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As a toddler, a celebrity chef gleefully ran down his grandparents’ driveway in Kusami (a city in Ghana’s Ashanti Region) to vendors selling Ghanaian food, especially bofrot, the fried donut balls he adored. Fast-forward three decades, and now Eric Adjepong joyfully invites people into Elmina, his new D.C. restaurant that tells the story of this first-generation Ghanaian American’s love for West African history, culture and cooking.
“You get music, the food, the vibe and the culture all in one sitting. That’s my goal, to transport people familiar and new to a place that either reminds them of home or a place they want to go,” says Adjepong, the chef and newly minted restaurateur.
The multi-level restaurant the Top Chef finalist opened on February 18 is a boyhood dream come true, with everything from the stunning design to the contemporary Ghanaian cuisine representing Adjepong’s vision of taking diners on a uniquely West African adventure.
“I didn’t know it would be in D.C. I knew what I wanted it to feel like, and that has stayed the same. That has been the driving force of Elmina.”
Making Elmina a Ghanaian Food Adventure
The restaurateur’s journey from being born in New York City, growing up with immigrant Ghanaian parents, getting a culinary arts degree and earning a master’s in international public health and nutrition prepared Adjepong for his divine purpose.
His devotion to promoting the beauty of Ghanaian food appears on the plates of diners sitting down for the four-course tasting menu at Elmina. “They choose their own adventure and go through a span of tastes and textures in a full download of the West African experience,” says the chef/owner.
The prix fixe tasting menu offered in the two dining rooms gives Elmina’s guests several choices for each of the courses. They include curried corn bisque with cockle clams and Ghanaian food classics such as fufu with braised goat, fante fante fish stew with puna yam chips and waakye rice and beans with oxtail and egg.
The dessert options include bofrot, mango pudding and malva pudding cake. Some dishes Adjepong made with his mother. Others demonstrate his knowledge of Ghanaian ingredients, traditional techniques and West African influences.
“The heartbeat is Ghanaian food. I’d say it’s about 80% of the menu. I took liberties here and there. There’s a Haitian pikliz salad on one of the dishes. There are uses of different ingredients that all make sense culinary-wise and culturally,” states Adjepong.
The celebrity chef’s rise to stardom as a culinary competitor on TV and a host of Food Network shows gave Adjepong the opportunity to work with many talented chefs. His travels to Ghana and within the African diaspora and his work at acclaimed restaurants like Kwame Onwuachi’s Kith and Kin inspire the contemporary global creations on Elmina’s menu.
“I would say probably our most popular dish in the restaurant is the jollof duck pot,” the chef acknowledges. Adjepong continues describing the menu item he based on the duck paella served at a New York City restaurant.
“We pair a duck breast, a confit duck leg and a sunny side duck egg, all in the same pot. We glaze the breast and the leg with a sweet, tangy tamarind glaze. So it’s sweet, tangy, spicy, umami, everything in one pot. We can’t keep it in-house. It sells out so much. It’s a really enjoyable dish.”
Elmina’s chef expects the jollof duck pot to become one of D.C.’s signature dishes. However, the Ghanaian street food available at the restaurant’s two bars could become the favorites of some patrons.
“What is really important for me, thinking about the fullness of African and Ghanaian food specifically, is the life and spirit of street food,” says Adjepong. “The people selling the kebabs or the Kelewele fried plantains with wax paper or newspaper around it. It’s very grab and go.”
The Chichinga, the spiced skewered and grilled meats popular in Ghana, are served at Elmina in wax paper. The wrapper is printed with the image of a March 1957 newspaper cover announcing the African nation’s official independence from British rule.
Patrons can order beef, chicken, prawn, pork belly, octopus or oyster mushroom kebabs from the Chop Bar menu. There is also tuna tartare, fried turkey tails, spicy fried plantains and crispy okra fries.
“The Chop Bar is fun, hands-on and very tactical. You’re eating with your hands. It’s a quick bite, and it’s good,” declares Adjepong. “We have all the scrumptious bites that also pair well with drinks. It gets you thirsty, in the zone, and in the mood for a really good time.”
Elmina closes on Sunday, but the restaurant in D.C.’s vibrant 14th Street neighborhood serves Saturday brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oxtail hash, eggs Benedict and shrimp and grits are among the brunch options. Almost Johnny cakes are also on the menu.
Making Elmina a Vision of Ghana
Selecting a name for his first restaurant took time and deep contemplation. The thought that often came to mind was Elmina, the fishing port in Ghana that Adjepong loves to visit. “It’s a fisherman’s town, a humble town, and a blue-collar town. It’s a place for me to go and hit do not disturb on my phone, just be and sort of connect,” he says.
