Ikoyi

Ikoyi serves Jollof Cuisine. Our aim is to combine bold heat and umami with the highest quality products we can find in a warm and welcoming environment.

Ikoyi | St. James Market, London, SW1Y 4AH

We are open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday and available for exclusive hire on Sundays.

Our reservation lines are open between: 10.00am – 6.00pm Monday to Saturday We recommend you reserve online.

If you’re unable to find availability online please email [email protected] or call the restaurant.

For reservations for more than 6 guests please email your request to Please note that we only take table reservations up to a month in advance.

We also provide external catering, for more information please email [email protected] or call the restaurant.

http://ikoyilondon.com

Ikoyi London Review: West Africa's First High-End London Restaurant

Ikoyi London is definitely the place to go if you are a foodie like me who has a taste for High-End Restaurants.

No offence, but I really didn’t want to go to just any mediocre West African restaurant with their terrible attitude, customer service and food.

On the same day I told her, she called Ikoyi London to make a reservation but realised they were closed after Lunch service, but will later open for Dinner.

On a final note, it was an overall great customer experience due to its premium Quality food, innovative flavours, relaxed ambience, professional service, and affordability.

Ikoyi London created a different twist on West African cuisine, by creating an Afrourban flavour.

Ikoyi, St James's Market, London: restaurant review - olive magazine

At Ikoyi, Iré Hassan-Odukale and Jeremy Chan are on a mission to give the flavours and ingredients of West Africa a slick, fine-dining polish.

A single wild Nigerian tiger prawn may sound like a stingy portion for a main, but it turns out to be colossal, and comes bathed in a shellfish bisque finished with raw gin and banga spices (similar in flavour to cloves and anise).

Ikoyi’s jollof rice is a clever take on a classic of West African cuisine; here it’s given an extra injection of umami with the addition of smoked bone marrow.

Drinks-wise, Ikoyi offers a concise wine selection plus a menu of cocktails with a West African twist, from an old fashioned made with caramelised plantain and butter to the Ikoyi Chapman: Beefeater gin, hibiscus, guava and sour passionfruit.

The Manx Loaghton rib is probably the best lamb I’ve ever eaten, with a rich, deeply savoury flavour that’s perfectly balanced by a fiery chilli and pepper relish.

Michael Deacon reviews Ikoyi, London: 'The chicken was like doing ...

By being born around 1945, I would have ensured that I spent the peak years of my career in the 1980s.

And the 1980s, it’s now clear, were the golden years of journalism.

Which are, after all, the three main reasons anyone enters journalism.

review of London African restaurant Ikoyi in St James by Andy ...

Jollof is a rice dish popular in Nigeria and indeed throughout west Africa, a kind of spicy paella for want of a better description – more on this later.

It is important to understand that the kitchen is not trying to reproduce Nigerian dishes, but rather to take west African ingredients and dishes as an inspiration, and often to apply them to more familiar and luxurious ingredients.

This is a little snack but a lot of work to make, involving no less than 33 ingredients, including shallots, red chillies and Scotch bonnets infused in oil and made into an emulsion, with a pickling liquor that is flavoured with honey, lavender and grains of selim (kimba pepper).

All that work was well worth it, the rice having distinct grains and there being a distinct spicy kick from the Scotch bonnet chillies, but the spicy flavours enhanced rather than overwhelmed the crab (15/20).

If you had three courses and coffee and shared a modest bottle of wine then a typical cost per head might come to around £85, though of course you could also opt for the cheap lunch menu, which today included the excellent jollof rice.

Ikoyi, St James's Market, London: restaurant review - olive magazine

At Ikoyi, Iré Hassan-Odukale and Jeremy Chan are on a mission to give the flavours and ingredients of West Africa a slick, fine-dining polish.

A single wild Nigerian tiger prawn may sound like a stingy portion for a main, but it turns out to be colossal, and comes bathed in a shellfish bisque finished with raw gin and banga spices (similar in flavour to cloves and anise).

Ikoyi’s jollof rice is a clever take on a classic of West African cuisine; here it’s given an extra injection of umami with the addition of smoked bone marrow.

Drinks-wise, Ikoyi offers a concise wine selection plus a menu of cocktails with a West African twist, from an old fashioned made with caramelised plantain and butter to the Ikoyi Chapman: Beefeater gin, hibiscus, guava and sour passionfruit.

The Manx Loaghton rib is probably the best lamb I’ve ever eaten, with a rich, deeply savoury flavour that’s perfectly balanced by a fiery chilli and pepper relish.

Ikoyi: West African dynamism not to be missed | London Evening ...

West African-inspired food cooked by a Chinese-Canadian chef in a restaurant named after a prosperous part of Lagos that was home to the Nigerian business partner installed in a soulless West End precinct where other catering operations have all the allure of a fridge with the door left ajar is a fairly quick summary.

Hassan-Odukale took time out from part of his business studies to work front-of-house at Clutch Kitchen (clutchchicken.com — can’t wait to go) run by two of his friends.

A friend describes wild Nigerian tiger prawns as “sweet frustrated lobsters” where sous-vide, if it has been used, has done no favour to texture but banga bisque and prawn grits that accompany them compensate.

Jollof rice, a dish common to most West African countries, is slick with chicken stock and barbecued onions but made opulent by the addition of smoked, salted bone marrow to stir in.

Having approached the menu by ordering nearly all of it between two — regretting later missing out on beef blade, a sophisticated take on Nigerian suya served with traditional condiments (raw onion, tomatoes and peanuts) — we try both desserts.

Michael Deacon reviews Ikoyi, London: 'The chicken was like doing ...

By being born around 1945, I would have ensured that I spent the peak years of my career in the 1980s.

And the 1980s, it’s now clear, were the golden years of journalism.

Which are, after all, the three main reasons anyone enters journalism.

Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall London restaurant review | Life and ...

A previous Asian food centre here also contained restaurants, but was notable for the Chinese and Japanese supermarkets serving the sizeable populations from those countries in this corner of London.

Royal China’s dim sum plates are £3.95 each and, while not quite as sparkling as those at its restaurant on Baker Street, are more than creditable.

The winner for me, though, is a generous plate of slippery, snowy-white steamed pork dumplings, alive with spring onion and sesame oil, for £9.80 from Xi Home, specialising in the cooking of northern China.

■ For something less familiar from the Chinese culinary regions, head to the ever-popular Silk Road in Camberwell, which serves the food of Xinjiang in North West China, at pleasingly low prices.

There are skewers of grilled lamb, crusted with cumin and chilli, terrific dumplings and, best of all, the big plate chicken, a huge soupy stew into which they slide platefuls of wide ribbon noodles.

Ikoyi restaurant review - London, UK | Wallpaper*

West African cuisine is having its moment in London, thanks to Ikoyi at St James’s Market.

Local firm Studio Ashby has populated the street-level space with bespoke elm tables, modernist seating, earthenware pendant lights, and an ochre banquette, while striking black-and-white terrazzo underfoot.

The result is an intimate, contemporary space, best admired from the six-seat bar while sipping an African-inflected cocktail designed by Max and Noel Venning, the brains behind London drinking den, Three Sheets.