representin' Nigeria, Wazobia,
the eastern and southern parts of Nigeria
of Igbo and Yoruba descent.
Before we had a restaurant,
it was always a big deal for us to find
a Nigerian restaurant to go eat at.
So we decided, let's take on this task of
providing a nice, comfortable place
where you can have food
that you're very comfortable with and you're familiar with
in an upscale setting.
So that's the whole idea behind Amarachi,
bringing Africa into the 21st century through our lens,
not someone else's.
The base of a good jollof are the seasonings.
Especially if you're definitely making jollof for Nigerians,
you want it very spicy.
You want a lot of pepper in it.
You want them sweating when they're eating it.
Grab a nice big spoon, and dig in.
So we have here our signature jollof rice dish
with stewed chicken drumettes and sweet plantains.
Manny: I'm gonna take a bite.
Ijeoma: Dig in.
Manny: It's incredibly savory, incredibly flavorful.
I'm tasting a lot of tomato.
Ijeoma: It's very tomato-based.
Manny: Yeah.
Ijeoma: Which is always a good thing.
There's a little bit of spice there.
It could always use a little bit more spice, but.
Since this is your first time having Nigerian jollof,
what are your thoughts so far?
Manny: I'm really in love with it, honestly.
When I usually have rice, it's, like, hard,
the grains are hard, or it's not meant to be
the flavorful, main-dish experience.
But this is, like, treating rice really well.
Treating it, putting it on a pedestal.
I'm a big fan.
Ijeoma: Yeah. I think in America, a lot of times
rice is served as a side dish,
and in West Africa it really is the main dish
and, like, the staple of the foods that we eat.
Manny: And rightfully so,
because this thing is delicious.
I'm honestly, like, done with this interview.
I'm just tryin' to eat this now.
All right, guys, we're here at our second location.
Ijeoma, where are we?
Ijeoma: We are currently in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn,
at Joloff Restaurant.
It is a Senegalese restaurant,
so pretty excited to see what a restaurant
that calls itself Joloff, how their jollof tastes.
Aicha: The restaurant started in 1995.
My dad used to cook out of his apartment with my mom,
and they'd go to downtown Brooklyn,
selling it to different customers.
They had specific customers who they would sell to.
And then they decided, why not open up a restaurant?
Love is the full base of good jollof rice.
You have to know what you're doing.
And you have to love this rice that you're cooking.
We usually have it with fish.
You have cabbage, cassava,
carrot, yuca, sometimes eggplant,
and also
with some lime. Mmm.
And some hot sauce.
Manny: OK, Ijeoma, you're having the short-grain rice,
jollof rice, with fish,
and I'm having the long-grain jollof rice with chicken.
I'm interested to see what you think of your first bite.
Ijeoma: Let's see.
So short-grain rice,
I don't think I've ever had short-grain rice before.
And it's giving me, like, couscous vibes.
I'm a little bit thrown off.
I'm a little bit thrown off with the size of the rice,
but the flavor is really good.
Manny: Flavor's good.
Ijeoma: The flavor is really very good.
Manny: So I really like it.
This has a similar tomato base
as the last restaurant we had.
I'm interested to see what you think is more authentic,
because I remember at the end of our last experience,
you said that the jollof rice was not the same kind
that you would've had at, like, parties.
Ijeoma: Right.
Manny: So what do you think of this one?
Ijeoma: That jollof rice is really, really good.
Manny: So you're more used to seeing this.
Ijeoma: Yeah, that I'm used to.
I'm gonna take another bite of this.
Manny: I wanna try yours too.
Ijeoma: Please do.
Manny: Well, as someone who doesn't have a lot
of jollof experience, I really like this too.
Ijeoma: I also like that this is served with a vegetable.
You know, at the other restaurant, we were given plantains
and a little bit of onions, but not really
a vegetable on the side, yeah. Manny: Like a true vegetable
on the side, yeah.
It's nice to have, like, a real, like,
veggie dish with the rice.
Ijeoma: Right.
Manny: It tastes really good too.
Ijeoma: I'm gonna see how their pepper adds to the flavor.
Manny: Is it good? Ijeoma: That's good.
Manny: I wanna try some.
Ijeoma: I think that adding pepper
just, like, elevates all the flavors.
Manny: So good.
That is so good. Ijeoma: Really, really good.
Manny: It's gonna be a really tight race at the end.
But if you guys don't mind excusing us,
we have to finish these plates.
We've been to Amarachi. We've been to Joloff.
But now we're here at our final location.
It's coming down to the wire.
Ijeoma, where are we?
Ijeoma: Today, we're at Accra Restaurant.
It is in Harlem.
And it is an Ghanaian restaurant, so we're gonna be
trying out Ghana's version of jollof rice.
Ayesha: We decided to start Accra because
we wanted people to get the real taste of African cuisine.
Particularly Ghana, or the west coast of Ghana,
the western part of Ghana.
Africa in general.
So we wanted everybody to get the same taste
that we get when we think about home.
The good base to the jollof is the beginning,
the frying process, because the onions also
will give it its taste and its smell.
Then when you're frying your onions and tomatoes,
making sure that it's not overly cooked
before you add the tomato paste
and whatever you want to put into that jollof
to give it that flavor.
Senegalese use broken rice.
Most Nigerians use parboiled rice.
We, the Ghanaians, predominantly we use jasmine rice.
We predominately use smoked turkey to get our flavor.
So little variations in seasoning,
but pretty much the same base.
Junior: Today, guys, we have fried plantains, jollof,
then we have steak with onion and tomato-based stew.
That's the bases for the jollof rice.
I hope you enjoy.
Manny: I think we are going to.
Junior: Oh no, I know you're going to.