Adjepong’s connection to the coastal town of Elmina is grounded in his admiration for the local Ghanaians and their approach to life. “The people there are so rich in culture and the disciplines and ways of life; getting up early, making do, making sure they provide for the family. I love Elmina,” proclaims the restaurateur.
Elmina Castle, a Portuguese trading post built in 1482, is one of the most visited sites in the town. It later became a central holding place for captured Africans about to be shipped away in the transatlantic slave trade. Yet Elmina is so much more than the World Heritage site from the past. Adjepong wants his restaurant to mirror people’s pride in what the town is today.
“Elmina, in many ways, is a place for refuge. It is also a place of wealth and beauty. I’m really happy that I settled in on the name. I love it when people come in and say, ‘I love the name.’ How it makes me feel is a cool moment,” says the TV host.
Jimmy Drummond’s design and décor reflect Adjepong’s personality as much as the Elmina name. The themes for the five rooms represent the income-producing treasures of Ghana: cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, timber and blue ocean.
Elmina itself is a Spanish word for the gold mines located there. “It’s very unique. Each space is dedicated to a commodity that brings wealth or abundance to Ghana. Even if you just walk through the space, you get transported here to different places,” adds the restaurateur.
The vibrant colors of blue, green and gold are meant to take visitors to Ghana for a night out in Accra, the capital city. On closer inspection, guests will see the African artwork and family pictures that define how personal the restaurateur’s investment in Elmina is.
Chef Adjepong shares why he put his life and loved ones on display. “It’s a nice reminder and a way to connect. I think people love seeing the family photos. When you go to people’s homes, if they still have photo albums, you always want to look through them and get a good understanding of your friends and family. I try to put those touches all through the restaurant in artistic ways.”
One of the first images patrons see is a painting of the chef’s grandmother. A portrait of his daughter hangs upstairs, but Lennox also makes her importance known in person. “She’s the CEO. Everyone calls her the boss. She loves showing people her painting and feels a lot of pride in the space,” says her dad.
Lennox showed off the restaurant to her first-grade classmates. She also helps with the cooking as much as possible. “She’s got egg duty. She’s cracking and whisking eggs and doing the sunny side up eggs,” Adjepong boasts.
Bacon is one of her favorite things to eat, so the brunch menu lists Lennox’s Million Dollar Bacon as a side. Elmina’s chef/owner honors his father and stepfather with cocktails named Benjamin’s G&T and Daddy Bofa.
A New Cookbook Introduces Ghana to the World
Less than one month after Elmina’s opening, Penguin Random House officially released Chef Adjepong’s first cookbook. The 100 recipes, essays, and narratives tell his story through the Ghanaian food he ate growing up and learned to cook in his family’s kitchens and during international trips.
“It’s a love letter written in Ghana and passed to the world. I wanted to honor traditional recipes as closely and earnestly as possible but still have the room to play around and get funky with some contemporary dishes,” says Elmina’s chef/owner.
“Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past” speaks to Adjepong’s understanding of the Twi word Sankofa, which means “to retrieve.” He embraces the Sankofa idea of learning from the past to take positive steps toward the future.
“There are presentations for things that my grandmother and mother made, very much traditional versions of recipes like Red Red and jollof rice that haven’t really been changed. And then you have more contemporary recipes like the roasted banana grits that you probably wouldn’t have seen on menus 50 to 100 years ago,” Adjepong explains.
Diners will find dishes on Elmina’s menus that also appear on Ghana to the World’s recipe list. “You have to have the greatest hits in there like the waakye, the jollof and the fante fante fish stew. But then also I wanted to make sure I put my spin on things,” says the cookbook author.
Most Ghanaian families pass on their recipes orally without ever writing them down. The cookbook the restaurateur co-authored with Korsha Wilson presents a beautifully photographed story of the culinary experiences that form the essence of Adjepong’s traditional, modern and global West African cooking.
“It was important for me to write the recipes down and go through the research and development process. It’s cool to have them in a book form that I can share with my mom. I can share it with my sister and daughter, so it’s really nice,” Adjepong expresses.
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Sharing the Exploration of Ghanaian Food
As with his restaurant, Adjepong spent years thinking about writing “Ghana to the World.” He credits Wilson for helping him get it published in March. “I am so thankful for her participation and keeping me and the book in check and organized. This book probably would have taken another five years if it hadn’t been for Korsha.”
