Biography

My father is Nigerian and my mother, African-American. Having spent a large part of my life
in both countries, I am well acquainted with multiple cultures. I grew up eating Nigerian food
influenced by my mother's American tastes, and those are the foods I share with the Bay Area.

When I was young, my father planted 15 acres of pineapples along with plantains and bananas,
mangos, palm, cashew, coconut, African apples, avocados and all sorts of citrus fruits. Our
farm also had a piggery and poultry. At home, we raised goats, ducks, rabbits, dogs, a cat, an
occasional bird or two, guppies and sometimes runts.

Many of my favorite childhood memories revolve around cooking and experimenting with food.
As children, my brother, sister and I would save up our lunch monies and any small change from
groceries or school books and buy ingredients to cook when my parents were not home. No, we
were not authorized to cook. But it was fun, it was a secret, and it just seemed the right thing to
do! Most of our experiments were on the sweet side since we all inherited my mother's love for
desserts. When he found out, though angry that we were using the gas without adult supervision,
our father was mostly amazed at our creations. My mother took it as a Blessed Sign from Above
and retired herself from the kitchen.

I remember wanting to be many things growing up – an engineer, architect, gymnast, acrobat,
veterinarian, writer. I never thought cooking could not be a serious career choice because it was
something I did for fun. That's why I feel so blessed to start Chiefo's Kitchen where I can use food to make people happy and give them a "wow!" experience.