All Stories

Food culture essays, recipe narratives, brand stories, and dispatches from the Road to Kisumu.

Recipe

Milk Greens: A Taste of Kisumu

In Kisumu and across western Kenya, greens cooked down in milk are everyday food. Laura made it with her dinner and shared her recipe, along with the one step you can't rush.

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Food Investigation

The Stamp Is Real

Kenya's fear has moved from illicit brew to the branded bottle in a licensed shop. I'm about to stock a bar, and the only check on offer tells me less than I hoped.

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Recipe

Nothing Takes Root in Lake Chabot

The catfish I fried came out of a lake that buys its fish by the pound, in weight classes, delivered by truck. I had spent years fishing there without once asking where the fish came from.

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Food Investigation · Road to Kisumu

Cost of Fuel

When cooking gas gets expensive, the obvious answer is charcoal. Except charcoal is at a 78-month high too. I've been planning a menu built on fire without ever asking what the fire would cost.

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Food Investigation · Road to Kisumu

The Maize Was Inherited

I learned masa from my neighbor's mother and ugali from a phone. Then I went looking for how an American grain became Kenya's staple, and found a tax, a labour migration, and a daily ration called posho.

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Food Culture Essay · Recipe

Several Years of Thursdays

Half the Kenyans I know told me I'd hate githeri. The other half said they'd eat it every day forever. The split has nothing to do with the food — and everything to do with when you first met it. With the recipe I cook almost weekly.

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Food Investigation · Road to Kisumu Series

The Prawns Had to Travel

A firecracker shrimp dish went onto the opening menu before the building exists. Then the prawns turned out to come from 830 kilometers away — and farm-to-table broke before I ever left California.

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Food Culture Essay · Road to Kisumu Series

Barbecue Taught Me Control. Choma Taught Me Restraint.

Twenty years on an offset smoker taught me control. Nyama choma solves the same equation — meat, fire, time — from the other direction. Two expert traditions, opposite answers.

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Food Investigation · Behind the Label

Between Kenya and My Cupboard

Kenya is one of the world's largest tea exporters. Almost none of it reaches American shelves with that word on the label. A chef traces the loop — Mombasa to Dubai to your cupboard — and finds the same shape colonialism drew a century ago.

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Food Investigation · Behind the Label

Shop the Meat, Not the Label

Grass-fed, pasture-raised, Product of USA. The prices climb with each claim. A chef who can't taste the difference went looking for what those labels actually guarantee, and found the answer was less than he assumed.

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Food Culture Essay · Road to Kisumu

The Price of Cheap Fish

A growing share of the tilapia sold on the shores of Lake Victoria was farmed and frozen 8,000 kilometers away. What that means for the fishermen, the lake, and the plate in front of you.

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Recipe & Narrative · East African Classics

Green Grams (Ndengu)

A humble legume with a history rooted in drought resilience and a billion-shilling export trade — and a personal one, introduced by a friend's memory of her grandmother's kitchen. With the recipe that's become my own weekly ritual.

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Recipe & Narrative · Road to Kisumu

Chapati, or: Why Are You Rushing, Man?

I threw out whole batches of dough. I almost gave up. The story of how a chef learned to stop rushing — and how a South Asian flatbread rode a steam engine all the way to the city I'm about to call home. With the recipe that finally got it right.

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Recipe & Narrative · Road to Kisumu

The Bhajia War

I posted the video like it was any other post. I woke up at 2am to a comment section at war. What followed was a lesson in food, culture, and why getting the story right matters — and a recipe for Nairobian Bhajia that started it all.

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Recipe & Narrative · Road to Kisumu

Oven-Baked Whole Tilapia with Crispy Cassava Fries and Kachumbari

A Kisumu staple made without the deep fryer — whole tilapia roasted until the skin crisps, served with cassava fries and a palate-refreshing kachumbari. The kind of food you eat with your hands and don't care who sees you.

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Food Culture Essay

Ugali: A Kenyan Staple

A deep dive into the cultural history of Kenya's most beloved dish — from colonial roots to Pan-African identity. More than food, ugali is a statement.

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Recipe & Narrative

Smoked Turkey: A Holiday Tradition Reimagined

From childhood smoked drumsticks at the fair to smoking a 20lb bird for the holidays — the personal story behind a recipe that now has people calling every Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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