D.C. Chef Kafui Attakpah Wins Jollof Festival Third Year Running

Kafui Attakpah, co-owner of Alexandria's Calabash African Cuisine & Bar, took home the top prize at Washington, D.C.'s Jollof Festival for the third year in a row, beating out chefs representing Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the United States in a blind taste test that drew roughly 2,000 people to Union Market. The six-hour tasting pitted regional versions of the beloved West African rice dish against one another, with judges sampling plate after plate without knowing which country or chef prepared each one.

The festival, which began in 2017, was built around exactly this kind of blind competition, according to NPR. Attakpah runs Calabash alongside siblings Obed and Faustina Attakpah, and the family-owned restaurant has served traditional Ghanaian dishes like banku and jollof rice in Alexandria since at least 2017, according to Northern Virginia Magazine. This year's win extends a streak that has made Calabash something of a fixture at the top of the D.C. competition.

A Kitchen Team Started Cooking Before Dawn

Not far away at the same market, the team from Silver Spring's Koité Grill was already at work by 5 a.m., preparing lamb, chicken, tomatoes, and peppers for Senegal's entry, per NPR's report. Mamadou Koité and his mother prepared the Senegalese submission together, and Koité said the festival brings people together to appreciate West African food. Koité Grill, according to background reported by The Washington Post, evolved from a family butcher shop in Langley Park, Maryland, after customers began asking for portions of the Senegalese grilled dibi the family cooked for its own employee lunches, and the business opened its Silver Spring storefront in 2021.

Jermaine Foreman-Marshall, who runs the catering company The Maine Course, represented the United States and finished in second place. The full lineup of samples at this year's festival included jollof prepared by chefs from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the United States, giving tasters a rare side-by-side look at how differently the dish can turn out depending on who is cooking it.

Attendees Bring Their Own Loyalties

Opinions among the crowd ran strong even before the judging began. Virginia Richards, a 26-year-old D.C. resident of Liberian heritage, said Liberia has the best jollof, while Maggie Duncan August said Ghanaian jollof is her favorite and that Ghana stands out as number one. Julie Agbasi, who said her heritage is Nigerian and that she grew up eating jollof rice, represented yet another camp in the friendly rivalry that NPR's coverage captured among festivalgoers.

The differences aren't just sentimental. Nigerian jollof typically relies on long-grain parboiled rice cooked over open heat for a smoky finish, while Ghanaian versions often use aromatic basmati or jasmine rice, and Senegalese recipes center on broken rice cooked with fish, according to Demand Africa. Today the dish has recognized versions in at least 10 countries, per NPR, each with its own take on the rice, spice, and heat that define a good pot.

Deep Roots and a Debate That Won't Quit

The rivalry has real historical weight behind it. Jollof rice traces its name to the Wolof, or Jolof, Empire, a West African confederacy that ruled parts of what is now Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania between the 12th and 16th centuries, according to CNET. Senegalese chefs maintain that jollof rice originated in Senegal in the 14th century, per the NPR article, and in December 2021 UNESCO inscribed Senegal's national dish Ceebu Jën, widely regarded as jollof's culinary precursor, on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, citing the fishing communities of Saint-Louis as the dish's historic birthplace.

That kind of institutional recognition hasn't ended the so-called Jollof Wars, the running social media arguments over which country does it best. Ghanaian-born entrepreneur Ishmael Osekre launched the Jollof Festival in Washington in 2017 specifically to turn those online debates into a live blind-tasting event, and the concept has since grown into a touring competition held in more than 16 cities across the United States and the United Kingdom. NPR reports the tour will continue this fall with stops in Atlanta, North Carolina Central University, Dallas, and Houston.

D.C.'s event has produced its share of drama over the years. When the festival returned to the capital in July 2022 after a three-year hiatus, the blind tasting ended in a rare tie between Koité Grill representing Senegal and Mabin's Kitchen representing Sierra Leone, according to DCist. This year's decisive win for Ghana's Calabash restaurant lands just ahead of World Jollof Day on August 22, an annual celebration of West African food culture that has been marked with cook-offs and social media campaigns since 2015.