Chef’s two-year journey across Africa helped elevate his Afro-fusion cuisine to ‘business class’
- Congo-born Dieuveil Malonga learned his craft in Europe’s top restaurants. A two-year trip around Africa helped him find the key to his new restaurant, and life
- At Meza Malonga in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, diners pay US$150 for an experience that marries traditional ingredients from across Africa with modern techniques
Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga learned his craft in Europe’s top restaurants, but says he owes his success to grandmothers across Africa, who passed on the gastronomic secrets that underpin his celebrated Afro-fusion cuisine.
“I travel [to] different countries … to learn from the grandmothers. Then I get these old recipes and I bring it to my laboratory here and we try with my chefs to give it something of a modern touch,” he says.
The 30-year-old from Congo-Brazzaville has visited 38 of Africa’s 54 countries, bringing back fermentation and other techniques, as well as ingredients that add texture and flavour to the dishes served at his restaurant in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
The treasures sourced during his trips are everywhere in Meza Malonga (“Malonga’s Table” in Kiswahili, or Swahili).
Bins holding tiny chilli peppers from the Ivory Coast, pebe nuts from Cameroon and dried mbinzo caterpillars from the Congo fill an entire wall of the establishment.