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Houston is known for its diversity of food options that please any palate. Excitedly, there’s a fairly new addition that is one of the hippest spots in town and among some of the tastiest African restaurants in Houston.
Nigerian chef and restaurateur Ope Amosu opened ChòpnBlọk in the Montrose/Midtown section of the city after first starting his concept as a pop-up and then as a vendor at POST Market International Food Hall, which still garners long lines of locals and tourists for authentic Nigerian and West African cuisine. Amosu’s new stand-alone location opened in the fall of 2024 and is already receiving praise as one of the best African restaurants in Houston.
As soon as customers hit the door, they’re met with a soulful “Black is Beautiful” vibe. It starts with music by West African entertainers and the artwork of Black people by Nigerian and West African artists and continues with the wallpaper with drawings of Nigerian daily life, the West African plants dividing the dining room and the vinyl album covers by Nigerian and West African artists like Sade decorating a wall. You can feel that the West African vibe is vibin’!
“I want this to be a space where when you walk in, you feel represented and feel heard,” states Amosu, a 2025 James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef in Texas. “You get to learn who we are and how we as a [Black] diaspora are truly unified and ultimately how we can showcase the beauty of the culture that we come from.”
African Restaurants in Houston Serving Culture and Cuisine
But it’s the food that keeps patrons of all racial and cultural backgrounds coming back for more. Some of the most popular items on the menu include Trad — a smokey jollof jambalaya, chicken, yagi vegetables and stewed plantains; Golden – like Trad but with added Motherland Curry; Polo Club Suya — grilled beef skewers dusted in traditional Yaji peanut pepper spice, West African beef and veggie patties, plantain chips and dip made with Liberian greens, and Scotch Eggs from Nigeria’s colonial past, but with a deviled filling twist.
The menu is the perfect balance for both West African and American palates, with fragrant spices and tongue-pleasing textures, a slight departure from some African restaurants in Houston.
“We’re celebrating who we are as a collective in the diaspora,” notes Amosu, who was born in London, but grew up in Houston. “What I’ve experienced is, often, when you go to a West African restaurant, it’s usually focused on a particular country, which is usually where the owners are from,” he says.
“But when I had the idea of this concept, I wanted to celebrate where we all are from as a community. I not only want people from Nigeria to feel at home here but people from Senegal and other West African countries, as well as people who are Black American. And our menu speaks to that and represents the West African region before colonization.”
Amosu explains how he incorporated the West African diaspora into his menu. “So for example in our Black Star dish, we call it the Black Star as a nod to Ghana, which is the Black Star of the continent. And that’s because we use waakye (pronounced wah-chay) rice and waakye is a native Ghanaian rice cooked in sorghum leaves, which they call waakye leaf.”
He continues, “But in that dish, you’ll also find Ikoyi shrimp, which is a Cameroon peppered-style shrimp. Another big component to that dish is our yassa curry. Yassa is Senegalese. There’s a big relationship between the Senegambian region and the Ghanaian region. So we use a yassa curry, which is French influenced with Dijon mustard, onion and lemon — those are the three main components of a yassa dish — and I turned that into a curry. And then some of the dishes stand on their own like the Buka, that’s a very Nigerian dish. It’s a Nigerian-style red stew.”
As African restaurants in Houston continue to add excitement and exploration to the city’s gastronomy roster, one diner is embarking on a new culinary adventure at ChòpnBlọk for the first time. “The Golden was my favorite dish,” says Houstonian Wendy Salahuddin. “It was my first time experiencing West African cuisine and I was blown away by the blend of flavors. It was an amazing surprise of culinary artistry.”
According to Amosu, “Our Golden dish is our most popular. And our Trad dish is the first dish I ever made. Both have a jollof jambalaya component. And it speaks to how jollof rice is the precursor to southern jambalaya. Both dishes are very popular with our African American patrons.”
Under their Small Chops or light bites, the Polo Club Suya is a grilled beef skewer that’s a very popular streetside snack in Nigeria. “Beef is called suya and it’s dusted with a traditional spice, which we call suya spice or yaji spice, which comes from northern Nigeria,” Amosu explains.
“People take their suya very, very seriously. It’s a dish where everyone wants to try it to see if it’s as good as what they had back home,” he laughs. “And our suya has been doing very well.”
Another popular appetizer is the chips & dip, which is made with a twist. “It’s plantain chips and Liberian-braised collard greens and kale,” describes Amosu. “Greens are a very significant part of Liberian cuisine. Liberia is considered the Free Land of West Africa because it’s where enslaved Blacks from the U.S. went back to form their own country.”
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Rooted in Culture and Community
Before becoming a chef, Amosu got his MBA in corporate strategy and energy from Rice University and started a career in sales and marketing in the oil and gas industry. His work took him all over the world, with short-term residences in Dubai and Argentina.
“In order to make an impact on our society, I thought about universal languages, regardless of your background that people gravitate to, and that’s when I thought of good food and a good beat,” Amosu notes.
Soon after he started his private dining series. “It was my way of building out my concept with a live audience,” he discloses. “I was learning under West African home cooks and giving audiences my renditions of the food that represents where I and the diaspora come from,” he continues. “I also had my corporate 9 to 5, so that gave me the flexibility to be able to do that in addition to building out this dream on the side.”
That dream came to fruition when he opened ChòpnBlọk on October 1 of last year, which is also Nigerian Independence Day. The largest city in Texas also has one of the largest populations of Nigerians in the country, which inspires the number of African restaurants in Houston.
While Amosu recently became an American citizen in December of 2024, he remains very proud of his Nigerian heritage. “My family is from the Yoruba tribe. And in our culture, home is not where we grew up, but where our parents grew up,” he explains.
“So if you ask me where I’m from, I’ll say I’m Nigerian.” In fact, the chef says the name of the restaurant comes from Pigeon English, which is spoken in parts of West Africa. “In that language, the word chop means to eat. And in West Africa, chop ‘n block is like the location where you go to eat.”
It’s important to Amosu that ChòpnBlọk not only be a cultural crossroads of cuisine but also a community hub with events and programs like their popular speaker series. The restaurant decor is also used to champion other Black-owned businesses.
“So the art you see, it’s actually an art gallery designed by a Nigerian creative designer I work with often. The books on display are for purchase and are curated from Kindred Stories, which is a Black-owned bookstore in the Third Ward. The handmade, African pieces are also for sale and are from Black-owned Root to Home. And the plants are from another Black-owned business and are plants that are native to West Africa.”
The cultural decor will make Black patrons from any part of the diaspora feel proud. As one of the hippest African restaurants in Houston, ChòpnBlọk keeps customers coming back for the soulful atmosphere and to try everything on the menu.
Wrapping up the experience, Amosu adds, “I created this because it was not just a void in Houston. It was a void I experienced anywhere I was in the world outside of Africa. I think we’re playing in a very unique space and it’s something that I’d like to see more of.”
ChòpnBlọk is located at 507 Westheimer Road in Houston. For more information on Chef Amosu and the ChòpnBlọk’s menu and community offerings, visit their website and social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.