The cookbook was also a first for Wilson, a celebrated writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Food & Wine, Saveur and Eater. The Culinary Institute of America graduate traveled to Ghana with Adjepong, and the trip she took with her mother introduced Wilson to the chef’s West African roots.
The food writer calls it one of the most meaningful rewards of co-authoring the cookbook. “Getting to go with Eric, taste the food we had been talking about for a year and a half at that point. Getting to see some of his family members, see where his family is from, and getting to just experience the culture,” says the A Hungry Society podcast host.
Wilson and Adjepong’s tour of the Elmina Castle slave trade museum is an experience she vows to never forget. “We shed many tears that day. It was an emotional day. We were both crying, even being the only Americans there surrounded by West Africans. It was a really powerful thing.”
Before their cookbook collaboration, the New York Times and Food & Wine published Wilson’s feature stories about Adjepong. Testing his recipes in her kitchen solidified her admiration for his West African food and culinary mission.
“Getting to spend time in my kitchen with his food was beautiful. My mom is from St. Thomas. I saw so many connections between little touches in his recipes that my family does, like little bits of clove, coriander or curry powder sprinkled here. It reminded me of how we are all connected across the diaspora through these food ingredients,” Wilson comments.
The co-authors talked weekly, which allowed Wilson to tease out revealing elements of the chef’s story like Adjepong’s cab driver dad returning a wallet containing $4,000 and being called an outstanding citizen by the New York Post. “He’s the product of incredible people and an incredible family, so getting to put that onto the page is, I think, my biggest contribution to the book,” says Wilson.
Ghana to the World’s co-author emphasizes how much working with the chef expanded her palate and how she thinks about our ancestors’ cooking. It reoriented Wilson’s understanding of how ingredients, flavors and textures traveled across the African diaspora and beyond.
Together, she and Adjepong focused on creating a book that invites home cooks to explore his story, his recipes and other chefs celebrating West African cuisine. “How do we pull people into this story, this world and this galaxy of talented chefs? I think ‘Ghana to the World’ is a stepping stone for that,” predicts Wilson.
Response to the cookbook tours appears to validate the public’s interest in the long-ignored culinary contributions of the African continent. “The crowds have been a mix of people who have never had this food before, people whose families are from Ghana or other West African countries, or people who are African American,” Wilson confirms.
Not surprisingly, the podcaster still hungers for the tastes and spices of Ghanaian food. Wilson cooks some of her favorites from “Ghana to the World” at home, namely berbere-spiced fried chicken, tamarind-glazed duck legs and the malva apricot pudding cake she hopes to try at Adjepong’s D.C. restaurant soon. “I’m so proud of him and grateful I got to work on this cookbook. It’s a special project. I’m really proud of it,” says Wilson.
Faith in God and the Future of Ghanaian Food
In one of the first reviews of Elmina, the award-winning Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema said, “As with Dōgon by Kwame Onwuachi in the Salamander hotel, Adjepong, 37, is putting the food he knows from childhood on a pedestal, expanding the idea of fine dining, and paying overdue respect to some of the flavors of the world’s second-largest continent.”
Sietsema’s comments follow the praise Chef Adjepong has earned as a private caterer, TV chef, Crate & Barrel dinnerware designer, book author and now a restaurant owner. The Bronx youngster who watched and admired Julia Childs, Martin Yan and Emeril Lagasse has fans applauding his success and influence.
“Moments like that always help to remind me to try to stay as humble as possible, albeit it is sometimes a lot. I have nothing to complain about. I’m doing everything that I’ve ever wanted to do in life, plus more.”
While the chef admits that all the demands on his time can be overwhelming, Adjepong expresses his heartfelt gratitude for answered prayers. He identifies God’s grace as the foundation for his achievements.
“It’s faith. I’m definitely driven by my vocation and my faith. That has been passed down through my family, and I pass it down to my daughter. I understand where my sources are, and I’m thankful every day for it,” says Adjepong.
Elmina’s owner dreams of getting more sleep and fulfilling lofty goals of opening more restaurants and writing more books. Adjepong’s 2023 children’s book, “Sankofa: A Culinary Story of Resilience and Belonging,” echoes the philosophy behind the Sankofa Hospitality Group he founded.
It is all about letting past history, future possibilities and passion for your work guide you. As Adjepong stated in a 2024 Time magazine article, “The mother sauce is made when you stir your culture into your craft. When you barrel unapologetically towards your truth like a boy running after bofrot.”
For the latest information and updates, follow @chefericadjepong, @elmina.dc and @korshawilson on social media.
