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Drawing on her wealth of experience working in the kitchens of an Iron Chef, a Michelin-starred restaurant, and international hospitality brands, Ghanaian American chef Nana Araba Wilmot pays homage to her heritage as the owner and founder of Love That I Knead Supper Club.
Through this pop-up dinner series, she explores the vibrancy of West African foods while educating diners on the depth and influences of indigenous foodways.
Becoming a Chef
“As a child of immigrants, my parents came here for better opportunities for themselves and their children. Cooking wasn’t a profession they envisioned for me, but my mom had always said whatever you want to do, be the best at it,” Wilmot says.
As the youngest of two, her earliest memories of cooking involved being by her grandmother’s and mother’s sides in the kitchen, supporting them with various tasks. Chores like washing dishes or assisting with making Ghanaian staples like red stew or jollof rice replaced playing outside or riding bikes with her older brother, something she would have rather done instead.
Wilmot would initially pursue a career in public relations and communications. At the time, becoming a chef was never top of mind, but upon returning home during college in 2006, a desire to explore other career paths presented itself.
Reflecting on this period of her life Wilmot shares, “I was writing down all of these characteristics and strengths that I had…when I was online one day an ad for the Art Institute of Philadelphia’s culinary program popped up.”
The ad piqued her curiosity, and after looking through the course catalog, she was interested enough to consider enrolling. She just needed to convince her parents, which included challenging herself to cook different dishes for a week for her mother, before sharing her big plans to enter the program.
Wilmot formally enrolled in the program with her parents’ support, graduated in 2013 with degrees in culinary arts and culinary management. In the years that followed, she carved a path as a chef, landing a myriad of coveted roles in the kitchens of Iron Chef Jose Garces’ Tinto in Philadelphia, Michelin-starred restaurant Le Coucou in New York (working under the tutelage of chef Daniel Rose), and Wolfgang Puck Catering.
Working as a back-of-house professional in such well-known establishments was not void of its challenges, especially as a Black woman. While she had a strong mentor and received various opportunities to develop her craft, it was not always easy working in kitchens with others who did not share similar backgrounds, including growing up in a West African household and cooking West African foods.
During this time, she recalls how it became essential to create relationships with other chefs who shared her lived experiences. “It’s crazy what you can do when you’re in an environment that is for you and not against you…what is surrounding you and who is surrounding, is what can make you the best or also make you worse,” Wilmot shares.
From Restaurant Chef to Supper Club Entrepreneur
When the hustle and bustle of working in commercial restaurants and a global pandemic halted an opportunity she had initially taken in France, Wilmot returned home to New Jersey to recenter herself. Taking time to slow down briefly took her away from the kitchen, but a simple nudge from her mother took her in a new direction.
“When you come home, you always think about things that will refresh you, and for me, it was my mom’s cooking. One Sunday she came and asked me what do you want to make. Let’s make something,” Wilmot says.
This serendipitously evolved from one Sunday dinner into a weekly ritual. Each week was an opportunity to relearn how to cook dishes like jollof rice and corned beef stew, and at the same time, ignited a newfound love for the origins of indigenous cooking techniques and taking a deeper dive into the diversity of West African foods.
One week, a friend she was hosting urged her to share what she and her mother were cooking more broadly. “She was amazed with what we created and said people need to know about this, even though we were just making classics,” Wilmot says.
Her friend’s encouragement led her to enlist the help of industry colleagues to host a ticketed dinner party in her mother’s backyard in the fall of 2020. She sold out its 21 seats and featured a simple menu of traditional Ghanaian dishes reimagined through the techniques she honed throughout her culinary career.
The event was a complete success, ultimately becoming the impetus for Love That I Knead Supper Club—a name she came up with while making bread after learning the family recipe from her aunt and how it was a practice that she felt healed her.
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Centering West African Foods and Identity
The following year and beyond continued to be a whirlwind with Wilmot hosting dozens of pop-up dinners across Philadelphia and New York. Each dinner featured a one-of-a-kind menu showcasing the culmination of her career and honoring her grandmother’s legacy. She even returned to Ghana for two months in 2021, where she found herself rejuvenated and would eventually expand her business to host pop-up dinners in Accra.
“I really wanted to soak it all in. It’s a different experience cooking in Ghana. I’m going to the market, I’m going to straight to those who are cultivating the crops, so it’s different because your immersed in the experience in a different way than the United States,” Wilmot says.
Among her favorite events was a multicourse dinner hosted in 2024 for New York Fashion Week, where she partnered with AfroFuture, Martell Cognac, and Industrie Africa to curate a menu that drew influence from fashion and culture.
The menu focused on leveraging sustainable practices, with notable nods to West African foods like yassa onion crab cakes, red red croquettes made with tomato palm oil stew, and plantain upside-down cake.
With each new dinner, her concept evolves, including those that blend West African foods with other cuisines of the world, collaborating with brands for spirit and wine pairings, and most recently, hosting a pop-up dinner at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a part of their 2025 Black History Month programming and celebrations.
The Future of Love That I Knead Supper Club
Wilmot is excited to continue iterating her supper club while remaining rooted in what brought her to create it in the first place. This includes a desire to expand minds and thoughts on the ideas of Black food, providing more education on food access, and collaborating with up-and-coming chefs who aren’t always given opportunities. She also ideates what it would look like to have a permanent home for Love That I Knead Supper Club.
“Ultimately, I just want to renew us in our pride of who we are, and help people find their way back. It’s very important to be embedded in understanding our indigenous foods and how they were made.”
To learn more about chef Nana Araba Wilmot and her schedule of Love That I Knead Supper Club events, visit her website or follow @LoveThatIKnead on social media.