Ijeoma: First things first, before we even dig in,
the fact that this was served with stew
is already, like, winning points for me. I love stew.
I think that all jollof rice should be served with stew.
Manny: And I think this is our
first jollof rice served with beef.
Ijeoma: That's correct. Yeah. Manny: If I recall correctly.
So I'm excited to try this.
Ijeoma: Yeah, all we've had so far has been chicken.
So this should be good.
Even though the stew's already, like, cooked into the rice,
I just feel like you just need extra stew.
So I really appreciate that they gave us
some extra stew on the side to enjoy.
Manny: That is really good.
You can really taste the tomato in this jollof rice.
It's very present.
And the onion too.
I think you can taste the onion a lot more
than the other restaurants.
Ijeoma: Yeah. Wow.
The flavors are spot-on.
The spice is perfect.
This might be the one.
Manny: I'm really a fan of the texture of this rice.
It's not too hard. It's not too soft.
It's right there in the middle.
So I've got some beef here with the stew on top of it.
And that's just, that's just fantastic.
I'm really grateful that we had to try a fish dish,
a chicken dish, and now a beef dish.
My personal favorite out of the three is steak beef, so.
Ijeoma: Actually, I think this is, like,
my least favorite protein.
Manny: Beef?
Ijeoma: No, in general, of the ones that we've had so far.
This rice, though,
is everything.
This rice is so good.
Manny: So eating the plantain, the beef,
the stew, the jollof, all together,
and then thinking about the previous jollof rices we had,
this is gonna be such a hard decision.
I'm sort of leaning one way. I don't want to reveal yet.
But this is really good.
Ijeoma: Yeah, we've had different proteins.
We've had different sides.
We've had different, like, vegetable accompaniments, so.
We'll definitely have to kind of sit down
and maybe make a list of all the different things
that the different restaurants had going on.
But this is definitely a contender, for sure.
Manny: Yeah.
All right, we're finally done.
Ijeoma, thank you so much for taking me
on this jollof journey.
Ijeoma: You're so welcome.
Manny: I've had jollof before,
but, as I said earlier, I'm from East Africa,
and our rice is not as notable,
I would say. Ijeoma: No.
Manny: There were obvious differences
between each restaurant.
Let's go through those a little bit.
Ijeoma: So Amarachi, they served us that
really moist jollof rice
with the side of chicken and the onions and the peppers.
And I remember us being really surprised at how
tender and soft the rice was,
because some jollof can be quite dry,
as we saw in some other restaurants.
So I think that was the main difference
between the Nigerian jollof
and the other ones that we tasted.
Then at Joloff, the Senegalese jollof,
we were actually presented with
two different kinds of jollof rice,
which probably is, like, not really fair,
'cause all the other restaurants only presented one.
Manny: Yeah, I remember you weren't such a big fan
of the short-grain jollof. Ijeoma: I wasn't.
I did prefer the long-grain jollof.
It's just because it's closer to what I'm used to.
I haven't really had short-grain jollof that much.
The flavor was a bit stronger and had a little bit
more depth to it, but it was also dryer than
the Nigerian and Ghanaian versions that we had.
Then last, we went to Accra Restaurant,
which was the Ghanaian version of jollof,
and that was served with the steak and the stew
and the plantains on the side.
So that was really, really good.
The color of that was actually a bit deceptive
because it was pretty light compared to the other ones
that we had, especially the Senegalese one
was really, really dark and really rich.
The Ghanaian jollof was really light,
but it still had a lot of flavor in it.
Manny: All right, it's time to settle this debate,
once and for all.
I'm gonna choose Amarachi as my favorite jollof rice.
That is the Nigerian restaurant.
I was just a really big fan of the tenderness of the rice.
The rice was very soft.
The side dishes were really good as well.
And I think Amarachi had the best presentation
of the actual plate too,
the way that they kind of gave the jollof rice
that bowl shape and then put the sides around it.
It was all just really beautiful.
That was my favorite one.
What about you?
Ijeoma: So I really want to pick Amarachi as my favorite,
especially since I'm Nigerian,
but my one critique of Amarachi is actually that
I think it was too moist.
So typical jollof, like party jollof, can't be that moist.
It just can't.
It can't serve 400 people being that moist.
Manny: It's not sustainable?
Ijeoma: It's not. It's not.
So I feel like it works for a restaurant,
but is that, like, authentic jollof?
Manny: Mmhmm. OK. Ijeoma: I don't know.
I don't know.
The flavor was there. The heat was there.
But the way that you talked about Amarachi's presentation
being, like, very proper and very pretty,
you don't need jollof to be cute. You just need it
to taste good. Manny: OK.
Ijeoma: And so what was the most authentic
and the most flavorful for me
was Accra's jollof.
I bet that's, like, gonna get me killed.
So Accra, you know, it was a huge,
it was a massive plate.
Manny: Yeah, it was. Ijeoma: They just threw
some stew on top, threw the plantains there,
dusted it off with some lettuce,
and that's really all you need.
Manny: That's all you need? Ijeoma: You just need
two pieces of lettuce and a huge plate of rice.
That was really good.
That was the best rice that we had, in my opinion.
Manny: OK, so as an uncultured jollof eater,
I have to say that the Nigerians made it the best.
Ijeoma: As we usually do.
I will say, though, from the ones that we've tried,
I do think that the Ghanaians
really hit it out of the park this time.
I'm not saying that Ghana makes the best jollof.
I'm saying of the jollof
that we had... Manny: OK.
Ijeoma: Ghana made the best jollof.
Manny: All right. Ijeoma: You know.
Nigerians still have the best jollof.
Manny: I'm praying for your mentions.