Kenya’s celebrity chef makes fine dining from bush

Jethwa is what many in the Western world consider unlikely — a celebrity chef from Africa. But through two high-end Nairobi restaurants and a Fox International television series, he is using the continent’s extraordinary produce and unique culinary traditions to open the minds and change the palates of curious tourists, urbane Kenyans and bush tribesmen alike.

It’s a perspective he says is long overdue for attention.

“Nothing has come out of this region from a food perspective that did anything any justice,” Jethwa said during a recent interview at his Seven Seafood & Grill Restaurant tucked in a small Nairobi mall. “Anything that does come out of this region is either some sort of politics, poverty, hardship, war,” he said. “Any positive stuff is wildlife and the amazing animals that we’ve got. There’s nothing from a people’s perspective.”

Jethwa insists he’s not trying to revolutionize African food, but rather pay respect to its many and varied culinary traditions, as well as the people who harvest the produce and prepare it. In his series, “Tales from the Bush Larder,” now in its third season, Jethwa visits farmers, fishermen and tribesmen across Africa, investigating what they harvest and the lengths they go to get their food to market.

Seeing what it takes to get such ingredients to market “gives you a massive appreciation for the amount of hard work people have to do to produce food … especially in this part of the world,” he says.

His goal? Put Africa on the culinary map, and maybe teach locals things even they didn’t know about their own food cultures. And Mark Leslie, an international commissioning editor for Fox International Channels, said that drive to parade the best the continent has to offer is part of what makes the show a success.

Film shoots from Kenya to South Africa and countries in between “give you an insight into big parts of Africa, which probably most people around the world don’t really know much about,” Leslie said. “You actually get to see and learn a lot about Africa through the subject of food, because obviously it’s universal.”