‘Our food, our stories’: bringing West African cuisine to the world
Essie Bartels found US food bland, leading her to create Essie Spice with which she plans to bring her home country’s robust flavours to the US and beyond
Accra — It took a move to the US from Ghana to convince food entrepreneur Essie Bartels that the world deserved to know more about west African cuisine. "You would always end up having to put on tons of stuff — hot sauce, lots of salt, pepper. Nothing was well-seasoned," Bartels says about her American food experience. "It was literally whiter than white, there was no dry fish, no palm oil, no chillies." Bartels saw a gap in the market and dedicates herself to creating sauces and spice blends inspired by her childhood in Ghana’s capital, Accra, through her company Essie Spice. She remembers the flavours of her mother’s kitchen, where she helped cook mouth-watering banku, a filling, doughy dish made of fermented corn, and kontomire stew, a savoury dish featuring leafy greens sautéed in palm oil. But Bartels is far from a purist. The effervescent 31-year-old, who now lives in Englewood, New Jersey, works to take the flavours from her past and reinvent them with ingredients from around...
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