Chris Ihidero Unedited: Is Jevenik just a glorified buka?

By Chris Ihidero

If you do not know by now that I am a grubido, I wonder what you know. I wear the badge proudly.  More than just loving food, I love the experience of eating out. When chicken legs (see, even her nickname is associated with food) agreed to share my miserable life, I warned her that the idea of not eating out is alien to me, married or single. I am a buka boy and have no desire to change.

Just a couple of years ago, if you wanted to eat fairly good food and didn’t want to eat in a hotel, you had to go to the Island to find food. Lagos Mainland had great bukas (Amala Shonola in Ogba, Olaiya Canteen in Surulere, Belgium in Festac/Amuwo, White House in Sabo, Yaba, and whatever buka you find anywhere motor mechanics are gathered in Lagos) but few good restaurants. The story is different now. Between Isaac John and Joel Ogunnaike streets in Ikeja G.R.A, you can find enough restaurants to satisfy whatever you crave: Orchid Bistro has a defined style and a specific clientele it targets. You have to be on your best behaviour when you are there. The food is glorious and service often excellent. The ambience is cozy; foreign accents, real and fake, will accompany your food into your mouth. Zen Garden (formerly Jade Garden) is still the premium Chinese restaurant in Lagos. The Place has few pretensions about class. The food is plenty and served fast food like. The vast menu is their major selling point; they have whatever you want. The only negative things about them is that the staff like to quarrel right in front of customers.  I have written about Yellow Chilli and everyone knows by now that the chef that invented their seafood okro soup can do no wrong in my eyes. He will be the first person allowed into heaven on Judgement Day.

Jevenik is the latest addition to the list. I have had the pleasure of eating in the Abuja and Victoria Island branches of Jevenik and I enjoyed the food, largely. I am yet to set foot in their recently opened branch on Isaac John. About two years ago, I decided I couldn’t continue attempting suicide so I stopped eating at Jevenik. No, the food at Jevenik isn’t poisonous; it is just too much, and for someone who was brought up in a home where you have to finish the food on your plate, eating at Jevenik became a suicide mission. How can all that food be meant for one person? A friend and I have this unending argument about Jevenik and we have concluded that the people at Jevenik don’t buy the ingredients they use in preparing their soups: the Salvation Army donates the ingredients to them. This is the only logical explanation for why they can give you so much soup and still make a profit. Like @Ajikespecial, a fellow grubido, inferred when we were talking about Jevenik on Twitter the other day, they serve you food as if you are starving, as if you’ve never seen food before. It’s as if they say: ‘Oya, take, chop and quench, thou escapee from refugee camp.’

When I go to a restaurant to eat, I like to feel that my food was prepared with some care. There’s something about Jevenik that feels industrial, like the soup was cooked in a pot the size of a small village and the yam or fufu was pounded in a mortar the size of the National Stadium, surrounded by 720 muscled Igbo men holding pestles and pounding vigorously.  When I order pounded yam and bitter leaf soup in a restaurant I don’t want it to arrive in five minutes and I don’t want the soup bowl filled to the brim and spilling; I am not a starving refugee from a war zone. I also don’t like eating in restaurants that are built like boarding house dinning halls for 500 starving students, which is what the Victoria Island branch reminds me of.

That Jevenik is opening new branches suggests that whatever they are doing is working for them and business is good. I am happy for them. I shall find the courage to visit the new Jevenik soon. If the experience is similar to what I had in the past, it’s goodbye forever.